Billy Apple® satellite shows

A number of Billy Apple satellite shows are being presented in Auckland, timed to coincide with the survey exhibition Billy Apple®: The Artist Has To Live Like Everybody Else at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki. 

First up was SUCK, the first section of a two-part exhibition, Poetry in Motion, curated by Artspace director Misal Adnan Yildiz. Featuring a Suck sculpture and four small off-set lithographs on canvas of men with erections, perfectly centered on each wall, the exhibition transitioned into Poetry in Motion, a group show with with a lineup of artists including Billy Apple®, Art & Language, Bruce Barber, Yoko Ono, Martha Rosler and Laurence Weiner. This link takes you to a review of SUCK.

The Artspace show was followed by BILLY APPLE SOUND WORKS at Te Uru which gathers together, for the first time, sound works produced by Apple in collaboration with composers such as Jonathan Besser, Annea Lockwood, John Osborne and Nam June Paik.

Around the same time, Starkwhite launched its contribution to the city-wide satellite shows. Curated by Mary Morrison, TOTEM presents Billy Apple alongside Arnold Manaaki Wilson. Using the golden ratio the artist has divided the two columns in Starkwhite into artist's cut and dealers's cut. Starkwhite's share is white and remains part of the gallery architecture, and Apple demonstrates his share by painting it yellow, like a 3-D bar graph. Arnold Wilson is represented with three pou whenua of maori ancestral figures - Haumia, the god of wild, uncultivated things and her children Rangitiina and Tiniia. Grouped together they signify regeneration, emphasising the need to take care of nature's ecosystems.

You can read the curators rationale for the juxtaposition of the two artists here.
Image: Billy Apple SUCK, installation view, Artspace (top); artwork for SOUND WORKS at Te Uru (middle);  TOTEM, installation view, Starkwhite (bottom)

Billy Apple and Artspace support Artists for Kobane benefit auction

At the opening of the first show by new director Adnan Yildiz (tomorrow at 6pm), Artspace will present  a contribution from Billy Apple towards Artists for Kobane, a global benefit auction organised by Hito Steyerl and Anton Vidokle in solidarity with refugees from Kobane, Shengal and many other towns and areas in northern Syria and Iraq who have been displaced by IS attacks and provisionally sheltered in museums, construction sites or tents. Proceeds from this auction will go towards providing tents, winter clothes, electric stoves, blankets and diapers mainly to the municipality of Suruc, where around 50,000 refugees from Kobane live.
Images: Billy Apple, Art For Kobane, 2014, 382 x 618 x 25mm, UV impregnated ink on canvas; Billy Apple, Basic Needs, 2014,  618 x 382 x 25 mm, UV impregnated ink on canvas

New series of critical texts launched online

Artspace has launched a new series of critical texts by selected writers responding to recent exhibitions. The online texts can be accessed free of charge here.

Artspace announces new director

Adan Yildiz has been appointed director of Auckland's Artspace, replacing Caterina Riva who steps down at the end of May. Originally from Turkey, Yildiz is currently artistic director of the Kunstlerhaus Stuttgart and in 2013 he was one of the curatorial collaborators for the 13th Istanbul Biennale for curator Fulya Erdemci.
Image: Adan Yildiz

Artspace launches new benefactor programme

Auckland's Artspace launches a new benefactor programme tonight, along with works to be sold to assist with the fundraising drive. Martin Basher's The Pleasure of Leisure is one of the works that will be sold on the night. For more information contact benefactors@artspace.org.nz

At the launch the Board will also announce the appointment of a new director to replace outgoing director Caterina Riva.
Image: Martin Basher, The Pleasure of Leisure, 2013, screenprint with spraypaint and 18k gold leaf, 69 x 49cm

Artspace Sydney announces appointment of new director

Alexi Glass-Kantor is the new director of Sydney's Artspace. Since 2006 she has been the director and senior curator of Gertrude Contemporary, one of Australia's longest-running independent art spaces. In 2012 she co-curated Parallel Collisions the 12th Adelaide Biennale of Australian Art with Natasha Bullock and she has worked at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image as well as other independent spaces and festivals.

Image: Alexi Glass-Kantor (left ) with Natasha Bullock

Alicia Frankovich tote bag for Artspace

Every year Auckland's Artspace works with artists to create a range of editions to support its exhibition programme. This year Alicia Frankovich has produced a tote bag in an edition of 100 and selling for $35. You can support Artspace by ordering one here.
Image: Alicia Frankovich, After Medea, 2012. Cotton tote bag, digital print.

Artspace launches Volume 2 tonight

Tonight Auckland's Artspace launches Volume 2, a collection of essays and page art relating to the programme during Emma Bugden's directorship (2009-2011). Alicia Frankovich's A Plane for Behavers (2009) is documented in the publication and the writing includes Ellen Blumenstein interviewing Frankovich.

