Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Artistic director of the 2014 Biennale of Sydney announced


The Biennale of Sydney has announced Juliana Engberg as the director of the 19th edition of the Biennale for 2014, making her the second woman to be appointed since Lynne Cooke curated the 1996 Biennale Jurassic Technologies Revenant. Engberg is currently director of Melbourne's Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.
Image: Juliana Engberg

Hector Zamora's White Noise screened on Auckland's waterfront




Over four nights last week, Hector Zamora's video White Noise was projected onto a building on Auckland's waterfront as part of Move Towards the Light, a series of video and laser projections and light sculptures forming an after-dark art trail from Brittomart to the Wynyard Quarter.

Commissioned for the visual arts programme of the 2011 Auckland Arts Festival, White Noise documents a site-specific installation at Bethell's Beach on the West Coast of Auckland. Zamora invited the public to plant 500 white flags along the coast, creating a poetic 'white noise' in unison with the wind. At some point in the day the installation was politicised with the planting of a single Maori Flag by a local activist, highlighting continuing debates on the ownership of New Zealand's foreshore and seabed - an intervention that was welcomed by the artist.
Image: Hector Zamora's White Noise in Move Towards the Light on Auckland's waterfront

Monday, July 30, 2012

Alicia Frankovich talks about reconceptualising a performance for exhibition in an art museum


Yesterday Alicia Frankovich talked to Lynn Freeman about re-presenting Floor Resistance, a one-hour performance designed for a theatre space in Berlin, in the 2012 Walters Prize exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery. You can download the conversation at Arts on Sunday.
Image: Alicia Frankovich, Floor Resistance, 2011 at Hebbel Am Ufer, HAU 3. Photograph by Conor Clarke

This week at Starkwhite


Greetings from Los Angeles continues at Starkwhite this week through to Monday 6 August.
Image: Jorge Mendez Blake, I Would Prefer Not To (2012), installation detail, Greetings From Los Angeles exhibition, Starkwhite

Starkwhite at the Melbourne Art Fair


This week we are at the Melbourne Art Fair (Stand B76), which runs from 2-5 August. You can read our release here.

Sunday, July 29, 2012

Alicia Frankovich talks about her Walters Prize project on Arts on Sunday


Alicia Frankovich is one of the four artists shortlisted for this year's Walters Prize. She talks about Floor Resistance, the work selected by the jury, on Radio New Zealand's Arts on Sunday today at 2:53pm.

Named after one of New Zealand's greatest artists (Gordon Walters) the $50,000 prize is awarded every two years to an artist who has made an outstanding contribution to contemporary visual art in New Zealand. A jury of New Zealand curators and critics select four finalists who present their work in an exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery and an international judge selects the winning artist. The previous judges have been Harald Szeeman (2002), Robert Storr (2004), Carloyn Christov-Bakargiev (2006), Catherine David (2008) and Vicente Todoli (2010). This year's judge is Mami Kataoka, chief curator at the Mori Museum of Art, Tokyo and co-curator of the 2012 Gwangju Biennale.
Image: Alicia Frankovich, Floor Resistance, shown at Hebbel Am Ufer, HAU3, Berlin (25 June 2011)

Final night of Move Towards the Light on Auckland's waterfront


Move Towards the Light, a series of video and laser projects and light sculptures running after dark on the Auckland waterfront, ends tonight at midnight. The lineup of artists includes Jae Hoon Lee, Clinton Watkins and Hector Zamora.
Image: Clinton Watkins' Continuous Ship #1 at Shed 10 Queens Wharf

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Former MOCA chief executive urges Eli Broad to remove Jeffrey Deitch


In an email sent to Eli Broad and obtained by the Los Angeles Times, Charles Young, the former chief executive of the Museum of Contemporary Art, has called for the removal of museum director Jeffrey Deitch.

