Saturday, November 30, 2013

Final day for Richard Maloy's All the things I did


Richard Maloy's All the things I did closes at Starkwhite today at 3pm.
Image: Richard Maloy, All the things I did, installation view, Starkwhite

Thursday, November 28, 2013

In praise of invention, forward thinking and liberty


Freedom Farmers: New Zealand Artists Growing Ideas is currently showing at the Auckland Art Toi o Tamaki. Curated by Natasha Conland and featuring commissioned works by 20 artists, including Martin Basher and Richard Maloy, the show traces the way New Zealand artists are using ideas of utopia, sustainability and artistic freedom in their work. You can read a review of the show here.
Image Martin Basher's Untitled (Spiritual-Marketplace), installation view at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki. Photo by Jennifer French

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Australia announces artist for the 56th Venice Biennale


Fiona Hall has been selected to represent Australia at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. Her project will be curated by Linda Michaels, deputy director at the Heide Museum of Modern Art, and presented at Australia's new pavilion in the Giardini. Read more...
Image: Fiona Hall at the Art Gallery of New South Wales

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Doryun Chong outlines his curatorial vision for Hong Kong's M+ art museum


Doryun Chong, Chief Curator at Hong Kong's M+, talks to Art Radar Asia about his curatorial vision for the new Herzog & de Meuron-designed art museum, which is scheduled to open in Hong Kong in 2015, and the collection of contemporary Chinese art gifted to the museum by uber collector Uli Sigg. Read more...
Image: Doryun Chong, Chief Curator at Hong Kong's M+ art museum

Monday, November 25, 2013

Artistic director of Documenta 14 announced


The Documenta quinquennial has announced that its 14th edition will be directed by Adam Szymczyk, the director and chief curator of the Kunsthalle Basel in Switzerland.
Image: Adam Szymczyk

This week at Starkwhite




Matt Henry's High Fidelity is showing upstairs and Richard Maloy's All the things I did continues downstairs at Starkwhite this week.
Image: Matt Henry, Untitled  (Cadmium Red), 2013, Acrylic on sized and gessoed linen, tray frame, acrylic lacquer, 327 x 242 x 45 mm;  Richard Maloy, All the things I did, installation view (detail), Starkwhite

Saturday, November 23, 2013

Phil Dadson talks about his Bodytok Quintet at the SCAPE Biennale


Phil Dadson's Bodytok Quintet features in this year's SCAPE Biennale in Christchurch. Drawn from his Human Instrument Archive, and staged at ArtBox, Dadson's interactive videos of "non-verbal body music" are presented on five screens that are activated by viewers when they approach them. SCAPE posted a video on YouTube of  Dadson and SCAPE curator Blair French talking about Bodytok Quintet
Image: the SCAPE art box housing Phil Dadson's Bodytok Quintet

Friday, November 22, 2013

Oh's world at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery


Seung Yul Oh's MOAMOA opens tonight at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery. Curated Aaron Kreisler and Aaron Lister, the exhibition features a selection of work produced over the past decade, along with new pieces commissioned by the organising galleries and created with the support of Creative New Zealand.

Next week Oh heads to Art Basel Miami Beach where ONE AND J (Seoul) will present a solo show of his work.
Image: Seung Yul Oh's Pok Po in MOAMOA, an exhibition organised by the Dunedin Public Art Gallery and City Gallery Wellington. MOAMOA runs at the DPAG from 23 November 2013 to 27 April 2014 and then travels to the City Gallery Wellington.

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Jae Hoon Lee talks about art-making on the frozen continent


In 2012 Jae Hoon Lee visited the frozen continent under Antarctica New Zealand's arts fellowship programme, a trip that enabled him to produce an award-winning suite of videos and photographs. Recently, TurnOnArt interviewed him about about his voyage, motivations and creating art in the world's most pristine environment. Read more...
Image: video still from Jae Hoon  Lee's A Frozen Column

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Artists talk about their work in Freedom Farmers at the Auckland Art Gallery


Martin Basher and Richard Maloy were commissioned to produce new works for Natasha Conland's Freedom Farmers exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki. The Gallery has posted video interviews of the artists talking about their works on YouTube, which can be viewed via the following links: Martin Basher on Untitled (Spiritual-Marketplace) and Richard Maloy on Tree Hut #5.
Image: Martin Basher talks about his work in Freedom Farmers

Monday, November 18, 2013

Review of The Life and TImes of New Zealand Art Dealer


You can read a review of Jill Trevelyan's biography of art dealer Peter McLeavey here.
Image: Peter McLeavey

