Show Time: The 50 Most influential Exhibitions of Contemporary Art is a new book by Jens Hoffmann covering a period in which “the art world has become globalised, the international biennale has emerged as the ultimate exhibition format of our time and the curator [has become] an all-important arbiter of global art trends and tastes.”

Hoffmann has delivered events like the 9th Shanghai Biennale (2012-2013), the 12th Istanbul Biennale (2011) and the first Berlin Biennale (1998) and remains an advocate for the notion of curator-as-artist. “Curating has become a creative act in its own right,” he says. Read more…
Image: Cover of Show Time: The 50 Most Influential Exhibitions of Contemporary Art published and distributed by DAP

Rebecca Baumann's Automated Colour Field (Variation IV) is currently showing in Burster Flipper Wobbler Dripper Spinner Stacker Shaker Maker at the Christchurch Art Gallery's ArtBox. Curated by Justin Paton, the exhibition explores the shape-shifting, experimental and seriously playful work of making art, You can see Baumann's work in action here.
Image: Detail from one of Rebecca Baumann's automated colour fields

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

Sydney-based artist Shaun Galdwell has picked up the $25,000 prize for the 2014 Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award for his work The Flying Dutchman in Blue (Coogee 2).  This year's award was judged by Natasha Bullock, curator of contemporary art a the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Image: Sean Gladwell's The Flying Dutchman in Blue (Coogee 2

Tom Finkelpearl, the president and director of Queens Museum, is scheduled to be named as New York's commissioner of cultural affairs by mayor Bill de Blasio, putting him in charge of the city's $156m budget.

The New York Times says the appointment is in keeping with the new administration's emphasis on the disenfranchised. In his 13 years at Queens Finkelpearl hired community organisers to professionalise outreach efforts and emphasised the diversity of the local immigrant population. And his institution's recently completed $68m rennovation was largely aimed at making the museum more inviting and connected to the neighbourhood. Read more…
Image: Tom Finkelpearl

Layla-Rudneva Mackay's Blue squares, purple pairs continues at Starkwhite to 12 April.

A exhibition showcasing ancient aboriginal stories has been postponed indefinitely after a group of traditional owners threatened legal action. Although the South Australian Museum consulted widely with community leaders across the region about mapping the songlines of Aboriginal Australia, a group of male elders from the Anangu language group has expressed outrage at the publicising of what they say are secret men's stories. The group includes Yami Lester a revered elder who presided over the handback of Uluru to traditional elders nearly 30 years ago.

The intervention has sparked a fierce debate, dividing the Pitjantjatjara desert people. The Australian says: “No collision in recent decades between the grand designs of of the mainstream world and Aboriginal resistance campaign quite rivals this one for its long-term impact: its controversies dominate the community night-time fires. Senior men in the heartland talk of little else.” Read more…
Image: Mike Williams and Yami Lester

Less than a year after the Long Museum was founded in Pudong by the collector couple Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei, another Long Museum opened last weekend on the other side of the river in the Xuhui Riverside Development Area of Shanghai. Spanning over 33,000 square meters, including 16,000 square meters of exhibition space, it is the largest privately owned museum in China and will also house Dream Centre, the animation culture and entertainment complex scheduled to open in 2017.

China has embarked upon a massive programme of museum development, but the development of projects to drive them (and appointment of curatorial staff) is lagging behind. However, the Long Museum has learned from the experience of other museums and has settled on a curatorial approach to programming. Rather than appointing curators, the museum invites well-known domestic and foreign curators to work with an in-house academic department set up to help them develop their concepts into exhibitions.

In an interview with Randian, Managing Director Huang Jian talks about the Long Museum's operations, collections, exhibitions and educational programmes. Read more…
Image: Shanghai's new Long Museum, exterior and interior

Gavin Hipkins' photographic installation Leisure Valley opens tonight at ST PAUL ST Gallery.