"I hope that the four-alarm fire now enveloping MOCA has at least given you pause for thought about his appointment and your continued attempts to try to save him for a job which many (including myself) believe he is unqualified," Young wrote to Broad. "The resignation of dedicated, long term trustees, and especially four highly respected artists of international acclaim, should bother you, David [Johnson], Maria [Bell] and the other continuing members of the board. The question is 'What now is to be done?'"

"I will do anything I can to try to right the MOCA ship, but nothing will work, in my mind, without a new Captain/Director," Young concluded. Read more...
Image: Charles Young, former chief executive of MOMA and former UCLA chancellor

Taxman's claim for a share of gambling winnings places MONA's future at risk


Fears that Hobart's wildly successful Museum of Old and New Art may close if the Australian Tax Office goes after the eccentric gaming mogul and art collector behind it have sparked widespread concern in Tasmania where it has become a tourism boon for the debt-ridden state. David Walsh's $180 million museum has drawn 600,000 visitors in its first 18 months and is Tasmania's single most visited attraction, but it costs him around $8 million annually to keep the museum open, a contribution that may be at risk in the light of the ATO's claim that he has been running a $2.4 billion gambling business and owes $37 million in backdated taxes.
Image: Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart

Friday, July 27, 2012

India asks Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art to remove a politically sensitive work from Indian Highway exhibition


Video artist Tejal Shah's art work I Love my India has been removed from the Indian Highway exhibition at the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art in Beijing - not at the request of the Chinese government, but rather one from Indian Government officials. The work depicting Muslims talking about the Godhra riots upset the sentiments of the Indian community in China leading the Indian Ministry of external Affairs to intervene.

The exhibition curated by Julia Peyton-Jones, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Gunnar Kvaran opened at Serpentine in 2008 and traveled to venues in Oslo, Lyon and Rome without incident before its Bejing outing at the UCCA. Neither of the institutions has commented on the removal of the video which focuses, according to a description by the Serpentine, on "the ignorance and lack of understanding of the genocide against the Muslim minority in 2002."
Image: A video still from Tejal Shah's I Love my India

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Artists light up Auckland's waterfront


Over the next few days, visitors to Auckland's waterfront will encounter a series of video and laser projections and light sculptures staged at locations between Brittomart and the Wynyard Quarter. The lineup of artists in Reflect: Move Towards the Light includes Jae Hoon Lee, Clinton Watkins and Hector Zamora. The event runs after dark from 26 to 29 July.
Image: Clinton Watkins' Continuous Ship #1 at Shed 10 Queens Wharf

Artist-led group MOCA Mobilization is back on the case


The Los Angeles Times reports the artist-led group known as MOCA Mobilization is back. Founded in 2008 by artists Cindy Bernard and Diana Thater, the group has posted an online petition calling for changes including the replacement of chief curator Paul Schimmel and the appointment of new artists to the museum board to replace those who have resigned. Read more...

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

What is the role of art criticism in mainstream media today?


Frieze has asked art critics and editors of cultural publications around the world to tell them how they see the role of art criticism in mainstream media today, and how they view the impact of their writing on their audience. This link, takes you to the fourth installment of Who Do You Write For?, which includes a reply from Sydney Morning Herald art critic John McDonald. You will also find links to the first three installments at the bottom of the page.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Tino Sehgal fills the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall with story tellers


Guardian critic Jonathan Searle was at the launch of Tino Sehgal's commissioned work, These Associations, at the Tate Modern Turbine Hall. Read more...
Image: Tino Seghal with some of the participants in his commissioned work at the Tate Modern

Roberta Smith's take on the MOCA meltdown


In her NYT article A Los Angeles Museum on Life-Support, Roberta Smith says Jeffrey Deitch needs to stop organising exhibitions and learn to be a museum director, Trustees need to step up and give more more money to counterbalance Eli Broad's influence and views, and artists need to reassert themselves in the life of the museum. Read more...
Image: MOCA's Art in the Streets exhibition

