Jeffrey Deitch has finally announced he will be stepping down after three years as director of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. The official news release says he will be stay on for an unspecified time to ensure a smooth transition and the successful completion of MOCA's $100 million dollar endowment campaign, expected to close this fall. Now attention turns to the search for his successor.
Image: Jeffrey Deitch, outgoing director of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art 

Clinton Watkins' Frequency Colour opens tonight at 6pm. You can read the exhibition release here.

Creative New Zealand has announced a new selection process for New Zealand's representation at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015.

The approach adopted for the current biennale, which bypassed proposals in favour of informal sector consultation and a hands-on, behind-the-scenes selection process, has been replaced with a two-stage process beginning with preliminary expressions of interest from artists and curators. Eligible applicants will then be invited to submit proposals to be assessed by a panel including a CNZ representative, the 2015 Commissioner (Heather Galbraith), visual arts sector experts and representatives of the Venice Biennale patrons' group.

As the city of Detroit enters bankruptcy, the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts may be under threat. Unlike most art museums in the US, which are owned by non-profit entities holding art collections in trust for citizens, the Institute is owned by Detroit, as is much of its collection and many of the city's creditors have said that the artworks must be considered a saleable asset.

A spokesperson for the state-appointed emergency managers appointed to deal with Detroit's debts, which could amount to more than $18 billion, says”we haven't proposed selling any asset, but we haven't taken any asset off the table. We can't.”

Michigan's Attorney-General responded with an opinion saying the artworks – under the state's trust law – “were held in trust for the public” and could be sold only for the purpose of acquiring additional art, not for paying municipal debt. However, under federal bankruptcy proceedings it is unclear what force his opinion would have, all of which appears to point to a lengthy dispute between the city and its army of creditors.
Image: Detroit Institute Arts 

Following a trip to New Zealand Carol Yinghua Lu has written piece for Frieze on the making and presentation of art in the quake-devastated city of Christchurch. Read more…
Image: Chill Spree, installation view, Dog Park Art Project Space, Christchurch

Our next exhibition is Frequency Colour, a multi-channel video and sound installation by Clinton Watkins consisting of a twenty-minute piece generated using custom-made analog video manipulation hardware. Read more…

Doryun Chong, the associate curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, is to be the chief curator of M+, which is scheduled to open in Hong Kong's West Kowloon District in 2017. M+ is being designed by the Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron.

Richard Dale reports on the first edition of Art Basel Hong Kong for the New Zealand Herald. Read more…

Trenton Garratt's exhibition Absorption and Reflection《专注、沉思》closes today at 3pm. You can read a review of the show here.

Auckland's Audio Foundation presents ANTARCTIC CONVERGENCE  Part 2 this weekend. Curated by Australian sound and intermedia artist Philip Samartzis, it is the second and final evening of presentations of work responding to the uniquely evocative and geophysical attributes of Antarctica. The programme features presentations by Phil Dadson, Jae Hoon Lee, Rosy Parlane and Philip Samartzis. You can catch it at the Audio Foundation on Saturday 13 July, starting at 7.30pm.

A new exhibition at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery challenges 13 artists from New Zealand and Australia to document a 21st-century in which machines, humans and nature have come together. AMONG THE MACHINES provides a setting to rethink the stories we tell of the future and the kinds of images that will help get us there. Each artist presents two works: one selected by curators Su Ballard and Aaron Kreisler, and the other a new work that creates a response to or counter to the original work. The lineup of artists includes Stella Brennan, Jae Hoon Lee and Ann Shelton. Read more…

The Auckland Art Fair has revealed details of some of the projects that will be presented during the 2013 event, which runs at The Cloud on Auckland's waterfront from 7-11 August. They include Seung Yul Oh's oversize inflatable Huggong. Oh has just returned from Art Basel Hong Kong where he presented another interactive inflatable in the Encounters section curated by Yuko Hasegawa. Read more…
Image: Seung Yul Oh's Huggong installed at Starkwhite

In a new series of interviews for ABC Arts, Hannah Mathews invites leading curators in Australia to reflect on their influences, experience, the state of the profession and their relationship with art and artists. Here she talks to Robert Leonard, the outgoing director of Brisbane's Institute of Modern Art who returns to New Zealand in the New Year to take up the position of chief curator at the City Gallery Wellington. Read more…

Recently Hou Hanru talked to ARTINFO about the Auckland Triennial as a locally engaged project of global art and how it has validated the international significance of a city he he refers to as “one of the leading cities of the Pacific Rim.” Read more…

James Turrell's installation in the rotunda of the Guggenheim is the must-see show in New York this summer. Blake Gopnik arrived at the museum expecting to experience the light of timeless truth, but says what he could feel and see most clearly were “dollar signs and the troubling social structures that art such as this now reflects.” Read more…

Hobart's Museum of Old and New Art is back in the news with its inaugural winter festival Dark Mofo, which lit up the city over the weekend.