Captured during a visit to Chandrigah in 2013, Hipkins' images play with the utopian desire of modernist planning (the city was designed by a team of architects led by Le Corbusier) and mimic the romantic appreciation of the ruin through capturing aspects of the present day Chandrigah that are in various states of decay. Leisure Valley also includes a new experimental film by Hipkins titled The Port. Read more…

Recently we were introduced to The Distance Plan, a project initiated by a group of visual artists, writers, urban planners, poets, environmental scientists and geographers who produce exhibitions, public forums and publications on the effects of climate change.

In the first publication LA-based artist Amy Howden-Chapman writes: “Distance Plan is not another scribbled utopia, not another modelled future but a diligent diagram of causation between current actions and what is coming. There in the distance, but gradually materializing as it starts to impinge on life today, is climate change. With this issue, diagramming is a disorientating task. Our current actions will have consequences largely outside our life spans. The aim of The Distance Plan is to show how necessary it is to conceptualize the effects of this apparently distant phenomenon.”

The publication also contains Questions for my father about climate change, a must-read conversation between Amy Howden-Chapman and her father Professor Ralph Chapman, Director of the Graduate Programme in Environmental Studies at Victoria University, Wellington.
Image: The Distance Plan publication with contributions by Abby Cunnane, Amy Howden-Chapman, Louise Menzies, Ralph Chapman, Amy Balkin, Michael Paludan, Joe Hoyt, Biddy Livesey, Steve Kado, Arini Beautrais and Bjarki Bragason

Climate change is being felt in all corners of the globe and some parts may be undergoing irreversible change, an assessment by the United Nations Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change has found. The report forecasts impacts on hundreds of millions of people of coastal flooding, crop reduction and trillions of dollars in economic losses and says the impact of recent climate-related extremes, such as heat waves, droughts and floods, reveal the significant vulnerability of some ecosystems and many human systems. Read more…

Layla-Rudneva Mackay's Blue squares, purple pairs continues at Starkwhite to 12 April.
Image: Layla Rudneva-Mackay, Still life and sleepless nights (detail), oil on canvas, 400 x 310mm

Chilean architect Smiljan Radic will design this year's Serpentine Pavilion, an architectural intervention that the Guardian's Oliver Wainwright says will be one of the strangest structures Kensington gardens has seen. “Looking like the result of an alien visitation to some ancient pagan site, the pavilion will take the form of a delicate white fibreglass cocoon, resting on a ring of boulders above a sunken grassy bowl, as if a mutant spider had spun a great nest on top of a neolithic stone circle.” Read more…
Image: Smiljan Radic

New Zealand's Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage, Christopher Finlayson, has appointed 13 inaugural members to a new streamlined arts council, which replaces three statutory boards and one statutory committee. The new lineup includes art patron Grant Kerr. Best known for his support of the arts in New Plymouth, Kerr was a co-founder of the Taranaki Arts Festival and is currently a member of the Govett-Brewster Foundation, the avenue for donations gifts and bequests for the development of  the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery collection and realisation of major projects.

Kerr is now based in Auckland where he continues his trademark approach to patronage – a mix of support for big projects, like his continuing support for the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, and his own initiatives. Last year he facilitated a research trip to Auckland by Art Gallery of New South Wales curator of photography Judy Annear (and hosted a reception for her) and next month he has Sydney-based commentator Ann Elias flying in to speak about Peter Peryer's work at the Auckland Photography Festival.

Like many of New Zealand's most influential patrons, Kerr is also a passionate art collector. But unlike most he focuses on one medium – photography. Kerr has a vast collection of contemporary photography, which includes the country's largest collection of images by Peter Peryer and substantial holdings by other major figures, including Laurence Aberhart.
Image: Peter Peryer's portrait of Grant Kerr

Brisbane-based artist Ross Manning continues his exploration of the mechanisms of technology and nature of light and the role it plays in human perception with Spectra V, a kinetic sculpture installed on Cockatoo Island, one of the venues for the 16th Biennale of Sydney, You imagine what you desire. Manning will also curate the MCA Art Bar during the biennale. ARTBAR happens after dark every month at the Museum of Contemporary Art. It combines exhibitions, music, design and live acts under the direction of a guest curator, transforming the venue into a “pulsating piece of performance art.” Manning's ARTBAR runs on 30 May from 7-11pm.
Image: Ross Manning, Spectra (detail)

