Yayoi Kusama is set to create a 120-foot version of her Yellow Trees in New York's meatpacking district. The artwork, which doubles as netting for a condo construction site, will be visible from New York's High Line, making it the latest in a number of artworks that galleries, developers and artists have staged in sight of the elevated park, hoping to cash in on the crowds that use it every day.
Image: A rendering of Yayoi Kusama's Yellow Trees, commissioned by DDG partners

Our current show, Greetings from Los Angeles, closes today at 6pm.

Recently the Observer caught up with Alison Klayman, the filmmaker whose first documentary, Ai Weiwei:Never Sorry, is screening in festivals around the world. Read more…
Image: Filmmaker Alison Klayman with Ai Weiwei

Alicia Frankovich discusses her work with ARTSPACE director and curator Caterina Riva at the Auckland Art Gallery today at 1pm. And tomorrow at 11.30am she presents the first public performance of Floor Resistance, the work shortlisted for this year's Walters Prize.
Image: Alicia Frankovich, Floor Resistance, shown at Hebbel Am Ufer, HAU3, Berlin (25 June 2011)

Recently legendary Swiss art collector Uli Sigg donated $170 million worth of contemporary Chinese art to the M+ museum in Hong Kong, which is scheduled to open in 2017. A former ambassador to China, Sigg started collecting works by artists such as Ai Weiwei, Zhang Xiaogang and Fang Lijun in the 1970s and has built one of the world's great collections of Chinese art. Under the agreement, he will gift 1,463 works and M+ will pay around $23 million for an additional 47 works from the 70s and 80s. M+ director Lars Nittve said this is common practice among museums when receiving major collections from donors.

The decision to send the collection to Hong Kong rather than mainland China, and the part gift/part purchase has drawn some flak from the mainland. Sigg answers his critics in a recent interview with ARTINFO. Read more…
Image: Uli Sigg with Ai Weiwei's Uli Sigg

We are extending our gallery hours on Saturday [9am to 5pm] and Monday [9am to 6pm] to cater for out-of-town visitors arriving for the opening of the 2012 Walters Prize exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery.
Image: Ann Veronica Janssens, Untitled (Light Painting), 2004, installation view, Greetings From Los Angeles, Starkwhite

Visitors to Casa dei Tre Oci, a grand 20th century palazzo on the Guidecca can see a fully operational soviet-style laundrette installed by artist Arsenly Zhilyaev. The project is part of the exhibition The Way of Enthusiasts organised by the not-for-profit, Moscow-based V-A-C Foundation as a collateral event at Venice's Architecture Biennale.

“Public laundries were part of the utopian urban planning that traces back to the constructivist commune houses where all aspects of private life had to be shared. This intention revealed itself in the architecture of the houses of the new type that were built in starting from the late 1920s; there were no kitchen or laundry facilities in the apartments because these types of private activities were supposed to be performed publicly,” say the curators Katerina Chuchalina and Silvia Franceschini. “Thus appeared the famous soviet canteens or laundries that lasted in Russian cities until the fall of the Soviet Union… Zhilyae's project is an attempt to re-enact this long disappeared practice into a new and unusual context.”
Image: Arsenly Zhilyaev's Laundry, 2012

The Chair of the Venice in Peril Fund, Anna Somers Cocks, has resigned along with four other trustees, paving the way for a return to its restoration roots when rising waters remains the biggest threat to the city.

Founded after the great flood of 1966, Venice in Peril focused initially on restoration, but under Somers Cocks it also financed research into the city's ecological problems and proposed solutions, such as the need for mobile barriers at the openings between the Adriatic and lagoon. But she says there is a widespread and dangerous misconception that the barriers being built are the solution to the problem of rising water levels when they are, at best, a short-term measure to buy time. Read more…

Three members of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot went on trial this week for their protest in Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral in February. They could face seven-year sentences if found guilty of “hooliganism motivated by hatred” for performing an anti-Putin punk prayer service in the cathedral.
Image: Pussy Riot performing in Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral

Live art is under the spotlight at the Tate Modern with Tino Sehgal's work in the Turbine Hall that consists of encounters between around 70 story tellers and visitors to the gallery, and the recent opening of the Tanks, the vast underground oil tanks that have been converted to showcase live art and the moving image. The opening programme for the Tanks addresses ways in which artists have increasingly engaged with areas such as performance and the relationship between artist and audience.
Image: The Tate Moderns's Tanks

The Biennale of Sydney has announced Juliana Engberg as the director of the 19th edition of the Biennale for 2014, making her the second woman to be appointed since Lynne Cooke curated the 1996 Biennale Jurassic Technologies Revenant. Engberg is currently director of Melbourne's Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.
Image: Juliana Engberg

Over four nights last week, Hector Zamora's video White Noise was projected onto a building on Auckland's waterfront as part of Move Towards the Light, a series of video and laser projections and light sculptures forming an after-dark art trail from Brittomart to the Wynyard Quarter.

