Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Featured work


In her work Alicia Frankovich deals with the idea of the performing body that activates sculpture with physical and spatial transfer. She also addresses the question of materiality, which is produced and deferred, forming a by-product/and or a document of performance, often in the form of photographs such as Pugliese Suspension / Post-performance Object. If you would like to know more about Alcia Frankovich's work, or the work illustrated above, please email us at starkwhite@starkwhite.co.nz
Image: Alicia Frankovich, Pugliese Suspension / Post-performance Object, Diptych, 2007, edition of 8.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

How to collect performance art


THE ART NEWSPAPER Art Basel Daily Edition published an article in June on How to collect performance art, the day before it was the subject of a debate in an Art Basel Conversation. Klaus Biesenbach, chief curator of Media and Performance Art at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA) and Conversation panelist said: When you look back you understand that video art was the 'golden frame' of the 1990s. In 2009 we look back on the first ten years of this century and it is performance... At some point it reached a critical mass and awareness so that now it seems to be everywhere." MoMA has, in the past year, added performance art to its former media department and acquired new works. You can read the article by clicking here and scrolling down to page five of the newspaper.
Image: Alicia Frankovich, Trajectory, video projected onto found technologies, 2008-09

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Last week




Stella Brennan's project The Middle Landscape (downstairs) and Matt Henry's Flatline exhibition (Project Space) both close Saturday 3 October.
Images from the top: Stella Brennan, The Middle Earth, installation view, Starkwhite; Matt Henry, Flatline, installation view, Starkwhite Project Space

Saturday, September 26, 2009

ShContemporary wrap up


ShContemporary closed on Sunday 13 September 09 and like many in the region we're waiting for reports to emerge on how it fared. While there is talk of the global recession bottoming out and 'green shoots' appearing, it's still a tough time to be in the art fair business.

So how did it look to us?

ShContemporary continues to position itself as the Asia/Pacific fair with its sights set on becoming an event to rival the great fairs of Europe and America. We need great fairs in our part of the world and their commitment to the region is commendable.

The new director, Colin Chinnery, tuned the 09 fair to the region giving it a stronger Asian focus. The ShContemporary website listed 75 participating galleries of which just 20 were from Europe and America. This was a clever piece of recession proofing, as the economic downturn in Asia has not been as severe as in the West. But the recession did figure large in Chinnery's mind. He says: "One of the major objectives for this year's edition was simply adjusting people's expectations, which were overblown by the exploding Chinese market before being squashed by the recession. The expectations are different now than before but they are based on solid reality. The hyper-commercial or expensive work is nowhere to be seen. There is a lot more experimental works, lots of younger work. People are going to realize that art doesn't appreciate 100 times in five years."

Chinnery also carried out a little re-inventing to give the fair "a more experimental and daring vision". This year's event included sections aimed at attracting artists, curators, galleries and collectors looking for more than a slice of the art market in play, notably the Discoveries exhibition. Curated by Mami Kataoka, Anton Vidokle and Wang Jianwei, the exhibition explored the question "What is Contemporary Art?" through the work of 24 artists from around the world selected to present their individual responses to the question. The exhibition theme was also addressed in a conference on the same subject and structured as a 4-day series of lectures and discussions (see our earlier posting here), drawing such speakers as critic Hal Foster, artist Martha Rosler and curator Hans Ulrich Obrist. The contents of the conference are to be published in e-flux journal.

The fair also included a new initiative - The Collectors Development Programme - aimed at potential and emerging collectors. This will be of interest to artists and galleries around the world monitoring reports about the new-generation Chinese collectors who are said to be more interested in contemporary art than antiquities. "Very positive sales" were reported, but aside from a few examples, no details have been released so far.

And what of the future? ShContemporary has seen some changes during its short lifetime. Pierre Huber and Zhou Tiehai, two founders of the fair, left after the first edition on 2007. Co-founder and art impresario Lorenzo Rudolf took up the reins, but left after the second edition in 2008. Only time will tell whether Colin Chinnery can fully realise the potential of ShContemporary, but he appears to be off to a good start.
Image: Shanghai Exhibition Centre, venue for ShContemporary

Friday, September 25, 2009

American artists at The Physics Room


DANCE, SONS AND DAUGHTERS, DANCE! THE FUTURE IS OURS TO SHAPE AND MOLD! is an exhibition curated by Martin Basher for The Physics Room, A Contemporary Art Project Space, Christchurch. Traversing themes of hope, choice, play and language within the context of contemporary culture, the exhibition introduces the work of five young American artists who negotiate these themes via the modulated and self-aware tone of a YouTube savvy generation. More information on the exhibition, is published on The Physics Room website. The show runs to 11 October 09.