Buoyed by the success of Melbourne Now, a large exhibition showcasing work by Melbourne artists (the show has attracted 750,000 visits since it opened in November 2013), National Gallery of Victoria director Tony Ellwood has announced plans to launch a triennial in 2017. And with an eye to collection building from triennial, he will also roll out a new fund dedicated to commissioning and acquiring contemporary art for the NGV collection.
Image: Laith McGregor's ping pong tables in Melbourne Now

“I've never thought of the curator as a creative rival to the artist,” says Hans Ulrich Obrist. “When I started curating I wanted to be helpful to artists. I see my work as a catalyst – and a sparring partner.” Read more…
Image: Hans Ulrich Obrist

Japanese architect Shigeru Ban has been awarded this year's prestigious Pritzker Prize. He is best known for his post-disaster zone design projects, such as his temporary housing project in Onagawa, one of the coastal communities devastated by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that left thousands homeless. He also designed Christchurch's cardboard cathedral to replace the historic cathedral that was a casualty of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake.

From Haiti to Riwanda to China, Ban's low-cost structures have become a symbol of hope for people rebuilding their lives after natural disasters. “For me there is no difference between monumental architecture and temporary structures in disaster areas,” he says. “They give me the same satisfaction.”

Juliana Engberg talks about her biennale, You imagine what you desire, including her stance on Australia's off-shore detention centres and human rights issues. Read more…

The 19th Sydney Biennale, You imagine what you desire, opened last week with a suite of launches at Cockatoo Island, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Artspace and Carriageworks, with most of the press focusing on the fallout from the artists' boycott.

The story so far…

35 artists (of the 90 taking part in the Sydney Biennale) write to the board expressing their concerns over primary sponsor Transfield Holdings link to offshore detention facilities for asylum seekers, presenting the Biennale with an unenviable choice: to bow to pressure from the artists and sever links with Transfield and the Belgiorno-Nettis family (the owners of the company), or remain loyal to the company, recognising its role as founding partner and longtime supporter of the Biennale.

Luca Belgiorno-Nettis, son of Biennale founding patron Franco-Belgiorno-Nettis, has resigned as chair of the Biennale of Sydney, a move that comes in the wake of artist protests over Transfield's links to Australia's off-shore detention centers for asylum seekers.

And the board has severed links with Transfield, the family-owned company that has backed the Bienale since its inception. This comes as a surprise in the light of a recent announcement on the longstanding relationship between the Biennale and Transfield and the Belgiorno-Nettis family. In a statement issued to the media the board said: “The Biennale's ability to effectively contribute to the cessation of bi-partisan government policy is far from black-and-white. The only certainty is that without our Founding Partner, the Biennale will no longer exist. Consequently, we unanimously believe  that our loyalty to the Belgiorno-Nettis family – and the hundreds of thousands of people who benefit from the Biennale – must override claims over which there is ambiguity”.
Read more…
Image: Luca Belgiorno-Nettis

Five artists have withdrawn from the Biennale of Sydney over links between Transfield Holdings (founding patron and sponsor of the Biennale) and Australia's offshore detention centres for asylum seekers. You can read their Statement of Withdrawal to the Biennale at Leg of Lamb.

A few weeks before the Biennale of Sydney opens, 35 artists (of the 90 taking part) wrote to the board expressing their concerns over primary sponsor Transfield Holdings link to offshore detention facilities for asylum seekers. This left the Biennale with an unenviable choice: to bow to pressure from the artists and sever links with Transfield and the Belgiorno-Nettis family (the owners of the company), or remain loyal to the company, recognising its role as founding partner and longtime supporter of the Biennale.

