Phil Dadson's Human Instrument Archive at 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. Read more...
Image: Phil Dadson's Bodytok at the ArtBox, SCAPE Biennale 7

ANTARCTIC CONVERGENCE at the Audio Foundation

Auckland's Audio Foundation presents ANTARCTIC CONVERGENCE  Part 2 this weekend. Curated by Australian sound and intermedia artist Philip Samartzis, it is the second and final evening of presentations of work responding to the uniquely evocative and geophysical attributes of Antarctica. The programme features presentations by Phil Dadson, Jae Hoon Lee, Rosy Parlane and Philip Samartzis. You can catch it at the Audio Foundation on Saturday 13 July, starting at 7.30pm.

Image: Phil Dadson, Terra Incognita, installation view

21st-Century Collecting at the Adam Art Gallery

Billy Apple, Phil Dadson and Jae Hoon Lee are represented in 21st-Century Collecting at Wellington's Adam Art Gallery. Curated by Christina Barton, the exhibition raises questions about contemporary art practice and the challenges facing those who are its custodians.

Image top to bottom: Billy Apple, From the VUW Collection (2005), Phil Dadson, Aerial Farm (2006) video still, Jae Hoon Lee, Muriwai (2008), digitally manipulated photograph 

Auckland Art Gallery patrons centre stage in a suite of collection-based exhibitions

The Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki is highlighting the role of patronage in collection-based exhibitions drawing on works gifted by its patrons group and the Chartwell Collection, which is on long term loan to the gallery. The shows include works by a number of Starkwhite artists: Grant Stevens features in Whiz Bang Pop; Phil Dadson, Gavin Hipkins and John Reynolds are in Partner Dance: Gifts from the Patrons of the Auckland Art Gallery, both curated by Natasha Conland; and the evolving downstairs show Toi Aoteroa includes a new section, also curated by Conland, with works by Martin Basher, David Hatcher, Gavin Hipkins and Jae Hoon Lee.
Image: David Hatcher, The Simplest Surrealist Act (Andre Breton), 2002, silkscreen on plexiglass, 2000 x 1430 mm, Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki; Gavin Hipkins, Dunedin (Landscape), from The Homely series, 1997-2000, C-type colour photograph,  600 x 400 mm collection of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki; Phil Dadson, Echo-Logo, 2003, DVD, 7 mins, collection of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki.

A festival for the ears

Set up to celebrate the diverse methods of sound making and sound theory, Liquid Architecture is Australia's premier sound festival. This year's edition, Liquid Architecture 13: Antarctic Convergence, explores the philosophical, social and environmental ramifications of the growing human presence in Antarctica through the activities of artists who have produced work from first-hand encounters with the frozen continent. The lineup of artists includes Phil Dadson who visited Antarctica in 2003 under the Antarctica New Zealand Art Fellowship Programme.
Image: video still from Phil Dadson's Echo Logo [Polar Projects]

Let me hear your body talk

Phil Dadson's Bodytok Quartet is showing at Pataka to 29 July. You can read a review of his video installation here.
Image: video still from Phil Dadson's Bodytok Quartet

New arts agency for artists working with the moving image launched in Auckland

CIRCUIT Artist Film and Video was launched in Auckland last night at a function hosted by Artspace and The Film Archive. CIRCUIT is a new arts agency designed to support artists working with the moving image through distribution, critical review and research. It includes an online resource with over 300 streaming videos by New Zealand artists. The launch was accompanied by a screening of works from the CIRCUIT collection, including Phil Dadson's Between Worlds.
Image: video still from Phil Dadson's Between Worlds

Old Genes review at Critics' Picks

This link take you to a review of Old Genes: Artists reading Len Lye at Artforum's Critics' Picks. Curated by Tyler Caan for the The Govett-Brewster Art Gallery (he has since taken up a new curatorial position at IKON Gallery, Birmingham), the exhibition includes works by Phil Dadson and Dane Mitchell.

Image: Phil Dadson, Osmosis (of Len's universe) 2011, single channel video (still grab)

Phil Dadson's tribute to John Cage

Phil Dadson's video Between Worlds (2011) is amongst the collection of stories and visual and sound artworks by international artists in the Streaming Museum's online tribute to John Cage. You can view his video contribution to A John Cage Centennial Tribute here.

Produced and broadcast in NYC, Streaming Museum is a hybrid museum that presents multi-media exhibitions in cyberspace.
Image: John Cage, 1991, photo by Hemming Lohner, courtesy of the John Cage Trust; and video still from Phil Dadson's Between Worlds, 2011

Artists put heat on New Zealand Government to protect one of the last great wildernesses on the planet

Last year a group of artists from the South Pacific region, including Phil Dadson and John Reynolds, travelled on HMNZS Otago to a place rarely explored - the Kermadec Islands. The project was an initiative of the Pew Environment Group's Global Ocean Legacy programme, which promotes the designation of large, highly-protected marine reserves.

The Kermadecs are the most remote part of New Zealand. Despite their historical, as well as mythological significance, public awareness of the islands and surrounding waters is slight. The voyage aimed to change that by documenting an imaginatively-charged encounter with one of the least known natural wilderness areas on the planet.

The resulting exhibition, Kermadecs: Nine artists in the South Pacific, opens tonight at Auckland's Maritime Museum.