Martin Basher graduated with an MFA from Columbia University and splits his time between New York and Auckland where he is represented by Starkwhite.
Image: DANCE, SONS AND DAUGHTERS, DANCE! THE FUTURE IS OURS TO SHAPE AND MOLD, curated by Martin Basher for The Physics Room. Installation photograph courtesy Martin Basher and The Physics Room

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Crystal ball gazing


At an auction in Auckland last week Peter Stichbury's painting Lily Donaldson went under the hammer for a record price of $45,625 (including buyer's premium), against a reserve of $28,000. However, the prices for works by other 'blue-chip' artists varied - some held their ground while others dipped. Clearly it's too soon to be looking for a significant art market rally, which is just fine with many in the art world. We remain on the side of those who believe a recession-driven correction will be good for the art market in the long term.
Image: Peter Stichbury, Lily Donaldson, 2007, acrylic on linen

Artspace new artists show


Layla Rudneva-Mackay is one of the artists featured in Artspace's annual new artists show. This year's version has been selected by three artist-led initiatives - Newcall, a gallery and studio programme run by a collective of recent Elam graduates; Fresh Gallery, a Manukau City Council initiative for contemporary Pacific art; and Dunedin's long running but difficult to pigeon-hole performance space, None. Recently appointed Artspace director Emma Bugden says the new approach aims "to disrupt the curatorial auteurship of previous years and render more visible the grass-roots organisations that build the contemporary art communities of tomorrow". You can read more about the exhibition and related Artspace programmes here.
Image: Layla Rudneva-Mackay, A wire to fire into his heart (2009), installation view, Artspace, Auckland NZ. Photograph by Sam Hartnell, courtesy of Artspace

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Brought to Light


In B.158, the Bulletin of the Christchurch Art Gallery, senior curator Justin Paton maps out the Gallery's new approach to collection displays, which will ignore the usual hard-and-fast separation of historical and contemporary. He says: Though works of art legally 'belong' to the collectors who collect them, in an imaginative sense no one can own them or hold them in place. That's because what characterises the best art is its extreme imaginative volatility - the way meanings change and expand across time. That's what we hope you'll find in the new collection galleries: a place where, each time you visit, fresh meanings come to light." Brought to Light opens at the Christchurch Art Gallery in late November 09.
Image: John Reynolds, Table of Dynasties (detail), artist's studio view. First presented by Starkwhite at ART HK 09, Table of Dynasties is one of the works featuring in Brought to Light

Monday, September 21, 2009

et al. that's obvious! that's right! that's true!


You can read a review of et al. that's obvious! that's right! that's true! here and visit the artists' website here. The exhibition runs at the Christchurch Art Gallery to 22 November 09. 
Image: et al. That's obvious! that's right! that's true!, installation view, Christchurch Art Gallery, photograph by David Watkins and courtesy of the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu

Saturday, September 19, 2009

9/15: The Last Post


This is the last of our posts on the upside of the recession. (You can read our scene-setting post here.) The first is from Howard Greive and we have given the last word to artist Hye Rim Lee.

Howard Greive:
I was reading an economics paper the other day discussing the merits of a 'cash back' offer over a 'discount' of the same value.

Example: if you were to buy a car priced at $30,000 and are offered a discount of $3,000, reducing the price to $27,000 as opposed to paying $30,000 and receiving a $3,000 cash back you will inevitably take the cash.

The reason is about mitigating loss. You perceive a $30,000 purchase as a big loss. So $27,000 is still a big loss. However while $30,000 is a big loss, cash in the hand is perceived as a reasonable gain. So the gain mitigates the loss better than the discount.

There is no logic to this. I only mention it to illustrate an obvious point. Economics is not about empirical evidence. It is governed by human behaviour. While capitalism and the free market may be the vehicle that propels us forward, the fuel that drives it is confidence.

