Internet retail specialist hired as CEO of VIP Art Fair

Internet retail specialist Lisa Kennedy has been hired by the VIP Art Fair as its first CEO. Kennedy has no previous art experience, but art fair founder Jane Cohan says "she has a tremendous record for building consumer-driven companies." ARTINFO reports that in addition to streamlining and improving the web product, Kennedy will work to expand the fair to take place multiple times a year.

Kennedy's appointment follows news that rival e-commerce initiative Paddle8 is teaming up with the NADA art fair to provide an online platform for interactions with galleries.

2011 Pritzker Prize for architecture to be announced in China

The Hyatt Foundation's Pritzker Prize ceremony will be held in Beijing this year. Foundation Chairman Thomas Pritzker said China was a particularly appropriate location because of the number of projects Pritzker laureates have completed or are in the process of completing there, including Zaha Hadid's new opera house in Guangzhou; Rem Koolhaas' Shenzen Stock Exchange and Beijing China Central Televsion Tower; and Norman Foster's Hong Kong International Airport.

Image: Zaha Hadid's opera house in Guangzhou, China

Curator of Aboriginal art at AGNSW resigns to pursue her vision for a national indigenous cultural centre

Frustrated by years of unsuccessful advocacy to upgrade the Yiribana Gallery of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and stalled exhibition proposals, Hetti Perkins has resigned from the gallery to pursue her vision for a national indigenous cultural centre in Sydney.

The daughter of the late Aboriginal activist and politician Charles Perkins, she is considered to be one of Australia's most influential indigenous art curators - a view shared by outgoing AGNSW director Edmund Capon who describes her as a "stand-out curator" who will continue to undertake work for the gallery on contract.

Perkins says the proposed centre would display the full spectrum of indigenous arts including performance art, new media work and sound installations as well as more traditional paintings and crafts.

Image: curator Hetti Perkins at the Art Gallery of New South Wales

Marina Abramovic curates an online art show for Paddle8

Performance artist Marina Abramovic has curated an exhibition for Paddle8, the new internet platform for introducing art for sale to its online community. Abramovic says: "This exhibition is about artists who push us to the outermost bounds of reality, working with mediums that are all around us and part of everyday living and breathing but that we often take for granted due to their lack of visibility, tactility and weight - such as gravity, time, smell, memory, movement, context and reflection." Read more...

Coming up at Starkwhite

Ann Shelton's exhibition in a forest opens at Starkwhite alongside Dane Mitchell's The Dragon, The Purple Forbidden Enclosure on Tuesday 1 November at 6.00pm.

Image: Ann Shelton: Seedling, Lovelock's 'Hitler Oak', Timaru Boys HIgh School, 2 x C-type prints, 1214 x 1520 each, 2005-2010

Dane Mitchell: The Dragon, The Purple Forbidden Enclosure

The Dragon, The Purple Forbidden Enclosure by Dane Mitchell runs at Starkwhite to 23 November with the exhibition launch scheduled for Tuesday 1 November. Read more...

Image: Dane Mitchell, The Dragon, The Purple Forbidden Enclosure (2011), installation view, Singapore Biennale

Richard Branson reaches for the stars with a Norman Foster-designed spaceport

Richard Branson has launched the world's first purpose-built space-tourism facility in the New Mexico desert. He admitted that commercial flights were still more than a year away, but guests were able to view the Norman Foster-designed building and features such as the astronaut changing rooms.

Images: Richard Branson's Norman Foster-designed spaceport in New Mexico

Easy Listening: Chris Kraus

You can catch Chris Kraus, the Los Angeles based author and filmmaker, tonight at 6pm at the Auckland Art Gallery auditorium. She is speaking in the Easy Listening programme, a collaborative project by ARTSPACE, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki and Elam School of Fine Arts.

As art museums are are lined up by Occupy Museums, others are rushing to preserve Occupy Wall Street protest art and artifacts

As Occupy Museums (the recent offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement) targets museums in New York as part of its plans to take back cultural institutions from the 1%, other museums, including the New York Historical Society and the Smithsonian Museum of American History, are collecting protest ephemera for use in future exhibitions on the movement's impact.

