Tuesday, September 30, 2014

A conversation with Dame Jenny Gibbs about the formation of the Walters Prize


Last week Charles Esche awarded the 2014 Walters Prize to Luke Willis Thompson, the 7th artist to receive the $50,000 award. Along with the other finalists, he also received $5,000 from patron Dayle Mace when this year's lineup was announced.

The Walters Prize is the brainchild of Dame Jenny Gibbs and Erika and Robin Congreve, patrons who bring ideas as well as deep pockets to the arts. In 2010 Jenny Gibbs talked about the Prize and how it has been set up to keep the founders (and other patrons associated with it) at arms length, leaving it to the Auckland Art Gallery to appoint four New Zealand-based selectors to come up with a short list of four and the international judge to select the winner. You can view the video here.
Image: Dame Jenny Gibbs

Ai Weiwei at Blenheim Palace


Ai Weiwei has staged his latest exhibition at Blenheim Palace, the seat of the Dukes of Marlborough and the house where Winston Churchill was born. The Guardian's Jonathan Jones reflects on why Ai Weiwei would mount a survey of his work at a British stately home where visitors are more likely to come for the Capability Brown gardens or the tea shop, and perhaps not for conceptual art. Read more...
Image: Ai Weiwei's Han Dynasty vase with Coca Cola logo

Monday, September 29, 2014

This week at Starkwhite


Rebecca Baumann's Once more with feeling continues this week at Starkwhite through to 10 October.
Image: Rebecca Baumann, Once more with feeling (2014), installation view

Saturday, September 27, 2014

Imagineering at La Biennale de Montreal


La Biennale de Montreal opens next month. L'avenir (looking forward) examines how contemporary artists give form to the question, what is to come? "Shifting between assessment and anticipation, clearly grounded in the now and informed by echoes of the past, the exhibition looks forward to the future to unveil a range of possibilities and rekindle some that may have been prematurely foreclosed."

L'avenir (looking forward) was conceptualised by Gregory Burke (former director of New Zealand's Govett-Brewster Art Gallery) and Peggy Gale, and developed in tandem with co-curators Lesley Johnstone and Mark Lanctot of the Musee d'art contemporain de Montreal. All four curators worked in close collaboration with the biennale's executive and artistic director Sylvie Fortin to create an event that promises viewers "powerful experiences: moments for contemplation, invitations to wonderment, occasions for exchange and calls for action."

The biennale runs from 10 October 2014 to 4 January 2015.

Friday, September 26, 2014

Frieze founders appoint new director


In a surprise move, Frieze art fair has announced the appointment of Victoria Siddall as director of Frieze London and Frieze New York. The fair's co-founders and current directors, Amanda Sharp and Matthew Slotover, say it will give them more time to focus on the future and explore new projects for Frieze.

In an interview with The Financial Times, Slotover said the new projects he and Sharp have in mind do not include opening another fair. "It's not clear there are obvious opportunties elsewhere," he said. But he added, "Never say never."
Image: Victoria Siddall

Final curtain for SHContemporary?


While art fairs are on the rise in Hong Kong where Art Basel Hong Kong will be joined by Art Central in 2015, Shanghai's main fair is in troubled waters. The recent edition of SHContemporary was a disaster, opening with the grand Shanghai Exhibition Centre conspicuously devoid of art. Consignments were held up in customs with many crates arriving after the last visitors had left the vernissage. And to cap it off, participating galleries were told no sales could take place within the fair as the permit obtained was one only to exhibit art.

Art fair director Guido Mologni says it is too soon to say whether SHContemporary will continue in the future, but it's hard to see the fair recovering from such a set back.
Image: SHContemporary booths in the grand hall of the Shanghai Exhibition Centre

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

New art fair to be launched in Hong Kong


The founder of ART HK, Tim Etchells, will launch a new art fair in Hong Kong in 2015. Co-directed by Eve Share Banghart (Art Basel, ART HK and Gagosian Gallery) and Maree Di Pasquale  (Melbourne Art Fair, Sydney Contemporary and Abu Dhabi Art Fair), Art Central debuts 14 to 16 March to coincide with Art Basel Hong Kong.

News of the fair comes as no surprise - Etchells has been planning it ever since he sold ART HK to MCH Swiss Exhibition Limited, the parent company of Art Basel. However, rather than rolling out an 'affordable' art fair (as expected), Etchells has opted for a high-end fair that will sit alongside Art Basel Hong Kong. Art Central will be staged in a purpose-built tent on the new Central Harbour Front, less than two kilometers from the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre where Art Basel takes place.

Word on the street is Art Central will offer an attractive alternative to galleries that are unable to get into Art Basel Hong Kong, but it will also appeal to gallerists who liked the the focus and format of ART HK before it was made over by Art Basel.