What has this to do with art? Everything and nothing. The art market, like all markets, is consumed by confidence or a lack of it. An artist has to ignore it, as if it is nothing and carry on. Perhaps when it comes to a recession, we should all behave like artists.
Howard Greive is a collector, a member of the team behind et al. the fundamental practice at the 2005 Venice Biennale, and a former trustee of Artspace, Auckland

Hye Rim Lee:
There has been an upside for me as an artist, but it's not easy to gloss over the past twelve months. My sales have dropped, partly because art fairs have fallen on hard times, and I've had to move from the West Village where I could walk to Chelsea, Soho and downtown. Now I'm living New Jersey, traveling most days to Manhattan. But no one ever said it was easy being an artist so I have just got on with making art, albeit with less money and a lot more stress. I've found I have friends, colleagues and collectors in the art world who have been there for me during tough times - and that's been a source of comfort and joy. I'm still living within commuter distance of Manhattan and able to travel regularly to Europe where there is growing interest in my work. The exhibitions I have made and others I have been represented in (like Glasstress, showing in the collateral events programme of the 53rd Venice Biennale) have opened up further opportunities. Perhaps most importantly for me, the last year has shown that, whatever the circumstances, artists have to continue making their art, putting it out there for curators and collectors to see, hoping that the next big exhibition invitation or sale is just around the corner. Perhaps not much has changed after all.
Hye Rim Lee is a Korean-born, New Zealand artist who divides her time between New York and Auckland. She is represented by Starkwhite (Auckland) and Kukje (Seoul)
Image: Arturo Di Modica, Charging Bull, Bowling Green park (near Wall Street), NY

Friday, September 18, 2009

The Middle Landscape reviewed


You can read a review of Stella Brennan's exhibition The Middle Landscape here. The show runs to 3 October 09.
Image: Stella Brennan, The Middle Landscape, installation view, Starkwhite, Auckland, NZ

9/15 posts


Here is our third suite of posts on the upside to the recession. (You can read our first post here.) They come from Ben Plumbly, the art director of a new Auckland-based auction house, and the editors of Art Asia Pacific, a magazine dedicated to contemporary visual culture from Asia, the Middle East and Pacific since 1993.

Ben Plumbly:
A weaker economy creates opportunity. For an auction house? Always lurking behind every auctioneer's shoulder are the creeping twin pressures of higher volume (more pictures) and lower clearance rates (less sales); surely the death knell for any new and under-resourced auction business. That will be them now... But wait. Greater discretion, improved value judgements, a shedding of speculators, re-growth, maturation, opportunity - all resultant emerging factors that ensure a healthier and more robust market and which are becoming discernible among the many new collectors entering the marketplace, tantalized by recessionary bargains, be they real or imagined. Now we've just got to get through this. How? More tightly-focused, edited catalogues to stimulate the market and put it under less pressure. It can only absorb so much right now. Below that thin layer of buyers in this country is air; miss them and that's it. Work harder. Encourage, nurture, stimulate, promote, facilitate. And reserves. Did I mention reserves...
Ben Plumbly is the Director Art, ART+OBJECT, a new Auckland auction house launched in 2007

Art Asia Pacific Editors:
Less money means, for many galleries, fewer shows in the season. Shows being up for twelve weeks instead of five is a good thing for a harried magazine editor. You are on top of cocktail conversation, you can forget to see a show multiple times and still see it, and if you're publishing a review you can very tidily hide the fact that it took an absolute age to edit and was full of rewrites and dreadful problems, because the show's still open, so you can still be on top of things.
William Pym, Managing Editor, Art Asia Pacific

The potency and fun of gossip has been enriched, along with better articles pitched by freelance writers who are looking to consolidate their sources of income.
Ashley Rawlings, Features Editor, Art Asia Pacific

Good times for cities not in financial turmoil: One thing I was struck by in the last week in Israel, where, granted, the recession doesn't seem to have had a huge effect on the art world, was a lack of cynicism. Everyone just wanted to show off their artists, the artwork and their (often new) spaces. Momentum seemed to be building there, not dwindling.
HG Masters, Editor-at-Large and Almanac Editor, Art Asia Pacific

At least during the first few months when people were really holding onto their wallets-- collectors started showing more interest and and buying lesser sought (and therefore more reasonably priced) art, such as art from countries in Southeast Asia. And that's great, because there is definitely very exciting art coming out of these places.
Hanae Ko, Assistant editor, Art Asia Pacific

Back to basics: Less predatory-type gallerists on the scene jockeying for coverage on themselves, or their gallery, and not the artists. And for those gallerists still standing, they actually take the time to speak about the art versus who bought it.
Elaine W. Ng, Editor/Publisher, Art Asia Pacific

