Coming up at Starkwhite

On Friday 8 October we open Beyond, an exhibition of works by three artists who engage the paranormal in their practices - Tamar Guimaraes' A Man Called Love, works from Dane Mitchell's Conjuring Form project and Georgina Starr's I Am The Medium.

Image: From Tamar Guimaraes' poetic slide show A Man Called Love (2007)

A collision of cultures at Versailles

Takashi Murakami is facing as much resistance for his Manga-inspired exhibition at Versailles as Jeff Koons did two years ago. Agence France-Presse reports a number of petitions are circulating against Murakami's exhibition at the former royal residence of the "Sun King" Louis XIV. According to the President of the public castle, Jean Jacques Aillagon, the protesters come from "extreme right fundamentalist groups and very conservative groups" who want make Versailles into a "reliquary of nostalgia for France of the Ancien Regime, or a France withdrawn into itself and hostile to modernism".

Murakami says the exhibition is "a face-off between the Baroque period and postwar Japan" and that he hopes it will "create in visitors a sort of shock, an aesthetic feeling".

Images: Takashi Murakami at the Chateau de Versailles, France

A biennial for artists living outside the mainstream art world

People's Biennial is a project conceived by artist Harrell Fletcher and exhibition-maker Jens Hansen. Organised by Independent Curators International (ICI), People's Biennial is an exhibition that examines the work of artists who operate outside the mainstream art world in the United States. It also proposes an alternative to the the standard contemporary art biennial, which the curators say mostly focuses on art from a few select cities (New York, Los Angeles, occasionally Chicago, Miami or San Francisco). This link takes you to the ICI website and further information on the event.

An outpost for photography

In his latest entry on Outpost curator Ron Brownson says: "I was wondering do many people know the difference between sheet fed gravure printing and platinum printing nowadays?" It's an unusual opening gambit for a gallery blog post, but not an unexpected one for followers of his writing.

Outpost began as a blog for the personal thoughts, opinions and activities of the Auckland Art Gallery staff, but Brownson is using it to publish a lot of writing on photography. Outpost also allows him to present images and writing to a readership while the Auckland Art Gallery's main building is closed for renovations. 

It's a smart move. Brownson is developing an online research and publishing project with the potential to inform and enrich the exhibition programme of the Auckland Art Gallery when it re-opens in 2011. In the meantime, Outpost is well worth a visit if you are interested in the history of photography, viewed through a curatorial lens and packaged for a blog.

Image: Auckland Art Gallery renovations, 2010

A virtual museum dedicated to digital media

The Adobe Museum of Digital Media (AMDM) is a virtual space designed to showcase and preserve groundbreaking digital work and to present expert commentary on how digital media influences culture and society. This link takes you to the AMDM site and further information on the new museum project and opening exhibit by Tony Oursler.

Danish Pavilion at the 2010 World Expo, Shanghai

The Danish Pavilion at the World Expo in Shanghai is a class act. Bypassing propagandistic advertising, the Danes have combined art and architecture with an icon (Copenhagen's Little Mermaid) creating a spiral shape for visitors to explore while taking in photographs, films and Jeppe Hein's social bench and fountain. As well as animating the architectural space Hein's intervention functions as a barrier between the pedestrians and cyclists who use the cycling lanes that take them from the ground through two curves and up to a level of 12 metres and down again.

Images: from the Bjarke Ingels Group website, Danish Pavilion architects

ShContemporary 2010: a market for ideas

The following links take you to reviews of ShContemporary 2010, the art fair that styled itself as a market for ideas as well as an Asian outpost of the art market: ShContemporary opens with wary dealers and an academic cast and Shanghai's 'messiest' art show is back.

Image: Choi Jeong-Hwa's towering balloon installation at ShContemporary 2010

China's Great Firewall

We were unable to post from Shanghai because we couldn't jump the Great Firewall of China that allows Beijing's internet police to block access to blogs. However, we resume our daily posts today. 

Leigh Davis flag poems at JAR

Image: Leigh Davis, Mouthing of Space, flag poem presented in the JAR exhibition Time, Text & Echoes (2010 - 2011), New North Road, Kingsland, NZ. 

Radio Berkman: a brief history of noise

Noise is distracting and irritating enough in the real world, but Kate Crawford, Associate Professor in Media Research at the University of New South Wales, says it also exists in the virtual world, and is often more insidious. Digital distractions disguise themselves as useful information - posts from friends on Twitter and Facebook, text messages, email and instant messaging. She says separating the noise from the signal is often an arduous and personalised task. And as a new generation of youngsters grows up with mobile phones and uninterrupted network connectivity, researchers fret about a possible information overload and its effects on attention span. Last month Kate Crawford spoke with David Weinberger on Radio Berkman about the history of noise and how noise lives in the digital world.

