1001 Nights at The Armory Show

The collection of death-defying stories known as The Thousand and One Nights is reconfigured in John Reynolds' work as a dark double-sided wailing wall of words, fragments and torn phrases. Like some architectonic Trojan Horse, this 1001 Nights spills a harrowing present-day content quoting language and terms from Robert Fisk's mammoth recent history of the Middle East, The Great War for Civilisation. 

1001 Nights is installed at The Armory Show, Starkwhite booth 527, to 7 March 2010.

Images: John Reynolds, 1001 Nights (2010), Starkwhite at The Armory Show, New York, March 2010

The Armory Show Vernissage

The Armory Show Vernissage

The Armory Show, NY

We are at the Armory Show, NY, this week to present 1001 Nights by John Reynolds (Starkwhite, Pier 94, Booth 527). Watch this space for images of the fair.

Image: John Reynolds, 1001 Nights (detail), 2010, acrylic and silver marker on canvas, each block 100 x 100 x 40mm, installation dimensions variable

NY bound

We head to New York tomorrow to participate in The Armory Show. During this time the gallery will be open Monday 1st to Friday 6th from 11.00am to 5.00pm,  Saturday 7th from 11.00am to 4.00pm, closed Monday 8th and normal hours from Tuesday 9 March.

Seung Yul Oh: Bogle, Bogle

Seung Yul Oh's Bogle Bogle is showing at The New Dowse until 30 May 2010. We'll post more installation views next week.

Image: Seung Yul Oh, Bogle Bogle (detail), The New Dowse, Lower Hutt, NZ

The World is Not Enough: The Future of Biennials

Just two months into 2010 we have posted reports on four biennales and one triennial in the Asia/Pacific region - the Auckland Triennial, Busan Biennale, Biennale of Sydney, Gwangju Biennale and Singapore Biennale. Clearly the global recession hasn't diminished art-funder enthusiasm for these events.

Curators of biennial events will discuss the future role of expansive international surveys of contemporary art in today's fluctuating political and economic landscape in The Armory Show's Open Forum programme. The panelists in The World is Not Enough: The Future of Biennials are Dan Cameron (co-curator, Prospect New Orleans), Gary Carrion-Murayari (co-curator, 2010 Whitney Biennial), Elizabeth Sussman (co-curator, 1993 Whitney Biennial), Christina Paul (artistic director, third Quadrilateral Biennial, 2009), Trevor Smith (co-curator, Singapore Biennale, 2011) with moderator Katy Siegel, Associate Professor of Art History and Criticsm, Hunter College and contributing editor of Artforum.

We'll post a report on the discussion from New York.

Image: from The Armory Show Website

From the street

The From the street photographs of Starkwhite and Shanghai Ye! Shanghai are by artist Jin Jiangbo.

Artist directs third Singapore Biennale

The artistic director of the third Singapore Biennale, Matthew Ngui, has a lot of experience in the field of biennales, both as a participating artist and more recently as a curator. He was part of curatorial team for the Singapore Biennale in 2008, and has exhibited at the Sao Paulo, Venice and Gwangju biennales in 1996, 2001 and 2002 respectively. Ngui is one of four artists who represented Singapore at its first participation in the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001 and he is also the first Singaporean artist to exhibit at Documenta in Kassel in 1997. Trained in sculpture, Ngui focuses on installation, video, performance, site-specific works and public art.

Ngui brings this background to the forthcoming Singapore Biennale, Open House. He says: "I would like the focus of the Biennale to be on Singapore and other countries as sites, homes and nations, where the role of art is to engage and re-present realities through its unique creative processes that often give new and fresh insights into the spaces we inhabit. Hence on site in Singapore we hope to engage artists with the public as participating and audiences starting from the very process of art making in both private and public spaces."

Ngui's curatorial team includes Russell Storer, Curator of Asian Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery and Trevor Smith, Inaugural Curator of Contemporary Art at the Peabody Essex Museum, Massachusetts.

Image: Matthew Ngui, Artistic Director, 3rd Singapore Biennale, 6 March - 8 May 2011

Eighth Gwangju Biennale

Tilted 10,000 Lives and directed by Massimiliano Gioni, the Eighth Gwangju Biennale will develop as a sprawling investigation of the relationships that bind people to images and images to people. Gioni says: "The exhibition will engage our obsession with images and our need to create substitutes, effigies, avatars and stand-ins for ourselves and our loved ones. It is this perennial state of iconophilia, this maniacal love of images that we wish to examine in Gwangju."

The exhibition title is borrowed from Maninbo (10,000 Lives) a yet unfinished 30 volume epic conceived by Korean author Ko Un while imprisoned in 1980 for his participation in the South Korean democratic movement. Held in solitary confinement, as a means to preserve his sanity, Ko envisaged a poem which described every single person he had met throughout his life, including historical figures and fictional characters encountered in literature. Upon his release he began writing the 3,800 poems that compose Maninbo (10,000 Lives), a magnum opus that reads as a personal encyclopedia of humanity. From the Biennale Media release

The Gwangju Biennale runs from 3 September - 7 November 2010.