And a final note from the senior editor: A financial shock is a great time for an art editor to reassess the nature of money, and the nature of value in art, as well as in life. When a hyped-up world, or financial system, collapses, the eye turns instinctively towards what has fallen the furthest, from the heights. A bout of schadenfreude is appropriate at times like these, often as a way of reinforcing long-held suspicions. By fall 2009, it is evident that this crash did not teach the right people enough right lessons. The seeds of more bubbles have only lain dormant for a year, and are about to sprout again. Much of the world is run by people who care only about money.
Don Cohn, Senior Editor, Art Asia Pacific

Thursday, September 17, 2009

9/15 posts


Here is our second suite of posts from people in the art world on the upside of the recession. (You can read the background to the posts here.)

Magnus Renfrew:
1. The focus has shifted away from being so much about investment to more about collecting.
2. As the traditional centres of New York and London have not been so buoyant recently, galleries are looking to expand into new markets and as a result are looking to engage pro-actively with Asia in the long-term. Hong Kong located at the centre of Asia, with its beneficial tax status (0% on import and export of art) is the natural market hub for the region.
Magnus Renfrew is the director of ART HK, the international art fair of Hong Kong

Art Patron (anonymous)
Patrons love to help public galleries with acquisitions and many of us work with them - sometimes individually, sometimes in patron/collector groups attached to particular galleries. The thrill of purchasing an artwork for a gallery, or donating one, is exceeded only by the pleasure gained when it is seen in a gallery, weaving its magic on viewers. But sometimes patrons can be forgiven for wondering what happens to works acquired for collections as they disappear into the climate-controlled coffers of galleries, rarely surfacing to see the light of day.

Even though the recession has hit many patrons in the pocket making it tougher to maintain their donations to gallery causes, there has been an upside. As the funding base for exhibitions shrinks and the cost of flying in artworks and artists becomes prohibitive, curators are looking more to their institutional collections as a source of inspiration and ideas for exhibitions - and not just for collection shows. A lot of the art purchased by patrons for galleries is being dusted off and groomed for presentation in themed exhibitions.

If the global economic downturn drives curators to their collections and more patrons experience the pleasure of seeing their patronage at work in gallery exhibitions, then clearly there is an upside to the recession.

Brian Butler:
As the new season is upon us here in the northern hemisphere, last weekend was filled with openings. In many ways, little has changed. The facade is business as usual. But in the back offices and studios there is hope that seriousness will return to the art market. Maybe it is not seriousness, but a sincerity and honesty to the endeavor.

1301PE decided to focus the beginning of the season on a series of aspects: the collection, the collector, the collaboration, the production and the publication. Jorge Pardo: The collection of Pae White, which opened on Saturday, used the artist Pae White's 20 year collection of Pardo's work to present a remarkable overview of Pardo practice, while also considering what it means to collect. This exhibition will shift into a collaboration between Jorge Pardo and Rirkrit Tiravanija. Friends since the early 1990s they have often been included in exhibitions together but have never collaborated on a single work. This exhibition will will transition into a one-person exhibition of Rirkrit Tiravanija. As an extension of this 11301PE/Brain Multiples will participate in the the New York Book Fair at PS1.

The possibilities remain great and the opportunities are to be created as we move into the unknown.
Brian Butler is the director of 1301PE, Los Angeles, and former director of Artspace, Auckland

HIRSCHFELD Berlin presents


On 16 September 09 HIRSCHFELD (Berlin) presents EARSHOT by Dane Mitchell, a new sound work that employs the Hirschfeld space as a point of departure to broadcast from several Berlin locations.

EARSHOT will experiment with ultra-sonic sound technology. This high frequency will be transmitted from the relative safety of a hired van at various sites across Berlin. Visitors or spectators may only notice the effect of Mitchell's sound work rather than hearing it for themselves as it is not pitched towards any human visitors. Results are not known, but these ultra-sonic frequencies have the ability to penetrate solid matter, supply focused energy and rouse the animal kingdom. It is very possible that something will happen, September 16. From the HIRSCHFELD exhibition release.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

9/15 posts


Here are our first two posts on the upside to the recession.