Commissioned for the visual arts programme of the 2011 Auckland Arts Festival, White Noise documents a site-specific installation at Bethell's Beach on the West Coast of Auckland. Zamora invited the public to plant 500 white flags along the coast, creating a poetic 'white noise' in unison with the wind. At some point in the day the installation was politicised with the planting of a single Maori Flag by a local activist, highlighting continuing debates on the ownership of New Zealand's foreshore and seabed – an intervention that was welcomed by the artist.
Image: Hector Zamora's White Noise in Move Towards the Light on Auckland's waterfront

Yesterday Alicia Frankovich talked to Lynn Freeman about re-presenting Floor Resistance, a one-hour performance designed for a theatre space in Berlin, in the 2012 Walters Prize exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery. You can download the conversation at Arts on Sunday.
Image: Alicia Frankovich, Floor Resistance, 2011 at Hebbel Am Ufer, HAU 3. Photograph by Conor Clarke

Greetings from Los Angeles continues at Starkwhite this week through to Monday 6 August.
Image: Jorge Mendez Blake, I Would Prefer Not To (2012), installation detail, Greetings From Los Angeles exhibition, Starkwhite

This week we are at the Melbourne Art Fair (Stand B76), which runs from 2-5 August. You can read our release here.

Alicia Frankovich is one of the four artists shortlisted for this year's Walters Prize. She talks about Floor Resistance, the work selected by the jury, on Radio New Zealand's Arts on Sunday today at 2:53pm.

Named after one of New Zealand's greatest artists (Gordon Walters) the $50,000 prize is awarded every two years to an artist who has made an outstanding contribution to contemporary visual art in New Zealand. A jury of New Zealand curators and critics select four finalists who present their work in an exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery and an international judge selects the winning artist. The previous judges have been Harald Szeeman (2002), Robert Storr (2004), Carloyn Christov-Bakargiev (2006), Catherine David (2008) and Vicente Todoli (2010). This year's judge is Mami Kataoka, chief curator at the Mori Museum of Art, Tokyo and co-curator of the 2012 Gwangju Biennale.
Image: Alicia Frankovich, Floor Resistance, shown at Hebbel Am Ufer, HAU3, Berlin (25 June 2011)

Move Towards the Light, a series of video and laser projects and light sculptures running after dark on the Auckland waterfront, ends tonight at midnight. The lineup of artists includes Jae Hoon Lee, Clinton Watkins and Hector Zamora.
Image: Clinton Watkins' Continuous Ship #1 at Shed 10 Queens Wharf

In an email sent to Eli Broad and obtained by the Los Angeles Times, Charles Young, the former chief executive of the Museum of Contemporary Art, has called for the removal of museum director Jeffrey Deitch.

“I hope that the four-alarm fire now enveloping MOCA has at least given you pause for thought about his appointment and your continued attempts to try to save him for a job which many (including myself) believe he is unqualified,” Young wrote to Broad. “The resignation of dedicated, long term trustees, and especially four highly respected artists of international acclaim, should bother you, David [Johnson], Maria [Bell] and the other continuing members of the board. The question is 'What now is to be done?'”

“I will do anything I can to try to right the MOCA ship, but nothing will work, in my mind, without a new Captain/Director,” Young concluded. Read more…
Image: Charles Young, former chief executive of MOMA and former UCLA chancellor

Fears that Hobart's wildly successful Museum of Old and New Art may close if the Australian Tax Office goes after the eccentric gaming mogul and art collector behind it have sparked widespread concern in Tasmania where it has become a tourism boon for the debt-ridden state. David Walsh's $180 million museum has drawn 600,000 visitors in its first 18 months and is Tasmania's single most visited attraction, but it costs him around $8 million annually to keep the museum open, a contribution that may be at risk in the light of the ATO's claim that he has been running a $2.4 billion gambling business and owes $37 million in backdated taxes.
Image: Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart

Video artist Tejal Shah's art work I Love my India has been removed from the Indian Highway exhibition at the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art in Beijing – not at the request of the Chinese government, but rather one from Indian Government officials. The work depicting Muslims talking about the Godhra riots upset the sentiments of the Indian community in China leading the Indian Ministry of external Affairs to intervene.