Sound artist Richard Francis responds to Dane Mitchell's The Smell of an Empty Space

Sound artist Richard Francis will respond to Dane Mitchell's The Smell of an Empty Space at Artspace today, starting at 3pm. The performance will be a 60 minute set where people are able to move freely around the space. Read more...

Image: Richard Francis, '0037 (Porters Ave)' 2010, digital image

Dane Mitchell's Radiant Matter III opens today at Artspace

Dane Mitchell presents part three of Radiant Matter at Auckland's Artspace, continuing his exploration into perfume and the 'vaporous', the state of suspension or in-between poetic potential of liquids, gases and solids. The exhibition opens today from 1 - 6pm and the artist will talk about his work on Sunday at 3pm.

Auckland's Artspace has a new director

London-based curator Caterina Riva arrived in Auckland recently to take up her position as director of Artspace. She follows (working backwards) Emma Bugden, Brian Butler, Tobias Berger, Hanna Scott, Robert Leonard, Lara Bowen, Priscilla Pitts and founding director Mary-Louise Browne.

Image: Caterina Riva, director of Artspace, Auckland

Seung Yul Oh's PokPo at Artspace

Seung Yul Oh's PokPo is currently showing at Auckland's Artspace and runs to 19 February 2011.

Images: from Seung Yul Oh's PokPo exhibition at Artspace, Auckland, NZ. Photographs by Sam Harnett

Seung Yul Oh project at Artspace

Seung Yul Oh's project POKPO runs at Auckland's Artspace from 4 December 2010 - 19 February 2011.

Layla Rudneva-Mackay floor talk at Artspace

Layla Rudneva-Mackay discusses her work in the exhibition A Rock That Was Taught it Was A Bird at Artspace today at 3.00pm.

Image: Layla Rudneva-Mackay, Taking a moment to lose himself, when found most unexpectedly squashed between a mattress and its base, 2006-2007, C-type print, installation view, Artspace, Auckland, NZ.

Layla Rudneva-Mackay at Artspace

Layla Rudneva-Mackay's photograph Taking a moment to lose himself, when found most unexpectedly squashed between a mattress and its base, features in the exhibition A Rock That Thought It Was A Bird at Artspace. Curator Emma Bugden says: "The work is from a series in which the subjects are literally masked by their interaction with simple domestic elements - a curtain, a bed, a sheet. A tableaux is performed, one in which the protagonist is somehow consumed and integrated into the environment."

Image: Layla Rudneva-Mackay, Taking a moment to lose himself, when found most unexpectedly squashed between a mattress and its base, 2006-2007, C-type print, installation view, Artspace, Auckland, NZ.

A Rock That Was Taught It Was A Bird opens tonight at Artspace

Layla Rudneva-Mackay is one of the four artists presenting stand-alone projects in the exhibition A Rock That Was Taught It Was A Bird, which opens tonight at Auckland's Artspace.

Image: Poster still from Simple Gesture and Temporary Sculpture, Koki Tanaka, DVD, 2008, courtesy of the artist and Aoyama Meguro Gallery, Tokyo

Artspace New Artists Show

KNOWING YOU, KNOWING ME: New Artists Show 2010 opened at Artspace on Friday 9 July 2010. Curated by Emma Bugden, the exhibition brings together artists who work across two specific mediums: performance and drawing. "At first glance these mediums might seem an unlikely combination, but within Knowing You, Knowing Me they are connected through an emphasis on small and personal gestures", she says.

The performances include Trenton Garratt's Model Conversations: The Last Days of a Famous Mime. Each Sunday Garratt will be present at Artspace between 11.00 am - 4.00 pm to meet visitors and deliver a reading of a short story by Peter Carey.

Image: Trenton Garratt, Model Conversations: The Last Days of a Famous Mime (2010), seats by Grace Jung, Artspace, Auckland NZ, July 2010

Artspace new artists show

Layla Rudneva-Mackay is one of the artists featured in Artspace's annual new artists show. This year's version has been selected by three artist-led initiatives - Newcall, a gallery and studio programme run by a collective of recent Elam graduates; Fresh Gallery, a Manukau City Council initiative for contemporary Pacific art; and Dunedin's long running but difficult to pigeon-hole performance space, None. Recently appointed Artspace director Emma Bugden says the new approach aims "to disrupt the curatorial auteurship of previous years and render more visible the grass-roots organisations that build the contemporary art communities of tomorrow". You can read more about the exhibition and related Artspace programmes here.

Image: Layla Rudneva-Mackay, A wire to fire into his heart (2009), installation view, Artspace, Auckland NZ. Photograph by Sam Hartnell, courtesy of Artspace