This week at Starkwhite



Matt Henry's High Fidelity is showing upstairs and Richard Maloy's All the things I did continues downstairs at Starkwhite this week.
Image: Matt Henry, Untitled A (Grey-Black), 2013, Acrylic on sized and gessoed linen, tray frame, acrylic lacquer, 327 x 242 x 45 mm;  Richard Maloy, All the things I did, installation view, Starkwhite

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Jar is back


Located on Auckland's New North Road, Jar is a small, not-for-profit space dedicated to the promotion of strong, singular work for public consumption, where where projects have been staged by artists Stephen Bambury, Peter Robinson and poet/Jar founder Leigh Davis. After a short hiatus, Jar  reopens next week with a project by Auckland-based artist Simon Ingram.
Image: Leigh Davis' Macoute, Temptation of the World from a sequence of thirty exhibitions entitled Time, Text & Echoes, each devoted to a single Leigh Davis flag poem. Jar is located at 589 New North Road, Kingsland, Auckland

Saturday, November 16, 2013

Matt Henry's High Fidelity opens today


Matt Henry's exhibition High Fidelity opens at Starkwhite this afternoon  at 4pm (upstairs).
Image: Matt Henry, Untitled (Vanadium Green) from the series 19:9, 2013, Acrylic on linen, frame, acrylic glazing, 510 x 820 x 76 mm

Friday, November 15, 2013

Natasha Conland on Freedom Farmers


Exhibition curator Natasha Conland talks about Freedom Farmers: New Zealand Artists Growing Ideas at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki. View video.

Curator Vera Mey heads to Singpore


Vera Mey is leaving AUT's ST PAUL St Gallery to take up a curatorial position at Singapore's Centre for Contemporary Art where she will work with founding director Uta Meta Bauer.
Images: Vera May 

Art auction records hit new highs in New York


Christie's New York has staged the highest grossing auction ever with a postwar and contemporary art sale that brought in $691.6 million and set a new record for a publicly traded artwork with Three Studies of Lucian Freud by Francis Bacon, which sold for $142 million - 20 million more than Edvard Munch's The Scream. And Jeff Koons' sculpture Balloon Dog (Orange) fetched 58.4 million, an auction record for a living artist.
Image: Francis Bacon's Three Studies of Lucian Freud goes under the hammer at Christie's

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Andrew Clifford takes up directorship of West Auckland's Lopdell House Gallery


Andrew Clifford has taken up the directorship of Lopdell House Gallery in West Auckland. Formerly the curator at Auckland University's Gus Fisher Gallery, Clifford is also a well-known art writer who contributes to publications locally and abroad, such as ArtAsiaPacific, and a trustee of the Len Lye Foundation, the Audio Foundation and CIRCUIT. 
Image: Andrew Clifford with a work by Ujino Muneteru in Metropolis Dreaming, the Living Room project he curated in 2011

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Gertrude Contemporary announces new director


Emma Crimmings has been appointed director at Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne replacing Alexi Glass-Kantor who has moved on to Artspace in Sydney. Crimmings has worked as a filmmaker, a producer for ABC TV Arts, a curator for the Moving Image Centre and Australian Centre for Photography, and most recently as Acting Director and Programme Manager of Cultural Affairs at the Australian Embassy in Washington.

Honouring the artist with advertising?


Today the New Zealand Herald celebrates 150 years of publishing with a souvenir edition honouring 150 of the greatest New Zealanders since 1863. Colin McCahon is in the lineup of inspirational figures with a half-page spread of images and text on his selection as New Zealander of the year for 1954. The piece introduces him as one of the country's most influential artists, whose work is highly prized by collectors, fetching big prices, and goes on to say: "But the true value of art is not calibrated in dollars and cents, but in cultural influence and by this standard there has been no greater painter in New Zealand than Colin McCahon. Sitting under the piece is a half-page advertisement by an auction house promoting its share of the McCahon market and a total McCahon turnover of $13.5 million. A curious editorial decision by the Herald.
Image: Colin McCahon in his studio 

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Coming up at Starkwhite


Matt Henry's High Fidelity opens in our upstairs galleries on Saturday 16 November at 4pm and to runs to 14 December. Richard Maloy's All the things I did continues downstairs to 30 November.
Image: Matt Henry, Untitled (Raw) 2013, loom-state linen, tray frame, raw oak, 332 x 236 x 48 mm

Monday, November 11, 2013

Backstory on the Nazi-looted art discovered in Germany


This link takes you to the NYT's backstory on the Nazi-looted art discovered recently in Germany.
Image: Adolf Hitler and his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels (far left) viewing German art purged of degenerate influences, Berlin 1939

This week at Starkwhite


Richard Maloy's All the things I did continues at Starkwhite this week, through to 30 November.
Image: Richard Maloy, All the things I did, installation view, Starkwhite

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Giant cruise ships to be banned from Venice


Over the past 15 years, Venice has become one of the word's most important cruise destinations, with up to nine cruise turnarounds a day in high season. But there are growing fears about the impact of the giant vessels on the fragile city and the risk they pose to its infrastructure and inhabitants. (They pass within 300 meters of St Mark's Square.) These concerns have been heightened by the disaster of the Costa Concordia which sank off the Tuscan Island of Giglio in 2012.