Glen Hayward picks up the Kaipara Foundation Wallace Arts Trust Award

The winners of this years Wallace Arts Trust Awards have been announced this week. Glen Hayward has been awarded the Kaipara Foundation Wallace Arts Trust Award, receiving a three-month residency at Altes Spital in Solothurn, Switzerland.

Image: Glen Hayward, Closed Circuit, 2010, acrylic on carved wood

NICE WORK: installation views (Part 1)

Our exhibition Nice Work continues this week and is scheduled to end on Wednesday 22 September 2010.

Images (from the top): Whitney Bedford's Weather; Billy Apple's String Piece; Trenton Garratt's Model Conversations: The Last Days of a Famous Mime (with Grace Jung); John Reynold's Untitled [De Chirico, Pacific Ocean] with Seung Yul Oh's Globglob; Jim Speers' Recording Angel with Glen Hayward's Closed Circuit.

NICE WORK: installation views (Part 2)

Images (from the top): Hye Rim Lee's Bunny Luv, pink with Seung Yul Oh's Globglob; Seung Yul Oh again and Jim Speers' Recording Angel; Jae Hoon Lee's Hajodae with Billy Apple's String Piece; Whitney Bedford's Weather with Trenton Garratt's Model Conversations: The Last Days of a Famous Mime (with Grace Jung) and Seung Yul Oh's Globglob sculptures

Posts from China

While we aim to continue our daily posts, they may be intermittent this week as we are in Shanghai.

Jim Speers at Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts

Jim Speers' exhibition Numerology and Territories opened yesterday at the Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts and runs to 5 December 2010. You can read about the show here.

Image: Jim Speers, Egyptian Rims (2010) digital print on photographic paper

Dane Mitchell at the Busan Biennale

The 2010 Busan Biennale Living in Evolution opens tonight and runs to 20 November. The biennale includes a new work by Dane Mitchell commissioned by artistic director Azumaya Takashi. We'll post installation views of Mitchell's work next week.

Image: Busan Museum of Art, one of the venues for the 2010 Busan Biennale

Peter Stichbury opens at Tracy Williams Ltd, NY

Peter Stichbury's exhibition The Proteus Effect opens tomorrow night at Tracy Williams Ltd New York and runs to 30 October 2010. The exhibition features five paintings and a suite of prints reflecting the metamorphosis that occurs through digital self-representation via the use of avatars and invented personas. This link takes you to the exhibition press release.

Image: Peter Stichbury, Bernard M (2010), acrylic on linen, 19.7 x 23.6 inches (500 x 600 mm), courtesy Tracy Williams Ltd, New York

John Reynolds' Untitled [De Chirico, Pacific Ocean]

John Reynolds' Untitled [De Chirico, Pacific Ocean] is currently showing downstairs in the exhibition Nice Work, which runs to 22 September 2010.

Image: John Reynolds, Untitled [De Chirico, Pacific Ocean] (1989/2010), oil/wax crayon on acrylic on canvas, 1680 x 1680 mm

ShContemporary launched this week with a curated exhibition and Hou Hanru conference

ShContemporary, the Asia Pacific Contemporary Art Fair, takes place this week from 9 - 12 September 2010.

This year's edition includes Discoveries: Re-Value a thematic exhibition that highlights the confrontation between different ideas of artistic and commercial value. Curators Mami Kataoka, Manray Hsu and Colin Chinnery, have selected work by artists whose practices evoke different notions of value: value of the ordinary and the extraordinary, innovation against traditional values, as well as the value of physical objects versus the ephemeral, technique and craftsmanship, or conceptual value associated with political, sociological conditions and backgrounds. It's an exhibition that asks questions about the way we see and consume art.

The fair also includes a conference co-organised with Hou Hanru on the theme Collecting Asian Art: What, When and How? The Chinese-born curator and critic currently based at the San Francisco Art Institute believes that ShContemporary is a seemingly contradictory but effective context for this kind of debate. Somehow, he says, the pragmatic coexistence and interaction between the intellectual and commercial worlds can produce unexpectedly productive and interesting solutions. This link takes you to the conference programme and lineup of speakers.

Image: Shanghai Exhibition Centre, venue for ShContemporary 2010