Jim Barr & Mary Barr:
Economists say we need recessions to drag markets back to reality, and there's a truth in that for the art world too. There's a possibility now for the weighty art infrastructure (the museums, funding bodies, educational institutions etc) to start being more concerned about how sustainable they are in the long-term rather than how fast they can grow and how much territory they can take. For the past decade and more institutions have used the good times to increase the duration of exhibitions way over their ability to captivate, to build and then build some more, to sideline incisive curation for exhibition design, to sacrifice focus for funding partnerships and move the selection of after-opening restaurants from two stars to five. Maybe a return to home entertaining, faster turnaround of exhibitions and more openess to opportunities and ideas is the way to go. Whatever results, it is unlikely to be what we expected. In the boom that followed the '87 crash we thought we'd been pushed out of the market but it wasn't true then and it won't be true tomorrow. Most serious artists create their work independently of economic fluctuations. OK, the studios may have to be smaller and materials more carefully eked out, but the work goes on.
Jim Barr and Mary Barr are Wellington-based independent curators, writers, collectors and bloggers

Gregory Burke:
2009 the year that:
10. Obama gave more money to the NEA and appointed Knight Landesman's brother Rocco to run it
9. The queue got shorter for an Andreas Gursky
8. The fairs were less frenzied and more friendly
7. There were more thoughtful presentations at fairs and more room for younger galleries
6. Mortgage rates dropped to record lows
5. Construction costs dropped - think gallery building programs
4. There was a spate of great airfare and hotel deals
3. Less lavish sit-down post-opening dinners (one case running to seven figures) in favour of cheaper standup affairs (more fun)
2 We printed a catalogue in Iceland for less than half the price of a year before
1. Donors came out big time to support contemporary galleries and projects - think NZ at Venice.
Gregory Burke is the director of The Power Plant/Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto, Canada and former director of the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand

9/15


It's a year today since the global economy teetered on the brink of calamity. Over three days (15, 16 & 17 September 2008) Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, the global insurance giant AIG was taken over by the United States Government and a failing Wall Street icon Merrill Lynch was absorbed by the Bank of America in a deal brokered and financed by the US Government. Panic set in, credit stopped circulating and the world watched in disbelief as Wall Street's Masters of the Universe threatened to send us all to hell in a handcart.

Ironically the 15th (the day Lehman's declared itself insolvent) was also the day Damien Hirst abandoned the traditional method of selling art, going straight to Sothebys instead where the auction smashed top estimates to reach a record total of USD125m.

Today we appear to have weathered the worst of the economic storm. There's talk of the recession bottoming out and green shoots appearing, but uncertainty lingers on as the debate shifts to the stimulus spending of the US, Europe and China - whether it is right to press on with aggressive economic stimulation, or listen to the voices calling for an exit strategy to avoid a damaging round of inflation caused by the injection of trillions of liquidity into banking systems. Clearly we are not out of the woods yet and even more worrying is the fact that nobody seems to know what to do about the banking system, its greed-is-good bonuses and the excesses that caused the credit crunch in the first place.

The art world was also caught in the storm. Over the past twelve months the international art market has been in free-fall, prompting doom and gloom reports in the world's art press. However, as signs of an economic recovery appear (and because we are a glass-half-full kind of blog) we think it is time to look back on the recession, with an eye to the future.

Over the next few days we'll publish posts from people in the art world who can see an upside to the recession. We begin today with Jim Barr and Mary Barr, independent curators, writers, collectors and bloggers (go to overthenet) and Gregory Burke, director of The Power Plant / Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

ShContemporary sampler









ShContemporary sampler










ShContemporary sampler










Once again (we had the same problem in 2008) it has not been easy to email images from Shanghi. But at last our roving reporter has managed to get some images to us from ShContemporary 09. 

Sunday, September 13, 2009

The new face of ShContemporary


Colin Chinnery is the new director of ShContemporary, replacing Lorenzo Rudolf who departed after the 2008 edition of the fair. A Beijing-based artist/curator/writer, Chinnery has a reputation for bringing contemporary culture to a broader Chinese audience. He has curated such shows as Sound and the City, China's first major sound art project, and Aftershock, a survey of British art also presented in China. He was previously chief curator and deputy director at the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art, Beijing. 

Flatline review


You can read a review of Matt Henry's Flatline exhibition at eyeCONTACT. The exhibition runs in our Project Space to 3 October 09.
Image: Matt Henry, Duochrome No.4 (Fahrenheit), from the series "16:9", installed in Flatline, Starkwhite, Auckland, NZ

Saturday, September 12, 2009

ShContemporary: a new initiative


This year, ShContemporary has created a specialised team whose purpose is to engage with emerging collectors in China and create fresh networking opportunities through The Collectors Development Programme (CDP). Through their partners, who represent China's fast emerging affluent sector of society, ShContemporary is reaching out to potential and emerging collectors.