The visual arts component of the festival includes Kurt Hentschlager's installation Zee, which comes with a warning of its hallucinatory and potentially dangerous effects. People entering the piece must sign a waiver as the work can trigger what the artist decribes as an emergency shutdown of the brain as it struggles to process the aural and visual onslaught. But other works in the program offer more contemplative experiences, such as Ryoji Ikeda's tower of pure white light reaching 15 kilometers into Hobart's night sky.

MONA has transformed Hobart, putting what was once regarded as a sleepy hollow on the global arts and culture map. And the state government is happily piggybacking on the stunning success of the museum – on this occasion by contributing $1 million a year for three years to the winter festival.
Images: Kurt Hentschlager's Zee and Ryoji Ikeda's Spectra [Tasmania], featuring in MONA's winter festival Dark Mojo

A number of powerful works addressing war, conflict and terrorism made an impact at Art Basel this year – partly because they were timely presentations with a civil war raging in Syria and anti-Government protests in Turkey and partly because political work like this is not often seen at art fairs.

Visitors queued at Art Unlimited to see The Sound of Silence, Alfredo Jaar's work about the late photojournalist Kevin Carter, whose photograph of a starving child in the Sudanese desert won him a Pulitzer Prize. Other gritty, politically-engaged work presented at Art Basel included Huang Yong Ping's terracotta model of Osama bin Laden's compound where he was killed by US forces (Abbottabad), Johan Grimonprez's film exploring the global arms industry (The Shadow World) and Willie Doherty's harrowing account of the Troubles in Ireland (Remains). Read more…
Image: from Johan Grimonprez's The Shadow World 

Trenton Garratt's exhibition Absorption and Reflection《专注、沉思》runs at Starkwhite to 13 July.
Image: Trenton Garratt, Absorption and Reflection《专注、沉思》installation view, Starkwhite

The Art Gallery of New South Wales has launched a digital iPad publication to accompany the Anne Landa Award for video and new media arts 2013 exhibition The Space Between Us. The publication explores the relationship between video and performance art through videos, audio clips, still images, essays and curator interviews.

The Space Between Us features works by Lauren Brincat, Alicia Frankovich, Laresa Kosloff, Angelica Mesiti, Kate Mitchell, James Newitt and Christian Thompson.

“Each artist approaches the idea of performance from a different angle, ” says curator Charlotte Day. “A number of the artists are there performing directly, a few of the artists are creating situations in which performances occur whereas others are drawing on a rich history of performance and how they might create a kind of space in which we can come together.”

The winner of this year's $25,000 Anne Landa Award will be announced later this month.
Image: Alicia Frankovich's The Opportune Spectator, 2013

Nicholas Baume, the curator and director fo New York's Public Art Fund, will curate the public sector at Art Basel Miami. With Miami's Bass Museum of Art, he will transform Collins Park into an outdoor exhibition that will be a site for video, installation, performance and large-scale sculpture.
Image: Nicholas Baume

With the launch of his cloud-like gridded pavilion in Hyde Park, Sou Fujimoto became the youngest architect in the lineup of Serpentine Pavilion architects. Each year the Serpentine commissions an architect to design a temporary structure. Starting with Zaha Hadid in 2000, the commission has attracted a stellar list of architects including Frank Gehry, Herzog & de Meuron with Ai Wewei, Rem Koolhaas, Oscar Niemeyer, Jean Novel, Alvaro Siza and  Peter Zumthor. Read more…
Image: Sou Fujimoto's 2013 Serpentine Pavilion

STARKWHITE画廊谨向您呈献：
艺术家Trenton Garratt先生之近作: Absorption and Reflection《专注、沉思》
这是Garratt先生延续其以自然和光作为主题的表现。《专注、沉思》捕捉如诗境般波光粼粼的海景, 显示了此位艺术家对滨海风光的憧憬，及欲以海边为驻足静思之所。
《专注、沉思》将于6月15日, 星期六下午两点钟开幕, 届时欢迎您的参与。

展览期间：2013年6月15日 – 2013年7月13日

Our next exhibition, Absorption and Reflection by Trenton Garratt, runs from 17 June to 13 July with a preview on Saturday 15 June (2 – 6pm).
Image: Trenton Garratt, Deep Blue, 2013 (detail), oil on canvas, 500 x 400mm

Bazinga! closes today at 3pm. You can read exhibition  reviews here (EyeContact) and here (part of Anthony Byrt's review of the Auckland Triennial in Art Forum's Scene & Herd).