Monday, September 15, 2014

Coming up at Starkwhite


On Friday 19 September we open a new exhibition by Australian artist Rebecca Baumann. It is her first solo show at Starkwhite and follows her participation in Art Basel Hong Kong in May, where we presented a commissioned work in the Encounters section curated by Yuko Hasegawa.
Image: Studio shot (detail) of work under development for Rebcecca Baumann's solo show

Friday, September 12, 2014

New Zealand representation in biennales


New Zealand has featured in previous editions of the Sao Paulo Bienal - Joe Sheehan in the 28th, Andrew McLeod and Brendan Wilkinson in the 27th, Remember New Zealand curated by Tobias Berger for the 26th, Gavin Hipkins in the 25th and Peter Robinson in the 23rd. But New Zealand artists were not included in the 29th edition and they haven't made the cut again this year with the 30th edition. Nor are there any New Zealand artists in the Gwangju Biennale or in the upcoming Shanghai Biennale.

Over the past two decades a handful of New Zealand curators were instrumental in brokering our artists into these events before moving overseas to take up curatorial positions. Two of them have returned to New Zealand - Robert Leonard (now chief curator at the City Gallery Wellington) and Simon Rees (the new director of the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery) - and look set to ramp up biennale representation for our artists again.
Image: Pavilhao Ciccillo Matarazzo, venue for the Sao Paulo Bienal

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Jeff Koons works with handbags for charity


Jeff Koons will create the first in a series of new works that will be used to raise money for the United Nations Foundation. He will create a large sculpture (and several smaller pieces) made of materials from luxury handbags donated for the project by Sofia Coppola, Marc Jacobs, Diane von Furstanberg, Almine Ruiz-Picasson and others. The finished piece will be auctioned at a dinner at Four Seasons restaurant in New York on on 9 November with the proceeds going to the United Nations Foundation's shot@life campaign, which is raising money to fight  measles, pneumonia, polio and rotavirus in children.

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Okwui Enwezor's global curatorial project


Okwui Enwezor is the first curator of his generation to direct Documenta and the Venice Biennale and the first African curator to direct either one. In an article titled How Okwui Enwezor Changed the Art World, the Wall Street Journal tracks Enwezor's global curatorial project, beginning with his 1996 breakthrough show Insight: African Photographers 1940 to Present at the Guggenhein Museum. Since then he has produced international exhibitions that seek to define their moment - biennials in Johannesburg, Gwangju and the Paris Triennial - and historically-driven, encyclopedic museum shows. Read more...
Image: Okwui Enwezor

Monday, September 8, 2014

Israel's Gaza offensive draws flak at Sao Paulo Bienal


Like the recent Biennale of Sydney, this year's edition of the Sao Paulo Bienal has opened with artists calling for the organising foundation to sever links with a sponsor - this time from the state of Israel. Fifty-five of the 68 participating artists have signed a letter protesting Israel's Gaza offensive and calling on the bienal to return funds received from Israel.

"At a time when the people of Gaza return to the rubble of their homes, destroyed by the Israeli military, we do not feel it is acceptable to receive Israeli cultural sponsorship," the letter reads. "In accepting this funding our artistic work displayed in the exhibition is undermined and implicitly used for whitewashing Israel's ongoing aggression and violation of international law and human rights. We reject Israel's attempt to normalise itself within the context of a major international cultural event in  Brazil." Read more...
Image: Pro-Palestine protesters in Sao Paulo (2009)

This week at Starkwhite


SIGNALS continues at Starkwhite closing on Saturday 13 September.
Image: Jin Jiangbo, Silent (2011), pigment ink on photo rag, 110cm diameter

Saturday, September 6, 2014

Jerry Salz drills down into September issue of Artforum


Every September Jerry Saltz conducts a "semi-sick ritual", returning to the September issue of Artforum to see what the new season of shows and openings holds "for the faithful, the frightened, and the shy." This link takes you to an article on what he found this time.

Friday, September 5, 2014

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev's plans for the Istanbul Biennale


ARTINFO caught  up with Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev in Sydney and talked about her plans for the next Istanbul Biennale.

Having seen every edition of the biennale since its inception in 1987, she finds the history of the event particularly meaningful. "I think it was the beginning of a decentralisation of the art world from the canonical, traditional venues like the Venice Biennale to another system that we now have where there are 150 biennales around the world," she says. "The geopolitics of art really changed with Istanbul, and that's why I decided it was important."  Read more...
Image: Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev

Jessica Morgan talks about her Gwangju Biennale

Burning Down the House, the 10th edition of the Gwangju Biennale opens today and runs to 9 November. Curated by Jessica Morgan, the exhibition places a special focus on politically motivated and insurgent art , as well as works that address local history. ARTINFO's Wendy Vogel spoke to her about what makes this year's biennale particularly explosive. Read more...

Thursday, September 4, 2014

SIGNALS continues at Starkwhite


Our current exhibition SIGNALS has been extended by a week and will now close on Saturday 13 September. You can read an exhibition review here.
Image: SIGNALS, installation view (Billy Apple's THE ARTIST WILL LIVE FOREVER (Chinese) and FROM THE LAI SOO COLLECTION. and Jin Jiangbo's Hidden