The exhibition curated by Julia Peyton-Jones, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Gunnar Kvaran opened at Serpentine in 2008 and traveled to venues in Oslo, Lyon and Rome without incident before its Bejing outing at the UCCA. Neither of the institutions has commented on the removal of the video which focuses, according to a description by the Serpentine, on “the ignorance and lack of understanding of the genocide against the Muslim minority in 2002.”
Image: A video still from Tejal Shah's I Love my India

Over the next few days, visitors to Auckland's waterfront will encounter a series of video and laser projections and light sculptures staged at locations between Brittomart and the Wynyard Quarter. The lineup of artists in Reflect: Move Towards the Light includes Jae Hoon Lee, Clinton Watkins and Hector Zamora. The event runs after dark from 26 to 29 July.
Image: Clinton Watkins' Continuous Ship #1 at Shed 10 Queens Wharf

The Los Angeles Times reports the artist-led group known as MOCA Mobilization is back. Founded in 2008 by artists Cindy Bernard and Diana Thater, the group has posted an online petition calling for changes including the replacement of chief curator Paul Schimmel and the appointment of new artists to the museum board to replace those who have resigned. Read more…

Frieze has asked art critics and editors of cultural publications around the world to tell them how they see the role of art criticism in mainstream media today, and how they view the impact of their writing on their audience. This link, takes you to the fourth installment of Who Do You Write For?, which includes a reply from Sydney Morning Herald art critic John McDonald. You will also find links to the first three installments at the bottom of the page.

Guardian critic Jonathan Searle was at the launch of Tino Sehgal's commissioned work, These Associations, at the Tate Modern Turbine Hall. Read more…
Image: Tino Seghal with some of the participants in his commissioned work at the Tate Modern

In her NYT article A Los Angeles Museum on Life-Support, Roberta Smith says Jeffrey Deitch needs to stop organising exhibitions and learn to be a museum director, Trustees need to step up and give more more money to counterbalance Eli Broad's influence and views, and artists need to reassert themselves in the life of the museum. Read more…
Image: MOCA's Art in the Streets exhibition

Jeffrey Deitch has defended his exhibition record at MOCA and dismissed suggestions by some board members, including in an open letter published in the New York Times, that the museum has lost its artistic bearings under his directorship and is increasingly under the control of billionaire collector and philanthropist Eli Broad. Read more…
Image: Jeffrey Deitch, director of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art

On the eve of the UK release of a documentary about Charles and Ray Eames, the Guardian presents a selection of their 10 best designs in pictures.
Image: the DSR chair by Charles and Ray Eames

In the latest issue of Modern Painters (via ARTINFO) performance artist Tino Sehgal talks about his upcoming commission at the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall without giving too much away. Read more…
Image: Tino Sehgal

Over the past decade the Melbourne Art Fair has seen the arrival of an array of new fairs in the region, such as ART HK, Shanghai Contemporary, Art Los Angeles Contemporary and Art Stage Singapore. “They are growing, they are dynamic and, whether we like it or not, they are taking our ground,” the chairman of the Melbourne art Foundation Ken Fehily says.

In a bid to give the Melbourne Art Fair the international profile it has struggled to achieve, the Foundation has teamed up with ART HK founder Tim Etchells who brings a wealth of experience to the task of repositioning the fair, along with a global VIP data base and Asian collector base. Etchells is also behind the new art fair being launched in Sydney next year and the agreement with The Melbourne Art Foundation ensures the two fairs will work alongside each other, rather than in a winner-takes-all battle.
Image: Tim Etchells at ART HK earlier this year

Saatchi Online has launched a new exhibition created by curators from around the globe. Billed as a project to promote up-and-coming artists, the show presents a new collection of 10 works each day for 100 days, selected by a featured curator. The lineup of curators includes Alexi Glass-Kantor, director and senior curator of Melbourne's Gertrude Contemporary. You can follow the 100 Curators 100 Days exhibition here.

In an ARTINFO article, Ben Davis traces the troubled history of MOCA from the days of 2008 when its financial problems first came into the open and Eli Broad stepped in to save the museum. Now he says the rescue appears to be an example of pursing a solution that has nothing to do with the real problem, and is more of a pet ideological problem of one man, Eli Broad. Davis says MOCA had a finances problem, not a curatorial problem and that tackling the wrong problem in the wrong way has hurt MOCA 's chances of setting itself right in the long run. Read more…
Image: Eli Broad and Jeffrey Deitch

The first phase of the Tate Modern's underground extension has opened to the public. The vast spaces beneath the old Bankside Power Station have been converted by architects Herzog + de Meuron into two large spaces for performance and film installations, plus a number of smaller spaces.Tate director Nicholas Serota said: “It will bring the kind of work that has traditionally been seen in alternative spaces, for short durations, and often barely recorded, into the museum. It will bring it into our own sense of art history as something that is not on the margins, but something central to art. Read more…

