Blog time out

We are taking a break over the Christmas/New Year period, resuming regular posts on 14 January 2013.
Image: The flower of New Zealand's Pohutukawa also known as the Christmas tree

Take an online walk through the collection of Don and Mera Rubell

The Rubells show of their famous art collection via ARTINFO. View video

Final day for Ross Manning's Field Emissions

Ross Manning's Field Emissions closes today at 3pm. This link takes you to a review of the show.
Image: Ross Manning, Field Emissions (2012), installation view, Starkwhite, December 2012

The Guardian invites artists to produce Christmas screensavers

The Guardian is offering artists' screensavers to its readers, including this one by Urs Fischer who declined to give an explanation for his work. You can download the screensavers here.
Image: Urs Fischer's Christmas screen saver, available courtesy of The Guardian

India launches a new biennale

This month India launched its first biennale in Kochi, one of the oldest ports in the state of Kerala. It got off to a slightly shaky start, but Newsweek's Annie Paul says there was much to celebrate. Read more...
Image: M.I.A and Bollywood star John Abraham at the launch of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 

Centre Pompidou sends Electric Fields - Surrealism and Beyond to Shanghai's Power Station of Art

Paris' Centre Pompidu has joined the international lineup of institutions sending collection-based exhibitions to Shanghai's new art museums. The exhibition, Electric Fields: Surrealism and Beyond - La Collection du Centre Pompidou, opened recently at the Power Station of Art as part of the Shanghai Biennale. It follows presentations at the China Museum of Art including: contemporary works from the collection of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa; American masters from the Whitney Museum; Vermneer masterpieces from the Rijksmuseum; works from the collections of Maison de Victor Hugo in Paris, the Museo National de San Carlos in Mexico city and the British Museum; and the exhibition Naturalism in France.from the Musee d'Orsay.
Image: visitors at Electric Fields: Surrealism and Beyond, Power Station of Art, Shanghai

Jeff Koons creates a label for Chateau Mouton Rothschild

Jeff Koons has created the label for Chateau Mouton Rothschild's 2010 Pauillac first growth, working over a Pompeii fresco of the Birth of Venus with a silver line drawing of a ship sailing under a bright sun. Previous artists engaged to produce a label include Warhol, Picasso and Dali.

frieze on the Kathmandu International Art Festival

Nepal has just launched the second edition of its triennial Kathmandu International Art Festival, with climate change and its human impact as its curatorial agenda. Kurchi Dasgupta was there to cover it for frieze. Read more...
Image: Jyoti Duwadi's Shades of Seeds

China's Ministry of Culture rejects Warhol's Mao works

Andy Warhol's images of Chairman Mao won't be part of a traveling exhibition of his work when it goes to China. According to Bloomberg, the Mao works have been rejected by the Ministry of Culture. If mainland fans of Warhol want to see silkscreens of the great helmsman they will have to catch the Hong Kong leg of Andy Warhol: 15 Minutes Eternal. Read more...
Image: Andy Warhol's Mao

Pritzker prize winner challenges the direction of contemporary architecture in China

Faced with the groundswell of huge new building projects in China, this year's Pritzker Prize winner Wang Shu has proposed an alternative view saying they are not the only architectural products his country has to offer. The practice he runs with his wife Lu Wenyu, is concerned with such things as memory, location, craft and identity, for "real feeling between people and construction" and the ways in which they can be recognised in the extraordinary time through which China is now passing. Read more...
Image: Ningbo History Museum designed by Weng Shu

Ownership of The Armory Show to change hands

According to GalleristNY, art publisher Louise Blouin has finalised plans to buy The Armory Show from Merchandise Mart Property Inc. Ms Blouin is CEO and president of Louise Blouin Media, which owns Art + Auction and Modern Painters and founder of ARTINFO.
Image: Louise Blouin

This week at Starkwhite

Ross Manning's Field Emissions enters its final week closing Saturday 22 December at 3pm.

Image: Ross Manning, Field Emissions, installation view, Starkwhite, December 2012

Peter Peryer's annual Christmas photograph

Each year Peter Peryer releases a small, low-cost photograph just before Christmas - this time in association with Starkwhite. Contact the gallery for more information/orders.
Peter Peryer, Bluebells (2012), pigment ink on cotton rag, 12 x 16 cm, edition of 50

New director of Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art announced.