Fair director Colin Chinnery says: "We have resources far larger than those of individual galleries or independent advisors, and we are putting these resources to use all year round instead of just the few days during the annual fair, to create a platform that can really make a long-term difference in the Chinese contemporary art market."

The CDP was launched at ShContemporary on 10 September with a gala dinner attended by nearly 300 collectors, the fair's CDP partners and all of the exhibiting galleries.
Image from the ShContemporary website: Insane Park, Louis Vuitton, courtesy Godo Gallery

Friday, September 11, 2009

ShContemporary: Discoveries


The current edition of ShContemporary includes Discoveries, an exhibition curated by Anton Vidokle, Mami Kataoka and Wang Jianwei. You can read a short interview between ShContemporary director Colin Chinnery and the curators here. The fair also includes Platform, a section for galleries presenting emerging artists.
Image from the ShContemporary website: Xiang Qinhua, Sex Scandal, courtesy Author Gallery, Platform section of ShContemporary 09

ShContemporary underway in Shanghai

Over the next few days we'll be posting reports and images from ShContemporary, which opened last night in the Shanghai Exhibition Centre. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out in the current economic climate. While there's talk of the global recession bottoming out and 'green shoots' appearing, it's still a tough time to be in the art fair business.
Images: Shanghai Exhibition Centre, venue for ShContemporary

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Tate Modern backs move to fight global warming


A coalition of British scientists, companies, celebrities and organisations spanning the cultural and political spectrum have committed to slashing carbon emissions as part of a campaign to tackle global warming by reducing their carbon footprints by 10% during the year 2010. The coalition aims to bolster grassroots support for tough action against global warming ahead of the key summit in Copenhagen in December, which is being staged to broker a successor to the Kyoto protocol.

The 10:10 campaign was launched last week at the Tate Modern where four vast oil-fired generators once churned out greenhouse gases. As well as hosting the event, the Tate was amongst the first to sign up to the 10:10 campaign, which is backed by public figures ranging from the climate change expert Lord Stern to some of Britain's leading arts personalities including Antony Gormley, Anish Kapoor, Ian McEwen, Gillian Wearing and Franny Armstrong, the film-maker behind the climate change movie The Age of Stupid.
Image: Tate Modern, Bankside, London

Stella Brennan: The Middle Landscape










Stella Brennan's exhibition The Middle Landscape runs to 3 October 09. Brennan says: "The work addresses our desire to come into contact with wild nature, but our inability to survive it without physical and cultural framing. The core ideas of the project are an investigation of our notion of the natural, of biosecurity and ecological utopianism." You can read the full exhibition release here.
Images: Stella Brennan, The Middle Landscape, installation views, Starkwhite, Auckland, NZ

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Matt Henry: Flatline








Matt Henry's Flatline exhibition runs in our Project Space to 3 October 09. The title Flatline has a slightly ambiguous ring to it that could reference 'death' (as envisaged in Rodchenko monochromes, Malevich's 'zero of form' or void), or conversely a range of slim-line designer appliances/flat screen televisions. Henry sees the function of these particular works in the exhibition as a conduit, creating a kind of juncture between the end games (or openings) of early 20th century art/painting, and an opening out of paintings function in the world. You can read the full exhibition release here.
Images: Matt Henry, Flatline, installation views, Starkwhite Project Space, Auckland

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

ShContemporary


We are in Shanghai this week visiting ShContemporary. From Wednesday we'll be posting reports and images from the fair, which runs from 10 - 13 September 09 with the Vernissage on the 9th.
Image: Shanghai Exhibition Centre, venue for ShContemporary

Take a virtual tour of the new Auckland Art Gallery


The Auckland Art Gallery is currently under development until its re-opening in 2011. You can get a sense of what the new gallery will look like by taking this virtual tour.
Image: webcam photograph of the Auckland Art Gallery development site; virtual tour via OUTPOST, the AAG staff blog 

Sunday, September 6, 2009

And the award goes to...


Dane Mitchell is the winner of this year's Trust Waikato National Contemporary Art Award which was judged by Charlotte Huddleston, Curator of Contemparary Art at Te Papa the Museum of New Zealand. Dane is currently in Germany on one-year residency at the DAAD artist in Berlin Programme.