Art hub rollout

Hong Kong's ambition to become Asia's regional art hub was in the news again this week with the appointment of Lars Nittve as the Executive Director of Museum Plus (M+), a new museum concept planned at the future West Kowloon Cultural District and Exhibition Centre. M+ is being developed as a forward-looking cultural institution focusing on 20th to 21st century visual culture, with four initial broad groupings including design, popular culture, moving image and visual art. Nittve will be involved in the planning, design and curatorial development of M+, drawing on his years of experience directing institutions such as the London's Tate Modern, Stockholm's Moderna Museet and Malmo's Rooseum - Centre for Contemporary Art.

Image: West Kowloon Cultural District site

A private collection goes public

Built in the late 1870s as a 'gentleman's residence' for Auckland businessman James Williamson, Auckland's historic Pah Homestead will soon become the home of the James Wallace Art Trust's collection and be known as the TSB Bank Wallace Arts Centre. The new Centre opens in August 2010 with an exhibition drawn from the Trust's collection.

Image: Pah Homestead, Auckland NZ, soon to become the TSB Bank Wallace Arts Centre

A toxic brand

BP has announced that it will continue its arts sponsorships as pressure grows for damages arising from its disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The announcement comes in the wake of concerns amongst UK arts organisations that the cost of the clean up operation in the Gulf might force BP to scale back its support for the arts at a time when Government spending on the arts is about to be slashed amid efforts to cut public debt.

When questioned about the sponsorships the British Museum, the Royal Opera House, Tate Britain and the National Portrait Gallery in London rallied around BP issuing a joint statement praising the oil company for its contribution to the arts and cultural life of the country. And in another attempt to put a positive spin on the sponsorships the chief executive of Arts & Business in the UK, Colin Tweedy, said: "If they were spending billions on it some people might say it was a waste of shareholders' money which should be spent on cleaning up beaches. Saving that money will not do anything to the coastline of America."

As oil from the Deepwater Horizon rig continues to gush into the Gulf of Mexico and pressure mounts for cultural institutions to distance themselves from the oil giant, it seems likely that sponsored museums and galleries will face more spirited attempts from arts and environmental activists to position BP's arts sponsorships as a toxic brand, despite the best efforts of their spin doctors.

Image: oil continuing to gush from the broken wellhead at the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil well in the Gulf of Mexico

2010 Shanghai Biennale

The curatorial committee of the Shanghai Biennale recently held a conference in which curators Fan Di'an, Li Lei, Hua Yi and Gao Shiming revealed their vision for the upcoming biennale scheduled for late October 2010. Titled The Tournament Art Exhibition, the 8th Shanghai Biennale will feature several collaborative projects. Working with Long March Project the Biennale will launch a programme called Ho Chi Minh Trail in which international and local artists, curators and scholars will be invited to participate in panel discussions in each historic city on the itinerary. Other highlights include a collaboration with NY-based Performa and an experimental drama co-produced with Manifesta.

Image: The 8th Shanghai Biennial Curatorial Committee (from left) Li Lei, Fan Dian, Hua Yi and Gao Shiming

Contraflow review

This link takes you to a review of Matt Henry's exhibition Contraflow, which runs to 17 July 2010.

Image: Matt Henry, Contraflow, Starkwhite, June 2010

Guggenheim and You Tube search for the World's best online video

The Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation and You Tube have announced the launch of You Tube Play. A Biennale of Creative Video which aims to discover and showcase the most exceptional talent working in the realm of online video. A jury of experts comprising celebrated figures from the worlds of art, design, film and entertainment will select up to 20 videos submitted from around the world to be presented at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum on October 21, 2010 with simultaneous presentations at the Guggenheim museums in Berlin, Bilbao and Venice. The works will also be available to an international audience on the special You Tube Play channel. You can find out more about the project here, including how to participate.

Image: You Tube Play. A Biennale of Creative Video. Design by Jeff Baxter adapted from a photograph by David Heald. Sourced from artdaily.org, Courtesy of the Guggenheim Museum

Contraflow installation views

Matt Henry: Contraflow runs to 17 July 2010. 

Art Basel: Art Parcours

Art Parcours is the lastest entry to Art Basel's lineup of sections, one that Sarah Douglas says gave "a whiff of biennale spirit to the centre of art-world commerce" with nine installations deposited in various sites throughout the city. Curated by Jens Hoffmann, director of the CCA Wattis Institute in San Francisco, the project paired each urban locale with a "rhyming piece" by the artists involved. This link takes you to Sarah Douglas' ARTINFO article on Art Parcours.