Sydney Contemporary has announced the lineup of galleries for the first edition of the fair, which takes place at Carriageworks from 20-22 September. Seventy three galleries from twelve countries have been confirmed with one-third international and two-thirds Australian based. The full list of participating  galleries is published here.

Charles Esche has been announced as the new director of Arthub Asia, a not-for-profit organisation supporting contemporary art creation in China and the rest of Asia. A curator and writer, Esche is the Director of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, Netherlands and Editorial Director of Afterall Journal and Books in London. This follows his recent appointment as Curator of the upcoming Sao Paulo Biennial.
Image: Charles Esche

The Golden Lions at this year's Venice Biennale have been awarded to Tino Sehgal for his work in Massimiliano's biennale exhibition The Encyclopedic Palace and to Angola for the best national pavilion, which included a show by photographer Edson Chagas and a group show called Angola in Motion. Read more…
Image: Tino Sehgal 

Our current exhibition Bazinga! enters its final week, closing Saturday 8 June at 3pm. You can read exhibition  reviews here (EyeContact) and here (part of Anthony Byrt's review of the Auckland Triennial in Art Forum's Scene & Herd).

This link takes you to a video clip of Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota talking about Bill Culbert's installation at the Venice Biennale.
Image: installation view of Bill Culbert's installation at the New Zealand pavilion, Venice Biennale, Photo Jennifer French

Chinese billionaire and art patron Adrian Cheng unveiled a new retail concept in Shanghai last week – a mall where art meets luxury shopping. He launched his new K11 mall (which includes a dedicated art space) with a 45 minute multimedia performance by Ryoji Akeda, saying “sound art is very avant garde.”

Cheng plans to roll out 19 art/shopping malls over the next five years, despite a slowdown in the Chinese economy and a government-led austerity drive that has led some analysts to caution against expansion. He says China's luxury market is multi-layered and the ultra-luxury market, which he is targeting with his new retail concept, is resilient.

His faith in the ultra-luxury market was evident at Art Basel Hong Kong where, with Modern Media's Thomas Shao, he hosted a champagne-fueled, celebrity-studded post-vernissage party at the Grand Hyatt.
Image: Ryoji Akeda's performance at the K11 shopping mall, Shanghai

Paul Schimmel, the former chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles whose departure from the financially-troubled museum added to its woes, has teamed up with Hauser & Wirth to open a LA branch under the name Hauser Wirth & Schimmel.

“I think it is going to be quite different in respect that it will be developed on a larger scale, have fewer exhibitions and a combination of selling and non-selling shows, he says. The exhibitions will “feel more museum-like in terms of scale, scholarship and complexity” and be supported by “museum-like amenities” such as an education program and public events. Read more…
Image: Paul Schimmel

This link takes you to an ARTINFO  interview with Seung Yul Oh on his installation in the Encounters section of Art Basel Hong Kong, which was curated by Yuko Hasegawa, Chief Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo and curator of the recent Sharjah Biennale.
Image: Seung Yul Oh's Periphery (2013) presented in the Encounters section of Art Basel Hong Kong by ONE AND J Gallery, Seoul

Our current exhibition Bazinga! continues this week to 8 June. You can read an exhibition review here.

Images: Installation views of The Immortalisation of Billy Apple® presented by Starkwhite at Art Basel Hong Kong, booth 1D19 with the assistance of Creative New Zealand.

We'll be at Art Basel Hong Kong this week presenting THE IMMORTALISATION OF BILLY APPLE®, a ground-breaking project by artist Billy Apple® and artist/scientist Craig Hilton where art is in the service of science — Apple’s immortalised cell line is being used in studies that will directly benefit cancer and immunology research — and science serves the artist to enhance and protect the artist’s brand by immortalising his biological tissue in perpetuity. This transaction ensures that the brand (and the artist) can last forever, unconstrained by death. Read more…

Our presentation at Art Basel Hong Kong is with the assistance of Creative New Zealand.

Our current exhibition Bazinga! continues this week to 8 June.

The fifth Anne Landa Award exhibition opens tonight at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The space between us considers the relation between video and performance and features work by Lauren Brincat, Alicia Frankovich, Laresa Kosloff, Angelica Mesiti, Kate Mitchell, James Newitt and Christian Thompson. The artists are all eligible for the the acquisitive award of AUD$25,000, which sees the winning work enter the Gallery's collection.

Guest curator Charlotte Day says: “The seven artists are connected through their interest in the artist as performing body, the artist as creator /director of performances, and the viewer's role in relation to the works and as active participant. The resurgence in performative art continues out of a desire to question established exhibition and viewing habits, as well as the relative distinctions and distances between artist, artwork and audience.” Read More…

Rhana Devenport is the new director of the Auckland Art Gallery. Currently the director of the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth, Devenport takes up her position at the end of July.
Image: Rhana Devenport