News | Page 35 of 57

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

Melissa Chiu on Ai Weiwei and creative expression in China

Asia Society director Melissa Chiu reflects on the new parameters of creative expression in China as illustrated by the career of artist and activist Ai Weiwei. View video…

Ai Weiwei tops this year's POWER 100 List

ART REVIEW has published THE POWER 100, its annual list of movers and shakers in the art world. Entrants are ranked according to a combination of influence over the the production of art internationally, sheer financial clout and activity in the past 12 months.

Glen Hayward's Mirrorworld at the McCahon House

Glen Hayward's one-week studio exhibition Mirrorworld opens at the McCahon House tomorrow. The artist will be in the studio each day to talk about his work and the old McCahon house will also be open to view. The visiting days/times are: Saturday and Sunday 11am – 3pm, Monday to Friday 4 – 7pm and Saturday 22 11am – 3pm.
Images: Mcahon House. Titirangi, Auckland

Ullens collection to refocus around ground-breaking artists from China, India, Japan and Korea

The second and final cluster of works from the Ullens Collection of contemporary Chinese art went under the hammer at Sotheby's recently lifting the tally realised from sales to $54.8 million – a record for a single-owner sale of Chinese contemporary art. Ullens also confrimed his continuing interest in Chinese art saying he looked forward to “building and enhancing his collection by “working with ground-breaking artists from China, India, Japan and Korea.” Along with the appointment of Philip Tinari as the new director of the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art in Beijing, the announcement will set to rest rumours that the Ullens are getting out of China. Image: Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art, Beijing, installation view of Yan Pei-Ming's Landscape of Childhood

Tacita Dean on why her her Turbine Hall Film installation is a plea to save cinema

Tacita Dean talks to ARTINFO about her commission for the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall. Film is an homage to the old-fashioned format of that medium, which she has used since her student days – and which is now threatened with disappearance. Read more…
Images: Tacita Dean and Film at the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall

Venice Biennale president replaced by foodstuffs importer

In an age of shrinking state support, the Venice Biennale president Paolo Baratta found new ways to generate revenue, enabling the Biennale to fund 87% of its operations this year. However he has just learned that his mandate has not been renewed and that, subject to being approved by the Italian senate, his successor is foodstuffs importer Giulio Malgara, a veteran of advertising, pet food, sports drink and corn oil industries who has never shown any interest in the cultural sector. So why the appointment? Former Venice mayor Massimo Cacciari says “because he is a friend of Silvio Berlusconi's”.

Image: ousted Venice Biennale president Paolo Baratta

Type Specimens: A Berlin Miscellany

While in Berlin in 2010, designer Tana Mitchell discovered an expansive collection of letterpress type in the basement of the Druckwerkstatt im Kulturwerk des BBK. Using the BBK's press she began printing, accounting for and making sense of the collection with her own somewhat arbitrary methodology. Likening her activity to that of an entomologist in the field, the BBK typographic collection became a habitat from which she gathered her speciments to make her own typography collection. In the process of making and souveniring, Mitchell created a suite of prints from A to Z, each capturing a single letter in various forms, which are being exhibited in Type Specimens: A Berlin Miscellany at Auckland's Objectspace to 12 November 2011.

Images: Tana Mitchell's print specimens and letterpress type discovered at the Druckwerkstatt in Kultuwerk des BBK, Berlin

Third Creative Time Summit on socially engaged art

Recently Creative Time staged its third annual Summit, a gathering for artists and activists whose work addresses social and political issues. You can read a frieze review of the Summit here.

Living as Form also includes an exhibition proving an historical overview of socially engaged practices and the role artists have played in reshaping our world. The project staged at The Historic Essex Street Market NY brings together 25 curators, 9 new commissions and documents over 100 projects, and runs to 16 October.

Image: Time Bank currency designed by Lawrence Weiner. Initiated by Julieta Aranda and Anton Vidokle, the Time/Bank economic system provides a platform where individuals can pool time and skills, bypassing money as a means of value.

Kabakovs honoured as thought leaders

Emilia and Ilya Kabakov were amongst the recipients of this year's Louise Blouin Foundation awards, the annual celebration honouring thought leaders who have made “extraordinary contributions on a global level”. The Louise Blouin Foundation is one of the largest non-government funded, not-for-profit spaces in London featuring exhibitions of both established and emerging international contemporary artists alongside a programme of lectures and events.

Images: Ilya and Emilia Kabalov, The Palace of Projects (2000), 69th Regiment Armory, Lexington Avenue at 26th Street, commissioned by the New York Public Art Fund; and the 7th annual Blouin Creative Leadership Summit Awards ceremony and gala at New York's Metropolitan Club

Billy Apple's latest From the Collection work

From the Rove Cars Collection is the latest addition to Billy Apple's From the Collection series for London art dealer and collector Kenny Schacter. The canvas is painted with automotive paint in the colours of Schacter's favourite Porsches, which went on display (with the From the Collection text in rondel format) at Chelsea Auto Legends on 4 September 2011.