Less than twelve months ago the Smithsonian Institution was a target for protestors, drawing flak for censoring a video by David Wojnarowicz in the National Portrait Gallery's exhibition Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture.

Images: flag made by Occupy Wall Street protestors in Zuccotti Park and the New York Historical Society

Glen Hayward ends his residency with an open day at the McCahon House

Also closing today is Glen Hayward's Mirrorworld at the McCahon House. The artist will be in the studio from 11am - 3pm to talk about his work and the old McCahon cottage, which has been restored as a museum, will also be open to view.
Image: the McCahon cottage, Titirangi, Auckland

Clintons Watkins' Selection show closes today

Clinton Watkins' Selection exhibition closes today at 3pm.

Image: Clinton Watkins, Selection, installation view, Starkwhite

Occupy Museums launched as an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement

Launched as an offshoot to Occupy Wall Street and approved by its art and culture group, the Occupy Museums movement plans to fight "the intense commercialisation and co-option of art" and take back cultural institutions from the 1%. The first protests in New York targeted the Museum of Modern Art, the Frick Collection and the New Museum.

Frieze on Pacific Standard Time

Frieze's Jonathan Griffin asks: "Was there ever such a magnificently hubristic project as Pacific Standard Time?" Read more...

Image: ASCO, Instant Mural (1974) from the exhibition ASCO: Elite of the Obscure at LACMA

Review of Matt Henry's User Friendly exhibition

This link takes you to a review of Matt Henry's User Friendly exhibition at Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts, which runs to 6 November 2011.

Images: Matt Henry, User Friendly, installation views, Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts, Pakuranga. Photographs courtesy of Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts

Combining the virtual and traditional art fair

The NADA art fair has teamed up with Paddle8, the new online venture providing a platform for interactions with galleries and artists. Paddle8 will preview the work to be presented at the fair in November and its members will be able to purchase online during and for a week after the fair.

Since the VIP Art Fair's arrival, the jury has been out on virtual v. the real McCoy, but Paddle8 co-founder Alexander Gilkes is playing it both ways saying the website aims to "complement, rather than replace the opportunity to view works in person."

India's art scene on the rise

In line with India's position as as an emerging economic super power, the Indian art scene continues its upwards trajectory with recent developments including: plans for a new museum in Bihar, scheduled to open in 2015; a new museum of modern art in Kolkata, scheduled to open in 2014; the launch of its first-ever art biennial set to debut in 2012 in the port city of Kochi and in neighbouring Muziris; reports of the continuing growth of New Dehli's India Art Summit fair; and India's first dedicated pavilion at this year's Venice Biennale.

Image: Artist's impression of the foyer if the Kolkata Museum of Modern Art

Melbourne may have a new art fair

Bronwyn Johnson's resignation as the CEO and director of the Melbourne Art Fair has been followed by news that Melbourne may have a new art fair. The New Fair has a website announcing that it will open on 3 August 2012, two days after the Melbourne Art Fair, which opens on 1 August.

So far the people behind the new venture are keeping a low profile (they aren't named on the site) but industry insiders are wondering whether it is the same group that floated the idea of an alternative Melbourne art fair a few years ago.

If the new fair goes ahead, it comes at a time when Creative New Zealand has decided to back the Melbourne Art Fair with grants to approved galleries that run with the Fair's recent industry assistance package (half price booths) aimed at boosting New Zealand gallery representation in Melbourne's flagship fair.

Image: Installation view of Seung Yul Oh's project presented by Artspace (Auckland) at the 2010 Melbourne Art Fair

Tate and BMW team up to work with virtual space

The Tate is teaming up with BMW to commission performances exclusively for live broadcast from 2012. The four-year programme will be a virtual version of the ambitious art installations that the Tate Modern presents in its Turbine Hall and will focus on performance, interdisciplinary art and curating digital space. Read more...

Melbourne Art Fair announces resignation of current director

The Melbourne Art Fair has announced its CEO and director Bronwyn Johnson will be resigning from her role at the end of the year and that a search is underway for her successor.

Clinton Watkins' Selection show closes this weekend

Clinton Watkins' Selection exhibition closes on Saturday 22 October at 3.00pm.

Image: Clinton Watkins, Selection, installation view, Starkwhite