Dadson and Reynolds see the exhibition as a way to underpin efforts to protect the region, placing pressure the New Zealand government to protect the Kermadecs for all time by designating it as a marine sanctuary, free from fishing and mineral exploitation, making it the world's biggest marine reserve."The Challenge is to try to find a voice, an effective voice, for expressing concerns about the very real threat this part of the ocean is under", says Reynolds. "We understand from PEW that the National Government caucus agrees it's a worthy cause, but it remains unactioned."
Image: NASA photograph of Raoul Island, the Kermadecs, and still from Phil Dadson's video PAX (2011)

Jae Hoon Lee on the frozen continent

Jae Hoon Lee is at Scott Base under the Antarctica New Zealand Arts Fellowship Programme. Each year Antarctica New Zealand invites artists to become honorary Arts Fellows and travel to the frozen continent to undertake specific projects that will help raise awareness of the scientific, aesthetic and wilderness values of Antarctica. Lee follows in the footsteps of Phil Dadson who was there in 2003, a visit that culminated in Polar Projects.
Image: Scott Base Antarctica

Old Genes: Artists reading Len Lye

The exhibition Old Genes: Artists reading Len Lye presents the work of five contemporary artists, including Phil Dadson and Dane Mitchell, engaging with Lye's legacy and the role of language in his work. The exhibition opens tonight at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery and runs to 26 February 2012.

Images: Phil Dadson, Osmosis (of Len's Universe), 2011, single channel video (still grab) and Dane Mitchell, Len Lye, 'Snow Birds' 2010, glass, spoken word

Phil Dadson solo set tonight at Auckland's Wine Cellar

You can catch two acts at Auckland's Wine Cellar tonight: a solo set by Phil Dadson and the first performance of John Bell's Spoilers of Utopia Brass Band. The first performance starts at 8.30pm and there is a $5 entry charge.

Image: Phil Dadson in performance

Phil Dadson at the 2011 New Zealand International Film Festival

Phil Dadson's new video work Between Worlds features in the 2011 New Zealand International Film Festival which runs in Auckland from 14 July - 3 August. The work is a development of the Deep Water installation shown at Starkwhite earlier this year that morphs content into an unexpected realm of experience.

Between Worlds screens at the Academy Theatre in the Artist Cinema project curated by Mark Williams and as a short to the feature length documentary My Reincarnation.

Image: video still from Phil Dadson's Between Worlds screening in the 2011 New Zealand International Film Festival

Artists voyage to the Kermadec Islands

This week a group of artists from the South Pacific region, including Phil Dadson and John Reynolds, travel on HMNZS Otago to a place rarely explored - the Kermadec Islands.

The Kermadecs are the most remote part of New Zealand. Despite their historical, as well as mythological significance, public awareness of the islands and surrounding waters is slight. The voyage aims to change that by documenting an imaginatively-charged encounter with one of the least known natural wilderness areas on the planet.  

Later in the year the Tauranga Art Gallery will present an exhibition of works produced by the artists. The Gallery was selected as the exhibition venue because the Kermadec Ridge (the undersea formation which includes Raoul Island where the artists will spend two days) is geologically linked with the Tauranga area.

The project is an initiative of the Pew Environment Group's Global Ocean Legacy programme, which promotes the designation of large, highly-protected marine reserves.

Image: NASA photograph of Raoul Island, the Kermadecs

Tender is the Night opens at Wellington's City Gallery

The City Gallery (Wellington)  has opened Tender is the Night, an exhibition curated by Heather Galbraith that "brings together a selection of art works which explore the complex and intense nature of desire, love and the loss of a loved one." You can read more about the exhibition and lineup of artists (they include Phil Dadson and Derrick Cherrie) at the City Gallery website.

Image: Phil Dadson, Breath 1976 (a statement about birth and death), b/w video for two monitors, 16'30"

Artists on air: Phil Dadson and Dane Mitchell

Over the weekend Radio New Zealand aired conversations with Phil Dadson on Composer of the Week and Dane Mitchell on Saturday Morning with Kim Hill.  

Images: Phil Dadson in performance (photograph courtesy of the artist) and Dane Mitchell, Radiant Matter Part 1, installation view, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, 2011 (photograph by Bryan James)

Video live performance tonight at ST PAUL ST Gallery

Tonight at 7.30pm St Paul St presents a performance by Ko Nakajima working with Phil Dadson and other musicians and dancers to create a live performance work responding to and activating his work Tao installation in the exhibition Video Life. Kentaro Taki will also present a live video performance combining analogue and digital processes. Informed by an idea of finding a path to an artwork through a process rather than becoming attached to an outcome, Taki will attempt to find his way through a barrage of media to create his performance.

Video Life: Ko Nakajima and Kentaro Taki at St Paul St

Video Life: Ko Nakajima and Kentaro Taki opens tonight at AUT's St Paul St gallery. Curated by Phil Dadson, the exhibition runs to 25 March 2011 as part of the Auckland Festival's visual arts programme. Read more...

Image: Ko Nakajima, video stills from Biological Cycle (1971 - present)

Phil Dadson's Deep Water - final week

Phil Dadson's Deep Water exhibition at Starkwhite closes at 3.00pm on Saturday 5 March, 2011.

Image: Phil Dadson, Between Worlds #1 (2011), pigment inks on Ilford paper, 900 x 500 mm