The 90 artists and collectives selected for ROUNDTABLE: The 9th Gwangju Biennale have been announced. You can see the list here
Image: Dane Mitchell, detail Celestial Fields, 2012. Mitchell is one of the artists selected for ROUNDTABLE

All four artists on MOCA's board of trustees have resigned, raising further questions about the direction the museum is taking under the directorship of Jeffrey Deitch. John Baldessari was the first to go, followed by Catherine Opie and Barbara Kruger. “Parties and galas are OK, but sometimes these things called museums have to have things called exhibitions,” the two artists wrote. “Our concerns are with the art, the exhibitions and how the money that makes exhibitions possible is gathered and distributed. Our concern is for a continued curatorial practice that is both rigorously complex and pleasurably awesome.” (You can read the full version of their resignation letter here.) And on Sunday Ed Ruscha resigned leaving the board without any artist representatives.
Image: Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Since it was launched in 2007 to help rebuild the flood-ruined lower 9th Ward of New Orleans, Brad Pitt's Make it Right Foundation has been able to build 86 homes for displaced residents, including ones by starchitects David Adjaye and Shigeru Ban.

A duplex designed by Frank Gehry, another of the 21 architects enlisted by Pitt, has just been completed. Designing something that would sit well in a family neighborhood proved to be an interesting challenge for the architect. He said: “I wanted to make a house that I would like to live in and one that responded to the history, vernacular and climate of New Orleans.” It is Gehry's first home in Louisiana and one of only 22 Gehry houses in the US.
Image: Frank Gehry's Duplex for the Make it Right Foundation

Greetings from Los Angeles continues at Starkwhite to 6 August.

John Baldessari has stepped down from the board of the LA's Museum of Contemporary Art. He said his reasons include the recent ousting of Chief Curator Paul Schimmel and news that the pop-cultural slant the museum had taken under director Jeffrey Deitch will continue with an exhibition on disco music's influence on art and culture.

Baldessari is the fifth board member to resign since February – another sign that all is not well at MOCA. Last week four of the museum's life trustees called for a U-turn back to the kind of exhibitions it was famous for before the arrival of Deitch two years ago. They also disagreed with a recent column by Eli Broad, a MOCA life trustee and the museum's biggest supporter, who wrote in support of its direction under Deitch. “The celebrity-driven program…that Deitch promotes is not the answer,” the letter said. Read more…
Image: John Baldessari

Olafur Eliasson's latest project is a solar-powered lamp that he and his engineer partner Frederik Ottesen have designed to be widely distributed in the developing world. Called the Little Sun, the lamp will give 10 times more light than using a kerosene lamp, and at a 10th of the cost.

They have met the costs of the lamps and developed a business model through they can be distributed and sold by local retailers in Africa, initially in Kenya, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe, for £6.40

The lamps will also have a life at the Tate where they will be on sale at a developed world price of £16.50. And, starting on 28 July, and for every Saturday night until 23 September, the surrealism rooms at the Tate Modern will be plunged into darkness after normal hours and visitors will view works by the light of the Little Sun lamps, echoing an act of Man Ray who supplied people with torches to illuminate artworks at the opening of the international Surrealist Exhibition of 1938.
Image: the Little Sun lamp

The Occupy movement has targeted a number of art institutions around the world, most recently in Germany where Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, has welcomed activists to dOCUMENTA (13).

She wrote: “I welcome the occupy movement in the Friedrichsplatz, which has grown over the last weeks. It continues the wave of democratic protests that have been spreading across many cities in the world. It enacts the possibility of reinventing the use of public space and appears to me to be in the spirit of Joesph Beuys who marked Documenta and its history significantly, embodying another idea of collective decision making and political responsibility through direct democracy.”

She also asked the protestors “to care for the square, and to take responsibility for the space they have the right to occupy, to consider the City of Kassel and the other visitors of documenta in a worldly spirit of germination and flourishing.”

In Berlin, however, a decision to include activists in the 7th Berlin Biennale almost backfired on the organisers when members of Occupy and M15 (the Spanish protest movement) reacted to a curatorial framework that penned them into a zoo-like enclosure where they could be watched from a viewing platform. They issued a set of ultimatums, including a demand that the hierarchical structure of the Biennale be dismantled and replaced with an Occupy-style working group.

Their proposals were accepted by artist/curator Artur Zmijewski. “I didn't invite them as artists”, he said. “I invited them as important political actors of our time to come together and use a cultural institution. Maybe the 'human zoo' was good because they reacted and started a process.”
Image: Occupy protesters at dOCUMENTA (13)

Dane Mitchell is in the group show WHY DO BIRDS SUDDENLY APPEAR? at Volker Bradtke, Dusseldorf. Curated by Matt Moravec and Kyle Thurman, the exhibition runs from 14 July to 12 August 2012.
Image: from the Volker Bradtke website