The board has issued a statement saying: “The Biennale's ability to effectively contribute to the cessation of bi-partisan government policy is far from black-and-white. The only certainty is that without our Founding Partner, the Biennale will no longer exist. Consequently, we unanimously believe  that our loyalty to the Belgiorno-Nettis family – and the hundreds of thousands of people who benefit from the Biennale – must override claims over which there is ambiguity”.

With just days to go before the Biennale is launched, the art world will be watching to see how the artists respond.

Lovers continues at Starkwhite this week, through to 6 March. You can read a review of the show here.
Image: installation view of Lovers, curated by Martin Basher

“What artist wants to show with a gallery that can't offer them shows?” says Marc Spiegler, the director of Art Basel. “We stand for a gallery-centred vision of the art world.” Spiegler is quoted in Blake Gopnik's article, Great art needs an audience, on why those who believe galleries are no longer necessary are wrong. Read more…
Image: detail of David Scanavino's Changes (2104), 270 x 700cm, VCT tiles and change, installed in LOVERS, a group show curated by artist Martin Basher for Starkwhite 

Overthenet has picked up on news that there are no New Zealand (or Australian) galleries in the lineup for this year's Art Basel (Switzerland). In the past, Michael Lett (two presentations at Art Statements) and Starkwhite (one presentation at Art Statements and another at Art Unlimited) have flown the New Zealand flag in Basel. Now Art Basel Hong Kong appears to be the preferred fair for many New Zealand and Australian galleries. Starkwhite has been showing at Art HK and Art Basel Hong Kong since 2008 and will participate again this year in Hong Kong's international art fair, along with Michael Lett and Hopkinson Mossman, and Australian galleries Jensen|Sydney, Roslyn Oxley9, Anna Schwartz, Tolarno and Utopian Slumps.

Starkwhite's 2014 season begins with Lovers, a late-summer group show organized by gallery artist Martin Basher.

Picking up on the semantic slippage of the show's title, Lovers is a paean to beauty for the romantic viewer and illicit assignation with visual pleasure for the serious conceptualist. Featuring work by eleven of Basher's New Zealand and American contemporaries along with Basher himself, Lovers hones in on the physical and tactile elements of the work by this varied and inter-generational group, finding material and conceptual affinities connecting work otherwise separated by geography, time and conceptual focus. Lovers is a show with the tenor of sunsets, long cocktails, and holidays drawing to a close, and in this atmosphere, the works in the show find intimate common ground in the visceral and sensate, their relationships immediate and intense; summer lovers for a month.

Celebrations are underway in New Zealand to mark the arrival of the Year of the Horse. Communities here join over a billion Chinese around the globe celebrating the Chinese New Year, which falls on January 31.

A decade ago only a handful of Wall Street investors, such as Steve Cohen and Daniel Loeb, were collecting art, but now dozens of hedge-fund managers are joining the fray, applying their day-job tactics to their art buying.

The Wall Street Journal says: “Hedge-fund managers, who play a vital but disruptive role in the broader financial markets, are increasingly throwing their weight around in the art market. They are paying record sums to drive up the values for their favourite artists, dumping artists who don't pay off and offsetting their heavy wagers on untested contemporary art by buying the  reliable antiquity or two. Aggressive, efficient and armed with up-to-the-minute market intelligence supplied by well-paid art advisors, these collectors are shaking up the way business gets done in the genteel art world.” Read more…

Two of our best curators have returned to New Zealand to take up new positions. After a stint as director of Brisbane's Institute for Modern Art (IMA), Robert Leonard arrived in the New Year to take up the position of senior curator at the City Gallery Wellington (he is also the curator of the New Zealand pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale), and Simon Rees has just arrived back in the country to take up the directorship of the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth.

Leonard will bring a fresh approach to curating and programming at the City Gallery. He says: “I want to balance my love of detailed exhibition making with coal-face responsiveness, high turnover and direct collaboration with artists. I am interested in the radical relativism of contemporary art, the fact that everything is up for grabs, but also understand that all new moves are always read against a tradition, a canon, and will transform or succumb to it. I appreciate art that stands the test of time, but I am equally into art that is right here, right now.”