Monday, July 23, 2012

Jeffrey Deitch reponds to his critics


Jeffrey Deitch has defended his exhibition record at MOCA and dismissed suggestions by some board members, including in an open letter published in the New York Times, that the museum has lost its artistic bearings under his directorship and is increasingly under the control of billionaire collector and philanthropist Eli Broad. Read more...
Image: Jeffrey Deitch, director of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art

The 10 best Eames designs


On the eve of the UK release of a documentary about Charles and Ray Eames, the Guardian presents a selection of their 10 best designs in pictures.
Image: the DSR chair by Charles and Ray Eames

Sunday, July 22, 2012

Tino Sehgal at the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall


In the latest issue of Modern Painters (via ARTINFO) performance artist Tino Sehgal talks about his upcoming commission at the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall without giving too much away. Read more...
Image: Tino Sehgal

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Melbourne Art Fair to be managed by ART HK founder Tim Etchells


Over the past decade the Melbourne Art Fair has seen the arrival of an array of new fairs in the region, such as ART HK, Shanghai Contemporary, Art Los Angeles Contemporary and Art Stage Singapore. "They are growing, they are dynamic and, whether we like it or not, they are taking our ground," the chairman of the Melbourne art Foundation Ken Fehily says.

In a bid to give the Melbourne Art Fair the international profile it has struggled to achieve, the Foundation has teamed up with ART HK founder Tim Etchells who brings a wealth of experience to the task of repositioning the fair, along with a global VIP data base and Asian collector base. Etchells is also behind the new art fair being launched in Sydney next year and the agreement with The Melbourne Art Foundation ensures the two fairs will work alongside each other, rather than in a winner-takes-all battle.
Image: Tim Etchells at ART HK earlier this year

Friday, July 20, 2012

Saatchi Online launches a global platform for curators

Saatchi Online has launched a new exhibition created by curators from around the globe. Billed as a project to promote up-and-coming artists, the show presents a new collection of 10 works each day for 100 days, selected by a featured curator. The lineup of curators includes Alexi Glass-Kantor, director and senior curator of Melbourne's Gertrude Contemporary. You can follow the 100 Curators 100 Days exhibition here.

The MOCA meltdown as "an apt metaphor for our crisis-plagued times"


In an ARTINFO article, Ben Davis traces the troubled history of MOCA from the days of 2008 when its financial problems first came into the open and Eli Broad stepped in to save the museum. Now he says the rescue appears to be an example of pursing a solution that has nothing to do with the real problem, and is more of a pet ideological problem of one man, Eli Broad. Davis says MOCA had a finances problem, not a curatorial problem and that tackling the wrong problem in the wrong way has hurt MOCA 's chances of setting itself right in the long run. Read more...
Image: Eli Broad and Jeffrey Deitch

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Tate Modern aims to bring performance art and video installation to a wider public in The Tanks


The first phase of the Tate Modern's underground extension has opened to the public. The vast spaces beneath the old Bankside Power Station have been converted by architects Herzog + de Meuron into two large spaces for performance and film installations, plus a number of smaller spaces.Tate director Nicholas Serota said: "It will bring the kind of work that has traditionally been seen in alternative spaces, for short durations, and often barely recorded, into the museum. It will bring it into our own sense of art history as something that is not on the margins, but something central to art. Read more...

Artists announced for the 9th Gwangju Biennale


The 90 artists and collectives selected for ROUNDTABLE: The 9th Gwangju Biennale have been announced. You can see the list here
Image: Dane Mitchell, detail Celestial Fields, 2012. Mitchell is one of the artists selected for ROUNDTABLE

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

MOCA's troubles intensify with the resignation of all four artists on the museum board


All four artists on MOCA's board of trustees have resigned, raising further questions about the direction the museum is taking under the directorship of Jeffrey Deitch. John Baldessari was the first to go, followed by Catherine Opie and Barbara Kruger. "Parties and galas are OK, but sometimes these things called museums have to have things called exhibitions," the two artists wrote. "Our concerns are with the art, the exhibitions and how the money that makes exhibitions possible is gathered and distributed. Our concern is for a continued curatorial practice that is both rigorously complex and pleasurably awesome." (You can read the full version of their resignation letter here.) And on Sunday Ed Ruscha resigned leaving the board without any artist representatives.
Image: Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Frank Gehry designs a duplex for Brad Pitt's Make it Right Foundation


Since it was launched in 2007 to help rebuild the flood-ruined lower 9th Ward of New Orleans, Brad Pitt's Make it Right Foundation has been able to build 86 homes for displaced residents, including ones by starchitects David Adjaye and Shigeru Ban.