After 15 years at the helm of the Auckland Art Gallery, Chris Saines has been appointed director of the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, in Brisbane. He takes up his new position in March 2013
Image: Chris Saines, outgoing director of the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki

frieze's postcard from the World Biennale Forum No.1

In October the World Biennale Forum No.1, titled Shifting Gravity and co directed by Hou Hanru and Ute Meta Bauer, took place in Gwangju. Initiated to provide a discursive platform for the international biennale community and a space for networking and exchanging common practices, the three-day conference explored biennale structures, developments and futures. Harriet Thorpe was there to cover it for frieze. Read more...
Image: The World Biennale Forum No. 1, Gwangju, South Korea

LEAP looks at the "museumification" of China

China is undergoing a "museumification" with an average of over 100 museums built across the country every year. The current issue of LEAP looks at whether the speed and scale of this construction might mark a new chapter in the history of global museum development. It also sets out to identify problems with the state of the museum in China and potential solutions. As a final touch artist Cao Fei addresses some of these issues in her satirical work of short fiction Secret Tales from the Museum.

Flash Art to launch its own art fair

The Italian art magazine Flash Art is launching its own art fair in Milan. Scheduled for 7 - 10 February, it will feature 80 dealers who will each put on a solo show or curatorial project providing opportunities "to discover an emerging artist or rediscover an artist from the past." Recognising the rising cost of fairs, the price for a 16 square-meter booth is 3000 Euros with 3 nights free accommodation for foreign participants.

Ross Manning's Field Emissions reviewed

You can read a review of Ross Manning's exhibition Field Emissions here.
Image: Ross Manning, Field Emissions, installation view, Starkwhite, December 2012. Photo: Sam Hartnett

Jake and Dinos Chapman installation under investigation in Russia

Russian prosecutors have launched an investigation into whether an installation by Jake and Dinos Chapman exhibited at St Petersburg's Hermitage Museum is in breach of the country's extremism laws. Read more...

Image: Jake and Dinos Chapman installation at White Cube

Presenting video at art fairs

David Gryn, the curator of the art video section at Art Basel Miami Beach, and Edward Winkleman, the co-founder of Moving Image the contemporary video art fair, discuss  how to present video at art fairs and the rise of the cinematic experience in making and showing art films at TAN (Video: the long game)
Image: Installation view, Moving Image New York, 2012

This week at Starkwhite

Ross Manning's Field Emissions continues this week through to 22 December.

Image: Ross Manning, Field Emissions, installation view, Starkwhite, 2012

Billy Apple art for the Auckland City Mission

A Billy Apple billboard will be unveiled at 2:00pm today on Auckland's waterfront. The piece includes a mobile number so that viewers can text it to download a Billy Apple artwork to their phone with proceeds going to the Auckland City Mission.

This Fine Island screening at the New Zealand Film Archive

Gavin Hipkins' experimental screen narrative, This Fine Island, is screening at the New Zealand Film Archive in Auckland (click here for screening dates/times). Hipkins' film revisits Charles Darwin's journey to the Bay of Islands in 1835, but in his adaption, Darwin's nineteenth-century travel writing in The Voyage of the Beagle becomes a vehicle for present day tourisms, travel romance, and racial othering, against the backdrop of New Zealand's lush landscape.
Image: Gavin Hipkins, This Fine Island , 2012 (production still), 12 mins, 16mm transferred to Digibeta

APT7: mapping changing cultural landscapes with a focus on Asian and Pacific contemporary art

The 7th edition of the Asia Pacific Triennial opens today at the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) and Queensland Art Gallery (QAG). APT7 marks the twentieth anniversary of the APT and it will be the most ambitious to date, exploring themes including temporary structures and transforming landscapes, varied engagements with the city, and the adaptability of local cultures in the globalised world. Read more...

Image: Michael Cook, Civilised #13, 2012, inkjet print on paper

Jonathan Watkins to curate the Iraq Pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale

Ikon Gallery director Jonathan Watkins has been named curator of the Iraq Pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale. Speaking about his approach to the pavilion he said: "As much as possible the Iraq Pavilion will embody the nature of everyday life as it is lived now - both in Iraq and beyond the art world there, such as it is. We envisage a celebration of creativity in all forms, at every level of society"

Image: Jonathan Watkins, director of Ikon Gallery

Paola Pivi at the High Line

Paola Pivi's Untitled (Zebra) is the latest billboard project at New York's High Line. Pivi's work is the seventh installment on the 25-by-75-foot billboard, which has previously featured works by John Baldessari, Anne Collier, David Shrigley, Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari, Elad Lassry and Thomas Bayle. Read more...
Image: Paola Pivi, Untitled (Zebras), High Line Billboard to 2 January 2013

Alicia Frankovich tote bag for Artspace

Every year Auckland's Artspace works with artists to create a range of editions to support its exhibition programme. This year Alicia Frankovich has produced a tote bag in an edition of 100 and selling for $35. You can support Artspace by ordering one here.
Image: Alicia Frankovich, After Medea, 2012. Cotton tote bag, digital print.