You can read more about Leonard's approach to curating here.

Rees returns to the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery (GBAG) as director this time – he was curator there during Greg Burke's directorship – to oversee the building of the Andrew Patterson-designed Len Lye Centre (LLC) and launch the combined GBAG/LLC in 2015. We'll have wait to see what kind of project and programme he rolls out, but he brings a wealth of ability and experience to the task. He is, for instance, the only New Zealand curator to have won a prize at the Venice Biennale. In 2007 he curated the award winning Lithuanian pavilion with artists Gediminas & Nomeda Urbonas. Rees is also a regular contributor to frieze and frieze d/e.

Our first post for 2014 is a good news story for those following trends that will impact on the performance of the New Zealand art market this year.

After five years in the doldrums the New Zealand economy is on the rebound. At the end of 2013 economists were predicting GDP growth of 3% or more and even the IMF expected growth to pick up to 2.9% – ahead of our Western trading partners (including Australia) and not far behind Asian nations like South Korea and Singapore.

And consumer confidence in New Zealand has climbed to a seven-year high in the monthly ANZ-Roy Morgan survey where the index stands at 135.8, up from 129.4 last month and its highest ever since February 2007. A net 50% of the respondents think it is a good time to buy a major household item, up from 39% last month.

The prevailing sense of optimism is reflected in a piece published this week in the Wall Street Journal where Rebecca Howard writes:

“In a world still limping its way out of the global financial crisis, New Zealand's economy is looking remarkably zippy.

“The small Pacific nation of around 4.5 million people expanded by 3.5% in the this quarter from a year earlier, a good deal faster than many other developed economies, including its larger neighbour Australia.

“The Organisation for Economic development, or OECD, expects New Zealand to grow by 3.3% this year, compared with an estimate of 2.9% for the U.S. and a mere 1.0% in the euro area.

“New Zealand's economy is performing so well that some economists expect the central bank to raise interest rates as early as this month – which would put it among the first developed nations to tighten monetary policy since Lehman Brothers Inc collapsed in 2008 and sparked a global recession.”
Read more…

We are taking a break over the Christmas/New Year period and will resume our posts on 20 January. Happy holidays!

Starkwhite is closing for Christmas and New Year reopening on Monday 20 January with a continuation of Glen Hayward’s exhibition I don’t want you to worry about me, I have met some Beautiful People.  We start our 2014 season in February with Lovers, a late-summer group show organized by gallery artist Martin Basher. Featuring work by a number of Basher’s New Zealand and American contemporaries, the show will hone in on the visceral and tactile facets of the work of a varied and intergenerational group. Picking up on the semantic slippage of the show’s title, Lovers will be an earnest paean to beauty for the romantic, and a furtive dalliance with visual pleasure for the serious conceptualist.
Glen Hayward: I don’t want you to worry about me, I have met some Beautiful People, 2013 Installation view. Photograph Hamish McLaren

A decade after secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld dismissed looting of the Iraq's National Museum with the comment “stuff happens”, US officials have acknowledged mistakes over the protection of cultural property after the US-led invasion. Read more…
Image: a minaret damaged during fighting in in Iraq in 2005.

An all-star jury has been assembled to select the best of new curators from across the globe. The Curate competition is an initiative of the the Qatar Museums Authority and Fondazione Prada.

The jurors are: Sheika Al Mayassa bint Hamad al-Thani, chairperson of the Qatar Museums Authority; Miucca Prada, president of the Fondazione Prada; Rem Koolhas, architect and urban theorist; Nadine Labaki, Lebanese actress and filmmaker, Nawal El Moutawakel, the vice president of the International Olympic Committee and first woman from a Muslim country to win an Olympic gold medal; and Hans Ulrich Obrist, co-director of the Serpentine Gallery.

Applications to Curate can be submitted here. (The closing date is 31 December)
Image: Muccia Prada

Glen Hayward's I don't want you to worry about me, I have met some Beautiful People continues at Starkwhite this week.