A duplex designed by Frank Gehry, another of the 21 architects enlisted by Pitt, has just been completed. Designing something that would sit well in a family neighborhood proved to be an interesting challenge for the architect. He said: "I wanted to make a house that I would like to live in and one that responded to the history, vernacular and climate of New Orleans." It is Gehry's first home in Louisiana and one of only 22 Gehry houses in the US.
Image: Frank Gehry's Duplex for the Make it Right Foundation

Monday, July 16, 2012

This week at Starkwhite


Greetings from Los Angeles continues at Starkwhite to 6 August.

MOCA's disco show is a bridge too far for John Baldessari


John Baldessari has stepped down from the board of the LA's Museum of Contemporary Art. He said his reasons include the recent ousting of Chief Curator Paul Schimmel and news that the pop-cultural slant the museum had taken under director Jeffrey Deitch will continue with an exhibition on disco music's influence on art and culture.

Baldessari is the fifth board member to resign since February - another sign that all is not well at MOCA. Last week four of the museum's life trustees called for a U-turn back to the kind of exhibitions it was famous for before the arrival of Deitch two years ago. They also disagreed with a recent column by Eli Broad, a MOCA life trustee and the museum's biggest supporter, who wrote in support of its direction under Deitch. "The celebrity-driven program...that Deitch promotes is not the answer," the letter said. Read more...
Image: John Baldessari

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Olafur Eliasson's sun-inspired product with a social purpose


Olafur Eliasson's latest project is a solar-powered lamp that he and his engineer partner Frederik Ottesen have designed to be widely distributed in the developing world. Called the Little Sun, the lamp will give 10 times more light than using a kerosene lamp, and at a 10th of the cost.

They have met the costs of the lamps and developed a business model through they can be distributed and sold by local retailers in Africa, initially in Kenya, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe, for £6.40

The lamps will also have a life at the Tate where they will be on sale at a developed world price of £16.50. And, starting on 28 July, and for every Saturday night until 23 September, the surrealism rooms at the Tate Modern will be plunged into darkness after normal hours and visitors will view works by the light of the Little Sun lamps, echoing an act of Man Ray who supplied people with torches to illuminate artworks at the opening of the international Surrealist Exhibition of 1938.
Image: the Little Sun lamp

Friday, July 13, 2012

Occupy movement welcomed to Documenta


The Occupy movement has targeted a number of art institutions around the world, most recently in Germany where Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, has welcomed activists to dOCUMENTA (13).

She wrote: "I welcome the occupy movement in the Friedrichsplatz, which has grown over the last weeks. It continues the wave of democratic protests that have been spreading across many cities in the world. It enacts the possibility of reinventing the use of public space and appears to me to be in the spirit of Joesph Beuys who marked Documenta and its history significantly, embodying another idea of collective decision making and political responsibility through direct democracy."

She also asked the protestors "to care for the square, and to take responsibility for the space they have the right to occupy, to consider the City of Kassel and the other visitors of documenta in a worldly spirit of germination and flourishing."

In Berlin, however, a decision to include activists in the 7th Berlin Biennale almost backfired on the organisers when members of Occupy and M15 (the Spanish protest movement) reacted to a curatorial framework that penned them into a zoo-like enclosure where they could be watched from a viewing platform. They issued a set of ultimatums, including a demand that the hierarchical structure of the Biennale be dismantled and replaced with an Occupy-style working group.