Review of Clinton Watkins: Selection

This link takes you to a review of Clinton Watkins' exhibition Selection.

Image: Clinton Watkins, Selection, installation view, Starkwhite 2011. Photo Samuel Hartnett

Gibbs Farm has a new website

This link takes you to the new Gibbs Farm website.

Images: Daniel Buren's Green + White Fence, 1999/2001 and Sol LeWitt's Pyramid (Keystone NZ) 1997, Gibbs Farm, Kaipara Harbour NZ, image from the Gibbs Farm website

Ernesto Neto's installation at the new Faena Arts Centre in Buenos Aires

The new Faena Arts Center in Buenos Aires has opened with Ernesto Neto's installation Crazy Hyperculture in the Vertigo of the World, a fantastical bridge made of woven climbing rope and hollow plastic balls, which spirals through the space. It's the first time Neto has made a work that can support adventurous viewers who want to ascend into the space.

Images: the Faena Arts Center, Crazy Hyperculture in the Vertigo of the World (installation view) and Ernesto Neto (left) with Alan Faena

Dane Mitchell's RADIANT MATTER exhibitions reviewed in the latest issue of frieze

The latest issue of frieze includes a review of Dane Mitchell's RADIANT MATTER, a series of three exhibitions presented at three public galleries across New Zealand. This follows last week's launch of the publication RADIANT MATTER I/II/III in Berlin by the artist and the Berliner Künstlerprogramm DAAD.

Images: frieze cover, issue 142 October 2011 and Dane Mitchell RADIANT MATTER PART 1 installation view, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, 2011

Clinton Watkins: Selection installation views

Clinton Watkins' exhibition Selection runs downstairs to Saturday 22 November 2011.

Images: Clinton Watkins, Selection, installation views, Starkwhite, October 2011. Photographs Samuel Hartnett

CNZ announces New Zealand artist for the 55th Venice Biennale

Creative New Zealand has selected Bill Culbert to represent New Zealand at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013, allocating $650,000 for participation in the event. Culbert was recommended by an advisory panel comprising Biennale commissioner Jenny Harper (Christchurch Art Gallery), Alastair Carruthers (CNZ), Christina Barton (Adam Art Gallery), Elizabeth Caldwell (Dunedin Public Art Gallery), Heather Galbraith (Massey University), Michael Houlihan (Te Papa), and Peter Robinson (artist). CNZ says prior to making the selection, advice was sought from the wider visual arts sector inviting them to propose names of artists and/or artist/curator teams.

Thirty Years of video in China at the Minsheng Art Museum

The Minsheng Art Museum in Shanghai opened in April 2010 with a thirty-year survey of contemporary Chinese painting. This month the Museum launched the second installment of its metanarrative, a survey of the moving image in China from its first appearance in 1988 through to 2011. Read more…

Image: Shanghai's Minsheng Art Museum

Gagosian closes Madison Avenue space

Uber dealer Larry Gagosian's store on Madison Avenue has closed suddenly. The space previously sold high-end multiples by artists such as Damien Hirst, Richard Prince, John Currin and Jeff Koons. However as ARTINFO reports, the ongoing expansion of his gallery network (stretching from Hong Kong to Geneva, Rome and London) suggests the decision to close the store was not motivated by cash flow.

Testing the idea of an art centre as a place for the production and presentation of art

Marc-Olivier Wahler, the outgoing director of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, will open temporary art centres in Los Angeles and Paris next year. Chalet Hollywood will open at Los Angles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) and Chalet Society will open on Boulevard Raspail on Paris' Left Bank.

Palais de Tokyo has previously organised exhibitions and artists projects under the name Les Chalets de Tokyo in Buenos Aires, Roswell in New Mexico, Edinburgh, Seoul, New York and Coimbra in Portugal. Wahler's new projects are an extension of this initiative. He says: “My idea is to reflect on whether an art centre is the best structure for showing art and as a place of production. Chalet Society and Chalet Hollywood will be a laboratory to test this hypothesis for the benefit of young artists and [to examine] how to use and share this knowledge.

Later next year Wahler plans to open a third chalet in Marrakech in collaboration with the artists' residency centre Dar Al-Ma'mun. “Each time the Chalet will respond to a context and local needs”, he says. Read more…

Arab Spring-inspired work called off by London authorities

While the wave of civil uprising and resistance washing over North Africa and the Middle East is supported by the West (the Arab Spring is now the focus of speculation over this year's Nobel Peace Prize), it isn't always embraced closer to home. Last week London's Westminster council called off Egyptian artist Moataz Nasr's plan to cut the Kufic inscription “The people want the fall of the regime” (a chant of Arab Spring demonstrators) into a grass lawn at Mayfair's Hanover Square claiming the protests were still too raw.

Images: Protest in Egypt and Moataz Nsar's The Maze, 2011