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Steilneset Witch Trial Memorial by Peter Zumthor and Louise Bourgeois

Dedicated to 91 victims of a 17th century witch hunt in Vardo, The Witches of Finnmark Memorial is a collaboration between artist Louise Bourgeois and architect Peter Zumthor. Set to open on the 23rd of June, the monument is located at Steilneset in Vardo, the place where the burning of the vast majority of the witches occurred.

Inside a glass cube designed by Zumthor, Bourgeois' sculpture The Damned, The Possessed and The Beloved (2007 – 2010), is made up of a flaming chair surrounded by a ring of oval mirrors. A second building by Zumthor, made of wood and fabric and 125 meters long, has one illuminated window for each for the victims burnt at the stake.

In an interview on the collaboration, Peter Zumthor said: “The result is really about two things – there is the line, which is mine, and a dot, which is hers… Louise's installation is more about the burning and the aggression, and my installation is more about the life and emotions [of the victims].”
Image: Memorial in memory of the victims of witch trials by Peter Zumthor and Louise Bourgeois, Steilneset

Rules of Nature at the Museum of Lucerne

Jin Jiangbo's Rules of Nature was created for the Shanshui exhibition at the Museum of Lucerne. It explores not only the theme of the exhibition but also the striking architecture of the Culture and Convention Centre in which the Museum is housed. The KKL is the work of French architect Jean Nouvel, who wanted Lake Lucerne to be an integral part of his structure. The three wings of the complex are separated by two water channels, which when viewed from the museum's roof-top floor look rather like deep canyons. Jin Jiangbo has used one of these pools as the 'support' on which to project a landscape in the manner of traditional Chinese ink-and-wash painting. The process, however, is steered by the viewer, who by striking notes on a gugin, a traditional Chinese zither, triggers the electronic signals that define the parameters of the composition to be projected.

Image: Jin Jiangbo, Rules of Nature (2011), installation views, Shanshui exhibition, Museum of Lucerne, Switzerland

Francis Plagne at St Kevin's Arcade, Auckland

Aucklanders can catch Francis Plagne tomorrow night at the Wine Cellar, St Kevin's Arcade (7.00pm/entry $10). Plagne is a Melbourne-based musician and songwriter whose work engages with popular and experimental music forms. His music has been described as sounding as “close to Pet Sounds era Beach Boys as it does musique concrete future classics” (Mess + Noise) and as the “unlikely amalgam of Antonio Carlos Jobim's samba and an Andre Breton poem” (Three Thousand). The Wire's John Dale described his work as “slotting into a trajectory of experimental song/sound crossover that stretched from Caetano Veloso's 'Araca Azul' through to Broadcast.” . You can hear his work at http://soundcloud.com/francis-plagne

Image: cover for Francis Plagne's Idle Bones (Label: Synaesthesia)

Celebrating unrealised artists' projects

This year, e-flux was invited to develop a special project for the Kopfbau during Art Basel. In response, e-flux developed a raft of projects situated somewhere between exhibitions of art and the concrete forms of social reality encountered in everyday life, drawing on a wide circle of institutions, artists, curators and writers who have been involved with various e-flux projects over the past several years.

The projects include the Agency of Unrealised Projects (AUP) – a temporary office that exhibits a growing archive of several hundred unrealised art projects, including contributions received through an open call, as well as those originally collated by Hans Ulrich Obrist (they include one by Billy Apple). You can read more about this exhibition celebrating artists' projects that never got beyond the planning stage here.

Alicia Frankovich at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin

Alicia Frankovich's exhibition Gestures, Splits and Annulations opens today at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin where she is participating in the Creative New Zealand Berlin Visual Artists Residency. The exhibition runs to 10 July 2011.

Image: Alicia Frankovich, Volution 2011, 35 mm film transferred to digital video

Coming up at Starkwhite

Our next downstairs show, Hye Rim Lee's Crystal City Spun animation, runs from Monday 20 June 2011

Image: Hye Rim Lee, Crystal City Spun (animation still), presented in association with Kukje Gallery, Seoul

A window of opportunity in Venice

Like so many countries that missed the opportunity to build a national pavilion in the Giardini (Australia was the last country to be granted land to build on), New Zealand works with spaces selected from the array of palazzos, churches and other buildings available for Venice Biennale presentations.

The possibility of sharing a pavilion with Australia has been raised in the past and the idea surfaced again with the news that Australia's pavilion in the Giardini will be replaced with a purpose-designed space for artists. While the idea may be of interest on this side of the Tasman, ANZART in Venice appears to be an unlikely prospect. Would Australia consider sharing a pavilion with New Zealand and, if so, how would it work?