Their proposals were accepted by artist/curator Artur Zmijewski. "I didn't invite them as artists", he said. "I invited them as important political actors of our time to come together and use a cultural institution. Maybe the 'human zoo' was good because they reacted and started a process."
Image: Occupy protesters at dOCUMENTA (13)

Dane Mitchell at Volker Bradtke, Dusseldorf


Dane Mitchell is in the group show WHY DO BIRDS SUDDENLY APPEAR? at Volker Bradtke, Dusseldorf. Curated by Matt Moravec and Kyle Thurman, the exhibition runs from 14 July to 12 August 2012.
Image: from the Volker Bradtke website

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Hans Ulrich Obrist's Institute of the 21st Century


Hans Ulrich Obrist's Institute of the 21st Century (i21c) will be launched on 29 July. i21c is a non-profit initiative to consolidate and digitally archive Obrist's Interview Project archive so that his interviews with major figures of the 20th and 21st centuries can be shared as a searchable database. Over the launch weekend Obrist will conduct public interviews with artists John Baldessari and computer engineer Danny Hillis.

You can receive i21c news and be notified when an interview has been posted here.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

David Walsh says a $40 million tax bill won't force the closure of his Museum of Old and New Art


The Museum of Old and New Art is back in the news with reports that mathematician turned gambler David Walsh is in the sights of the Australian Tax office. The ATO says Walsh and others in a secret punter's club have been running a A$2.4 billion global banking business and wants taxes due. At last count Walsh faces a tax bill of just under A$40 million, which he disputes.

As the details became public, he was being asked whether this spelled the end of MONA. But Walsh remains upbeat, saying he is confident an agreement can be reached with the ATO and that he is determined to keep MONA running.
Image: David Walsh, founder of Hobart's Museum of Old And New Art

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Damien Hirst enters the fast-food brand game


Damien Hirst, the artist who became a brand, has entered the fast-food brand game, lending an artwork to Burger King as it attempts to counter rival McDonalds marketing messages as part of its sponsorship of the London 2012 Olympic Games. The title of the work is Beautiful Psychedelic Gherkin Exploding Tomato Sauce All Over Your Face Flame Grilled Painting, 2003. Burger King says the last part of the title is apt, given the fact that it flame grills its beef burgers. And Leicester Square franchisee, Django Fung, says: "Art should be accessible to everyone, especially in such a busy summer and putting this painting in our new-look Burger King restaurant in such a high-profile location does just that."
Image: Damien Hirst's Beautiful Psychedelic Gherkin Exploding Tomato Sauce All Over Your Face, Flame Grilled Painting, 2003

Greetings from Los Angeles opens tonight at Starkwhite


Greetings from Los Angeles opens tonight at 6:00pm and runs to 6 August 2012. Exhibition curator Brian Butler will be at the opening reception.

Monday, July 9, 2012

Young Curators Season 2013

The Palais de Tokyo sees participating in the renewal of the ecosystem of art as part of its remit. With this in mind, the institution will entrust its entire 2013 exhibition programme to young curators. Selected on the basis of the proposals they submit, "the winners will bear witness to the perpetual reinvention of the issues involved in curating an exhibition, their scouting talent and ability to dream up new ways of relating to art." Read more...

How performance art took over


Marina Abramovic's head-to-heads with her audience have been captured in a new film, while The Tanks, the world's first gallery dedicated to performance artists, is opening at London's Tate Modern. The Guardian's Adrian Searle reports on the boom in live art. Read more...
Image: Marina Abramovic, The Artist is Present exhibition, MoMA, 2010

Saturday, July 7, 2012

dOCUMENTA [13]: the most important exhibition of the 21st century?


ARTINFO reports on why Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev's Documenta may be the most important exhibition of the 21st Century. Read more...

Friday, July 6, 2012

European musuems launch ARTtube


Five European museums, including the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Gemeentemuseum at the Hague, have launched an online video channel for films about art and design. ARTtube will include interviews with artists and profiles of upcoming exhibitions, and aims to attract a half a million visitors a year by 2014.