The Italian Prime Minister, Enrico Letta, has approved plans to begin limiting large cruise ship traffic in the lagoon, with the biggest vessels of more than 96,000 tonnes to be banned from November 2014. However the announcement glosses over the fact that about 475 relatively large ships (for comparison, the Titanic was only 46,000 tonnes) will enter Venice next year.

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Ralph Hotere protest painting goes to auction


In 2003 Ralph Hotere painted White Drip II as a protest against broadcaster Paul Holmes for referring to United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan as a "cheeky darkie" on his radio show. Holmes purchased the painting and now (following his death earlier this year) it is going to auction with an estimate of $140,000 - $170,000.
Image: Ralph Hotere, White Drip II, acrylic on corrugated steel

Friday, November 8, 2013

Clinton Watkins in Crosstalk


Clinton Watkins is one of four artists featured in Crosstalk at the University of Connecticut's Contemporary Art Galleries, with a video titled Landscape Distortions. The exhibition focuses on single channel video work exploring various aspects of music performance, not to be confused with music videos.
Image: Clinton Watkins, Landscape Distortions (still), a twenty-minute video and sound composition using custome developed video manipulation hardware

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Comme des Marxists runway shows at White Columns


New York-based conceptual artist Rainer Ganahal presented his own designs this week in two runway shows at White Columns. Staged as part of Performa 13, Comme de Marxists featured items based on recent styles by Comme des Garcon, but adorned with class warfare-style slogans. Read more...

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

The life and times of a New Zealand art dealer


The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa has released Jill Trevelyan's much-anticipated biography of legendary art dealer Peter McLeavey, "the charismatic, pioneering art dealer who since the 1960s has shaped - even transformed - New Zealand art." Read more...

All the things I did at Starkwhite


Richard Maloy’s All the things I did opens at Starkwhite tonight.
Image: from Richard Maloy's student archive, re-presented at Starkwhite in All the things I did. Maloy's project was developed with support from Creative New Zealand.

Monday, November 4, 2013

A cautious rise in New Zealanders economic confidence


Consumer confidence in New Zealand is at its highest level in two years according to the latest global Neilson survey carried out between 14 August and 6 September. Consumer confidence indexed at 93 in the second quarter of 2013, increasing three points. (Confidence levels above or below a baseline of 100 indicate degrees of optimism and pessimism.)

"Confidence levels of New Zealanders are the highest we've seen in two years and nearly half of Kiwis (47%) now believe we are out of recession, an improvement of 12 percentage points in the last year," says Neilson NZ managing director Rob Clark.

Consumer confidence improvements were reported in Asia-Pacific (+2 to 105), North America (+2 to 96) and Middle East/Africa (+6 to 91). Europe's index held steady at 71.

Follies to test the potential of public space


In the past, the Folly project has been staged as part of the Gwangju Design Biennale, but this year it is being presented for the first time as a stand-alone event. Curated by Nikolaus Hirsch (director), Philipp Misselwitz and Eui Young Chan (curators), Gwangju Folly II uses the ambiguities of the folly as a tool of enquiry to address the condition of public space. Eight follies (some moving targets on the metro or a moving hotel) have been commissioned from artists/architects including Ai Weiwei, Raqs Media Collective, Rem Koolhaas, Do Ho Suh and Superflex
Image: Do Ho Suh and Suh Architects, In Between Hotel, Gwangju Folly II

Saturday, November 2, 2013

Jailed Pussy Riot member goes missing


Family members say Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova has gone missing after a prison transfer to an unknown destination after staging a hunger strike over "slavelike" conditions. Word has it that she is going to a prison in Alatyr, near Mordovia, though no one knows for sure. Her partner thinks her disappearance is a political move: "This is basically the only way they have to punnish Nadya," he says. "Let's cut her off from the outside world."

Earlier this year, Tolokonnikova was convicted of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred after Pussy Riot staged an anti-Putin performance in a Moscow cathedral.
Image: Pussy Riot performing at Red Square in Moscow

Friday, November 1, 2013

Coming up at Starkwhite


Richard Maloy’s All the things I did, a project developed with the support of Creative New Zealand, opens at Starkwhite on Tuesday.
Image: from Richard Maloy's student archive, re-presented at Starkwhite in All the things I did