Fortunately, another window of opportunity opened up this year. The President of the Biennale, Paolo Baratta, is offering countries that don't have a national pavilion the chance to buy a space in the Arsenale's Sale d'Ami. At a reported cost of €1.5m for a 20 year concession, a pavilion in the Arsenale could be an interesting option to consider for New Zealand.

Image: Arsenale, Venice

Jae Hoon Lee bound for Antarctica

Each year Antarctica New Zealand invites artists to become honorary Arts Fellows and travel to Antarctica to undertake specific projects. Jae Hoon Lee is one of four artists invited to travel to the frozen continent this year. The others are musician Dave Dobbyn, photographer Laurence Aberhart and sculptor Joe Sheehan.

Image: Jae Hoon Lee, Annapurna (2011), archival pigment ink on Ilford paper, 800 x 1200 mm

NYT's Roberta Smith on the Venice Biennale

When it comes to dense, out-of-control concentrations of contemporary art, there is nothing like the Venice Biennale. With its big central exhibition, its ever-rising number of national pavilions and the scores of collateral shows organised in museums, galleries and palazzos all over the city, the Biennale never stops. It is a cornucopia of recent artistic endeavor, endlessly amplified by Venice itself, which remains one of the most culturally layered, artful and art-filled places on earth. Read more…
Image: Mike Nelson's trompe l'oeil rabbit hole to Istanbul, Venice Biennale

From urban decay to post-industrial renovation

Eighty years after it was built to carry carcasses to New York's meatpacking district, the old railway line on stilts was converted into a city park, opening to the public in June 2009. The second phase of the conversion has just opened, doubling its length to one mile.

For a railway that came close to being torn down in 1999 when local businesses – backed by Mayor Rudi Giuliani – called it a blot on the landscape, it has become one of the most resounding examples of city rebirth. The neighbourhood has boomed since it opened and the flanks of the park have been dubbed “architects row” in recognition of the new buildings that have sprung up by internationally renowned architects such as Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel and Neil Denari.

In 2015 the area will receive another boost when the Whitney opens its new lower Manhattan museum at the southern end of the High Line.

Image: New York's High Line park, past and present

Ai Weiwei & Uli Sigg co-curate Shanshui with Peter Fischer

Jin Jiangbo is amongst the artists represented in Shanshui, Poetry without Sound? at the Museum of Art Lucerne. Curated by Ai Weiwei, Peter Fischer and Uli Sigg, Shanshui looks at the relationship Chinese contemporary art has shaped to its own tradition through the lens of landscape painting.

The exhibition combines 70 works from the Sigg collection, all dated between 1994 to 2011, some, like Jin Jiangbo's piece, commissioned for the exhibition. In addition to international stars like Ai Weiwei, Huang Yan, Liu Wei, Qiu Shihua and Zhou Tiehai, a younger generation of artists are present, including a significant number of women: Chen Ke, Hu Liu, Li Xi and Ni Youyu amongst others. Read more…

The exhibition is accompanied by book dedicated to Ai Weiwei whose whereabouts was unknown at the time of printing.

Image: Cover of Shanshui, Poetry without Sound? Landscape in Chinese Contemporary Art, published by the Museum of Art Lucerne

Billy Apple produces a text-based portrait in Chinese

The first painting in Billy Apple's From the Collection series was commissioned by the Bank of New Zealand in 1988. Since then it has attracted a broad range of corporate, public and private clientele such as Fletcher Challenge, Victoria University of Wellington and Jenny Gibbs. Each work in the series is commissioned by the collector and operates both as a text-based portrait and a frontispiece for their collection.

Recently, art collectors Jeffrey Lai and Michelle Soo commissioned the first work to be executed in Chinese. Along with a companion piece in English, From the Lai Soo Collection was exhibited by Starkwhite at ART HK from 26 – 29 May 2011.
Image: Billy Apple, From the Lai Soo Collection (2011), UV impregnated ink on canvas, 430 x 270 mm

Christoph Schlingensief and Christian Marclay awarded Golden Lions at the Venice Biennale

The Venice Biennale has announced the awards for its 54th edition. The Golden Lion for the best national pavilion went to Germany, represented this year by Christoph Schlingensief, who died last August. The Golden Lion for the best artist went to Christian Marclay for his piece The Clock, 2010, on display at the Arsenale.

Image: A still from Christian Marclay's The Clock, 2010

Jae Hoon Lee and Justin Paton in conversation

Artist Jae Hoon Lee and curator Justin Paton discuss his works in Unguided Tours: Anne Landa Award for video and new media arts 2011 at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Play video

Image: detail from Jae Hoon Lee's installation in Unguided Tours: Anne Landa Award for video and new media arts, Art Gallery of New South Wales, to 12 July 2011

Australia to get a new Venice Biennale pavilion

After almost 25 years of critical sniping, Australia's pavilion at the Venice Biennale will finally be replaced. Even the pavilion architect Philip Cox is on record as urging that the original was intended to be a temporary structure only.