Image: The scene at Martha Rosler's garage sale, part of the new Art Parcours section at Art Basel 2010

Art Basel 2010

These links take you to articles on Art Basel 2010: The Art Newspaper, New York Times and Bloomberg.

Image: Messeplatz, courtesy Art Basel

Matt Henry: Contraflow opening

Matt Henry's exhibition Contraflow opens tomorrow (Monday 21 June) at 5.30 pm. You can read the exhibition release here.

Image: Matt Henry, Control 2010, acrylic on linen, frame, perspex, 305 x 305 mm

Moving on

Heather Galbraith has stepped down from her curatorial position at the City Gallery Wellington to become the new Senior Curator Art at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.

Image: Forecourt and entrance to The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

Asian art hubs

This link takes you to a Sydney Morning Herald article by John McDonald on the emergence of ART HK as a powerful new Asian art hub and what it means for Australia, and in particular for the Melbourne Art Fair and Australian collectors. 

Charlotte Huddleston on the move

Charlotte Huddleston is the new director of AUT's St Paul Street Gallery. She replaces Leonhard Emmerling who left earlier this year to take up a position with the Goethe Institut in Munich. For the past four years Charlotte has been the curator of contemporary art at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. 

LIQUID STATE

Reading Room is a peer-reviewed journal of contemporary art and culture published annually by the E H McCormick Research Library at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki. Each issue is themed and features essays from local and international writers, artists' commissions and an archive section.

The theme for the latest issue springs from the idea of the Pacific as a non-place because it cannot claim identity in relation to a land mass. It addresses our liquid state as a problem and a possibility and as a counter to 'solid' thinking.

Reading Room 4 presents essays that treat liquidity as a tool to rethink nation, as a means to envisage new notions of connectivity and mobility, as a metaphor for being, or quite literally to focus on water as both medium and resource, suggesting as Sean Cubitt does in his essay The Ordering of Worlds: Two Recent Video Works by Stella Brennan "that this non-place offers a perspective from which to reconsider the 'order of the world'."

The issue also has a section dedicated to Julian Dashper (1960 - 2009) with tributes from friends and colleagues around the world.

Image: Cover of Reading Room 4 LIQUID STATE, 2010, published by the E H McCormick Research Library at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki

Upstairs at Starkwhite

This week we are installing Matt Henry's Contraflow exhibition downstairs, but we have works from stock on display in our upstairs galleries. 

Images: Whitney Bedford, Pink Iceberg (Odessa), 2010, ink and oil paint on panel, Gavin Hipkins, New Age (Falls), 2009, archival pigment print, 800 x 800mm

Coming up at Starkwhite

Matt Henry's exhibition Contraflow runs in our downstairs space from 21 June to 17 July 2010. We'll post the preview date and link to the exhibition release later next week.

Image: Matt Henry, Untitled relief from the series 16:9 (Green) 2010, acrylic on linen, 1294 x 1150mm 

Review of Bible Studies exhibition

This link takes you to an EyeContact review of Gavin Hipkins' exhibition Bible Studies (New Testament). 

Image: Gavin Hipkins, Abducted Young, Bible Studies (New Testament) 2008 -2009 series, C-type print, 1200 x 1300mm

Lehman Brothers art collection goes to market

Liquidators of the world's most notorious failed bank have announced that another slice of the Lehman Brothers' art collection will go under the hammer in September at an auction expected to raise $10m. The proceeds will go to creditors who are still owed billions of dollars following the bank's collapse in September 2008.

Lawrence McDonald, a former Lehman vice-president whose book A Colossal Failure of Common Sense chronicled the bank's collapse, said Lehman's art was off limits to the vast majority of the bank's workforce. "There was no art on the trading floors - and out of 25,000, very few ever saw the 31st floor," said McDonald who believes senior executives' penchant for art was a result of "becoming consumed with legacy, with power and with projection of power".

Unnerved publication

With essays by exhibition curator Maud Page and independent curator/critic Wystan Curnow, this publication accompanies the exhibition Unnerved: The New Zealand Project, which runs at Brisbane's Gallery of Modern Art and Australian Cinematheque to 4 July 2010. You can read Maud Page's introductory essay here.

Image: cover image for Unnerved: The New Zealand Project, published by the Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, image from the QAG/GoMA website