Starkwhite and the Walters Estate will present an exhibition of works by pioneer abstract artist Gordon Walters at this year's edition of Art Basel Hong Kong.
Walters is a revered figure in New Zealand, recognised for a long and productive career spanning four decades. The Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki presented a retrospective exhibition his work in 1983 and a survey exhibition Parallel Lines in 1994, and he has been included in many survey shows, including A Very Peculiar Practice: Aspects of Recent New Zealand Art at the City Gallery, Wellington (1995). His place in New Zealand's art history is also memorialised in the bi-annual Walters Prize exhibition and award at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki.
However, aside from Australia where his work has been seen in Headlands: Thinking through New Zealand art at Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art (1992) and the 5th Asia Pacific Triennial at the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art (2006-2007), Walters' work has not found its way onto an international stage. This provides an opportunity for Starkwhite and the Walters Estate to stage a solo show of his work at one of the world's great art fairs where it will be seen by international curators, exhibition makers and influential collectors.
The Gallery will also present a new work by Perth-based artist Rebecca Baumann commissioned for the Encounters section of Art Basel Hong Kong, which has been curated by Yuko Hasegawa, chief curator at Tokyo's Museum of Contemporary Art. Baumann's Automated Colour Field (Variation V) consists of 132 split-panel flip clocks, each with the number cards replaced with cards of solid colour, creating a vast and constantly changing field of colour.
Starkwhite first presented Baumann's work in the exhibition Bazinga! curated by Robert Leonard and staged in 2013 as a joint venture with Brisbane's Institute of Modern Art, and again later in the year at the Auckland Art Fair and inaugural edition of Sydney Contemporary.
Starkwhite first presented Baumann's work in the exhibition Bazinga! curated by Robert Leonard and staged in 2013 as a joint venture with Brisbane's Institute of Modern Art, and again later in the year at the Auckland Art Fair and inaugural edition of Sydney Contemporary.
Images: Gordon Walters, Arahura, screenprint (1982), 760 x 565mm (top); Rebecca Baumann, Automated Colour Field (Variation V), 2014 (detail), 132 flip-clocks, laser-cut paper, batteries, 1550 x 3950 x 90mm (bottom)