Australia Council Chairman James Strong said in Venice that a new pavilion design will be selected by invitation from a small hand-selected group of Australian architects with a brief to produce a functional exhibition space that works for the artist and complies with Venetian authorities' requirements.
Image: The existing Australian pavilion in Venice, designed in 1988 by Philip Cox a temporary structure

Exhibition concept announced for the 18th Biennale of Sydney

all our relations has been announced as by artistic directors Catherine de Zegher and Gerald McMaster as the exhibition concept for the 18th Biennale of Sydney, which will take place from 27 June – 16 September 2012. Read more...
Image: Biennale of Sydney artistic directors Catherine de Zegher and Gerald McMaster

Shrinking public subsidy forces Venice Biennale to be more reliant on self-generated finance

In an age of shrinking state support, the Venice Biennale has found new ways to generate revenue. This year the the Biennale will fund 87% of its operations.

The person behind the revenue-generating schemes is Biennale president Paolo Baratta, a cambridge educated economist whose favourite book is Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments. After a career in finance he was made minister of privatisations in 1993 and is said to have a gift for balancing social responsibility with commercial interests.

So what are the new schemes? He is offering countries that don't have a national pavilion the chance to buy a space in the Arsenale's Sale d'Ami for €1.5m each; he charges the collateral exhibitions €20,000 to use the Biennale's logo and appear in the official catalogue (he also says out of the 90 requests this year Bice Curiger rejected 55%); he's raised ticket prices by 30% to €20 (and visitors have risen from 319,332 in 2007 to 375,702 in 2009); and he's reduced the main curatorial show's installation budget thereby forcing some artists to seek additional funding and sponsorships. Read more…

Image: Venice Biennale president Paolo Baratta

Gertrude Contemporary runs into gentrification

Melbourne's Gertrude Contemporary has found that creative people don't just break ground for new ideas, but also for property developers. After 28 years of setting the scene, the not-for-profit space is a victim of the gentrification of Gertrude Street, which has gone from grunge to glamorous shopping strip in a generation. “We've gone from the days of bullets in the window from the Macedonian gangsters across the road, all the way to the first hairdressers and soy lattes”, Gertrude Contemporary director Alexie Glass-Kantor said.

The Age reports that a for sale sign is expected to go up this week and that it is unclear whether the gallery will be able to remain until its lease expires. However, Alexie Glass-Kantor says: “The sale will not affect Gertrude Contemporary's status as a leading centre for the creation and presentation of contemporary art in Australia, nor our capacity to carry out our vision for the future. In the face of Fitzroy's ongoing gentrification, we will continue to deliver our internationally acclaimed program of exhibitions, publications, education programs and, most of all, artists' studios consolidating our reputation as Melbourne's leading generator for contemporary art and ideas.”

Since 1983, Gertrude Contemporary has supported the careers of Australia's top thinkers makers and writers, charting movements, trends and revolutions in thought and art across its complex of galleries and studios. It has a big reputation in Australia and also across the Tasman and artists and colleagues in New Zealand will be on the lookout for news of moves to secure the space's future.

Image: Gerturude Contemporary, Melbourne

Leigh Davis' Jar

Today we feature the final Leigh Davis flag poem in the exhibition Time, Text & Echoes presented at Jar in a sequence of thirty, ten day hoists (see our earlier post). You can see the full suite of flag poems and installation views here.

Leigh Davis' death in 2009 at the age of 54 was a major loss to poetry and the visual arts in New Zealand. Jar is part of his legacy. Established as a small not-for-profit trust for promoting strong, singular work for public consumption, it aims to grow “an art excited public who experience in each Jar project something with small size but scale, something to look at and wonder about a long time.”

The first Jar space is 589 New North Road, Kingsland, NZ where projects have been staged by Auckland-based artists Stephen Bambury and Peter Robinson.

Image: Leigh Davis

Leigh Davis Flag Poems in Time, Text & Echoes

Image: Leigh Davis, Bees, flag poem presented in the JAR exhibition Time, Text & Echoes (2010-2011), a sequence of ten-day hoists over 300 days, New North Road, Kingsland, Auckland, NZ

Future Pass – From Asia to the World

Future Pass – From Asia to the World is part of the Collateral Events programme at this year's Venice Biennale. Curated by Victoria Lu, Renzo di Renzo and Felix Schober, the exhibition features works from more than 100 artists, including Hye Rim Lee. She is also represented in the second edition of Glasstress in the Collateral Events programme.