Image: Eighth Gwangju Biennale masthead

Shanghai, Ye! Shanghai: installation views

The four installation shots of Shanghai, Ye! Shanghai were taken by artist Jin Jiangbo, shown here with his family. 

Shanghai, Ye! Shanghai review

You can read a review of Jin Jiangbo's exhibition Shanghai, Ye! Shanghai here.

Image: Shanghai, Ye! Shanghai opening, Starkwhite, photograph by Jin Jiangbo

Grant Stevens: Burst at PICA

PICA (Perth) is presenting a trilogy of video works by Grant Stevens developed in response to his time in Los Angeles. If things Were Different (2009), Crushing (2009) and Really Really (2007) "...oscillate between the fanciful and romantic to the abrasively cynical by drawing on tropes of Hollywood film, advertising or bad day-time TV and purposefully mishandle media devices of editing, framing, cropping, and incorporating text or muzak". PICA website

The artist who now lives and works between Queensland and California explains that "...unpacking and testing out these ambiguities and ambivalences are what drive me to make art - to try and make works that draw you in while making you feel uncomfortable or unsure about what you are looking at." Eyeline 2008)

Grant Stevens: Burst runs at PICA until 5 April 2010.

Image: Grant Stevens, If Things Were Different, 2009, digital video, 18 min 17 sec, edition of 5

Shanghai, Ye! Shanghai installation views

Jin Jiangbo's exhibition Shanghai, Ye! Shanghai runs to 20 March 2010. You can read our media release here.

Images: Jin Jiangbo, Shanghai, Ye! Shanghai, installation views, Starkwhite, Auckland, NZ

Dane Mitchell at the Busan Biennale

Artistic director Azumaya Takashi has invited Dane Mitchell to realise a new work for the 2010 Busan Biennale, Living in Evolution (11 September - 20 November 2010). Mitchell is currently artist in residence on the DAAD Berliner Kunstlerprogramm.

Azumaya Takashi is an independent curator known for his experimental approach to exhibitions. He has held curatorial posts at the Setagaya Museum and Mori Museum in Tokyo and was the commissioner of Media_City Seoul 2002 and guest curator for the 2008 Busan Biennale. He is the first non-Korean to direct the Busan Biennale. 

This link takes you to the Busan Biennale website.

Image: Busan city

David Elliot unveils highlights of the 17th Biennale of Sydney

As final countdown begins for the Auckland Triennial (it opens 12 March 2010), artistic director David Elliot is unveiling plans for the 17th Biennale of Sydney (12 May - 1 August 2010). Based on the curatorial theme THE BEAUTY OF DISTANCE: Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age, the Biennale will present artists' works alongside the work of contemporary writers, filmmakers, commentators and musicians. Elliot says: "The aim of this Biennale is to bring together work from diverse cultures, at the same time, on the equal playing field of contemporary art, where no culture can assume superiority over any other." He has also constructed THE BEAUTY OF DISTANCE with Sydney's position as an iconic world city in mind and believes biennales should enter into a conversation with the places where they are shown.

The Biennale is also dedicated to the life and continuing influence of Nick Waterlow, one of the first Australian curators to look across the Tasman and open up a long and productive relationship with the NZ art world.

This link takes you to the Biennale website and the list of artists included in THE BEAUTY OF DISTANCE.

Image: David Elliot, Director of the 17th Biennale of Sydney, THE BEAUTY OF DISTANCE: Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age

Year of the Tiger

This year the Chinese New Year falls on February 14 being the Year of the Tiger. For us it is also the day Jin Jiangbo arrives in Auckland to oversee the installation of his exhibition Shanghai, Shanghai, which opens tomorrow at 5.30pm. 

Oh so playful

Seung Yul Oh's Bogle Bogle opens today at The New Dowse. It is the first in a series of five artists' projects commissioned by the art museum for its 2010 programme. You can read the Bogle Bogle media release here.

Image: Seung Yul Oh, Bogle Bogle (detail), The New Dowse, Lower Hutt, NZ

Ai Weiwei on censorship

Ai Weiwei has spoken out in support of US internet giant Google in its standoff with Beijing. In a commentary in The Wall Street Journal the artist said Google had set an important example for the Chinese people by challenging state censorship at the risk of sacrificing its place in the world's largest online market. Last month Google threatened to abandon its Chinese search engine and possibly leave the country altogether over alleged China-based cyberattacks. The company also said it would no longer obey censorship rules.

You can read Ai Weiwei's commentary here.

All of a Sudden: Things that Matter in Contemporary Art

This link takes you to an interview with Jorg Heiser, co-editor of frieze and author of All of a Sudden: Things that Matter in Contemporary Art.

Image: Book cover courtesy Sternberg Press, Berlin