Preview of Douglas Gordon's new video The End of Civilisation


The Guardian is offering a preview of Douglas Gordon's new video The End of Civilisation. It's his first ever film in England, albeit within sight of his native Scotland, and centres on shots of a grand piano burning in a dip in the fellside. "A piano started to represent for me the ultimate symbol of western civilisation. Not only is it an instrument, it's a beautiful object that works as a sculpture but it has another function entirely", he says. "I wanted to do something with a piano in a landscape of some significance and I suppose as a Scotsman, there's nothing more significant than the border." Read more...
Image: Douglas Gordon's burning piano at Talkin Head

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Jean-Hubert Martin presents another ground-breaking exhibition at the Museum of Old and New Art


Built by Australian gambling wizard David Walsh to house his private art collection, the Museum of Old and New Art has been in the headlines since it was launched in Hobart 18 months ago - partly because of the money Walsh has spent on acquisitions, extravagant openings and publicity, but mostly because the museum has captured the imagination of a wider public as well as the attention of the art world.

MONA has a reputation for challenging museum conventions and the latest exhibition takes it to a new level. Curated by Jean-Hubert Martin, Theatre of the World spans 4000 years of fine and decorative arts and includes 180 works from the collection of David Walsh and 300 items selected from the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery ranging from historical items of furniture to cutting-edge works of contemporary art. Convinced that it is no longer enough to see art in an art historical context, Martin set out to create an experience that is purely about "seeing", enacting a curatorial practice that favours what he calls "visual efficiency". Viewers are invited to use their imagination to find relationships between seemingly disparate objects.

Regardless of whether or not the exhibition points to the future of museum practice and exhibition making, Jean-Hubert Martin's Theatre of the World is beginning to generate the kind of discussion that circulated around his ground-breaking exhibition Magiciens de la Terre at the Centre Pompidu in 1989.

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

A biennale addressing the Eurocentrism of knowledge in modern times


The theme of the 2013 Sharjah Biennial is the courtyard and its metaphorical conditions in a globalised world.

Recently curator Yuko Hasegawa, announced plans to build a new city structure to house works by artists in next year's edition of the biennial. She says: "I will invite a selection of Indian, Lebanese, Belgian, Japanese and Spanish architects to help envision a new urban structure that connects the historic area of Sharjah and its courtyard typology with the larger city. Within these new and traditional structures a broad range of artists will be invited to create works that will offer new experiences to be shared. Here the courtyard becomes more than a 'place' - it becomes a 'condition' where culture is nourished and true knowledge is formed."
Image: the Sharjah Heritage Area

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

The Gallery of Lost Art


A new Tate-sponsored website called the Gallery of Lost Art has been set up to showcase modern and contemporary pieces that have been destroyed or lost, stolen or erased. The Gallery is currently showing 21 works of art in the form of dossiers with interviews, archival photographs and essays. Among them are Daniel Buren's 1971 installation for the Guggenheim's rotunda, Paul Thek's Tomb which a storage company is said to have discarded in the 80s, and Rachel Whiteread's monumental public work House (1993), which was destroyed as the artist intended. You can visit the Lost Art site here.
Image: Tracey Emin's Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1967-1995 (1995), which was lost in a fire at a London art storage company in 2004, along with pieces by over 100 artists

Monday, July 2, 2012

Sydney Biennale presents "a vision of art as a cathartic experience capable of healing wounds and building bridges"


Sewing, basket-weaving, music-making, story-telling and other communal activities are at the heart of the 18th Biennale of Sydney. The exhibition, spread over five venues in the city, is entitled "All Our Relations" and presents a vision of art as a cathartic experience capable of healing wounds and building bridges. Read more...
Image: Lee Mingwei's The Mending Project, 2009

Coming up at Starkwhite


This week we are installing Greetings from Los Angeles, which opens on Tuesday 10 July at 6pm.