Seoul's high season of contemporary art

frieze's Cristina Ricupero reports on a high season in Seoul where the country hosted four biennales concurrently, including the Gwangju and Busan biennales, along with two exhibitions of artists prizes (the Hermes Foundation Missulsang Prize and the new Korea Artist Prize), and a major exhibition celebrating what would have been Nam June Paik's 80th birthday. Read more...
Image: Nam June Paik, One Candle (1989), installation view, Nam June Paik Centre, Seoul

Turner Prize winner announced

Video artist Elizabeth Price is has been awarded the Turner Prize 2012. Read more...

Image: Elizabeth Price, winner of the Turner Prize

Sub-Tropical Heat at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery

Recently Art Radar Asia talked to Rhana Devenport about the exhibition Sub-Tropical Heat: New Art from South Asia which ended last month at New Plymouth's Govett-Brewster Art Gallery. The exhibition was the fifth in a series of shows on contemporary Asian art which began with Media Arena: Contemporary Art from Japan and Transindonesia during Greg Burke's time as director of the GBAG, continuing with China in Four Seasons, Activating Korea and Sub-Tropical Heat initiated by the current GBAG director  Rhana Devenport. Read more...

Image: Naeen Mohalemen, The Young Man Was (Part 1, United Red Army), 2011, film still

Song Dong: from Beijing to the Sydney Festival via MoMA and the Barbican

Carriageworks and 4A Centre for Contemporary Art are presenting Waste Not, an exhibition by Chinese artist Song Dong that has traveled from the artist's family home in Beijing, to the Museum of Modern Art in New York and on to the Barbican Art Gallery in London and now to Australia where it will be shown at Carriageworks in association with the Sydney Festival. At the same time, 4A is showing Dad and Mum, Don't Worry about Us, We are All Well, a survey show of Song Dong's work over the past two decades.

Waste not runs at Carriage works from 5 January to 17 March and Dad and Mum, Don't Worry about Us, We are All Well runs at 4A Centre for Contemporary Art from 5 January to 30 March 2013.
Image: installation view of Song Dong's Waste Not at the Barbican Art Gallery, London

MoMA adds video game classics to its collection

MoMA has acquired 14 video games for its collection in the architecture and design department including classics like Pac-Man and Portal. They form the seedbed of an initial wish list of about 40 to be acquired in the near future.

"Are video games art? They sure are, but they are also design, and a design appproach is what we chose for this foray into this universe," says department curator Paoli Antonelli. "Our criteria, therefore, emphasizes not only the visual quality and the aesthetic experience of each game, but also many other aspects - from the elegance of the code to the design of the players's behaviour - that pertain to interaction design."

Image: Pac-Man (1980)

This week at Starkwhite

Ross Manning's Field Emissions continues at Starkwhite this week.
Image: Ross Manning, Field Emissions (2012), installation view, Starkwhite, November 2012

Futurist Christmas tree in Brussels draws flak

Last month government officials ruled that a traditional Christmas tree should be banned from Belgium's main public square because it might offend the local Muslim community. Now the decision to replace it with an 8o-foot Christmas tree sculpture by French collective 1024 Architecture has come under fire from Catholic Belgians who see the work as an overly PC attempt to secularise Christmas.
Image: 1024 Architecture's ABIES Electronicus, Brussels

Winner of the 5th Artes Munde Prize announced

Teresa Margolles, whose work addresses the violence of drug-related crime in Mexico, has been named as the winer of the fifth Artes Munde Prize. The £40,000 prize is awarded ever two years to artists who engage with social reality and the human condition. Read more...

Image: Teresa Margolles

A Russian court bans online video clips of Pussy Riot

A Moscow court has ruled that websites must remove video clips of Pussy Riot. The anti-Putin prayer performed in a cathedral that led to the conviction of three of the group's members has been viewed more that 2.4 million times on YouTube. Read more...

Image: Pussy Riot performing at Red Square in Moscow