Image: from Hye Rim Lee's Crystal Candy series (2011), perspex face-mounted print on alupanel, 1000 x 1000 mm

Magnus Renfrew on ART HK 11

Magnus Renfrew, director of ART HK 11, talks about the changing nature of the fair and the appetites of Chinese and Asia-Pacific collectors. Play video

Dane Mitchell at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery

Dane Mitchell's RADIANT MATTER PART II opens today at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery and runs to 28 August 2011.

Image: Dane Mitchell, RADIANT MATTER PART II, installation view, Dunedin Public Art Gallery

Ai Weiwei's Marble Arm at ART HK

There is just one work by Ai Weiwei in the current edition of ART HK. Marble Arm can be viewed at the Galerie Urs Meile booth. The piece is on reserve, but the artistic director of Galerie Urs Meile has declined to reveal the buyer.

Image: Ai Weiwei's Marble Arm currently on display at the Galerie Urs Meile booth, ART HK 2011

ART HK 2011 launched

ART HK opened last night with a lively vernissage. Predictably, the direction the fair will take under its new owners was the subject of many conversations. The early signs are promising for those hoping the fair will retain its distinctive point of difference. Speaking by telephone from Switzerland, Art Basel co-director Marc Spiegler said: “We are not interested in copying and pasting the same fair on three locations. Along with the greater interest in China, we are looking at many rising markets from Australia and New Zealand, to Singapore and Indonesia. The Asian market is developing so quickly, it's hard to say what it will look like in five years.” Read more…

Review of Matt Henry's Vernacular Painting

“Henry with these (and earlier) works is combining a contrived invisibility with cultivated exhibitionism. Intro- and extra- version seamlessly blended.” Read more…

Image: Matt Henry, Vernacular Painting, installation view, Starkwhite, 2011; 2050 x 843 Signal Yellow 2011, acrylic and lacquer, installed in door frame, 2050 x 843 mm

This week at Starkwhite

We'll be in Hong Kong this week for ART HK, but Starkwhite will be open Monday to Friday from 11am to 5pm and 11am to 4pm on Saturday. Our exhibitions are: Group Show (downstairs), Matt Henry's Vernacular Painting (upstairs) and Billy Apple®: $23,610 Top Up, which is on display in the foyer and reception areas of Minter Ellison's Auckland offices.

Image: Alicia Frankovich, The Opposite of Backwards (2009), c-type photograph, 700 x 1050 mm, Starkwhite Group Show, May 2011

Art Gallery of New South Wales opens new John Kaldor Family Gallery

Today the Art Gallery of New South Wales unveils a new floor for contemporary art, a development catalysed by the gift of the John Kaldor Family Collection – the largest donation of art to a public art gallery in Australia's history. The Collection includes over 200 works by artists of our time and features in-depth representations of Robert Rauschenberg, Christo, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Bill Viola, Thomas Demand, Francis Alys and Ugo Rondinone.

Image: The new John Kaldor Family Gallery with Sol LeWitt's “Wall Drawing #1091: arcs, circles and bands (room),” 2003

Mercedes Vicente talks to Dane Mitchell in the latest issue of Flash Art

In the May/June 2011 issue of Flash Art, Mercedes Vicente talks to Dane Mitchell about his recent work and how it engages with the notion of the 'vapourous' — teetering on the edge of the invisible, making the intangible tangible.

Image: cover images of the May/June issue of Flash Art, by Thomas Hirschhorn and Lygia Clark

SPEECH MATTERS: The Danish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale

For the 54th Venice Biennale, the Danish Pavilion will host an international group exhibition, curated by Katerina Gregos, which will explore the timely and complex issue of freedom of speech. SPEECH MATTERS will feature 18 international artists of different generations from 12 countries. 13 new installations have been commissioned especially for the exhibition. Read more…

Image: Jan Svankmajer, The Garden, 1968, 35 mm film, 16'

2011 Pritzker Architecture Prize

Portugese architect Eduardo Souto de Moura is the jury's choice for the 2011 Pritzker Architecture Prize. It is the second time in the history of the prize that a Portugese architect has been chosen. The first was in 1992 when Alvaro Siza was selected.

You can see selected works by Eduarod Souto de Moura here.

Image: Eduardo Souto de Moura's Municipal Stadium, Braga, Portugal

Alicia Frankovich at Salon Populaire, Berlin

Alicia Frankovich will present an evening with two live performance acts, two video pieces and a sculptural activation at Salon Populaire, Berlin on 18 May at 8pm.

Image: Salon Populaire, Berlin

curated by_vienna 2011

Now in its third year, this year's curated by_vienna takes as its starting point the importance and relevance of Vienna for Eastern and Southeastern European contemporary art and artists. 21 international curators, including Rene Block, Magda Kardasz and Nicolaus Schafhausen, were invited to develop special exhibitions for 21 galleries. The exhibitions run to 18 June.

The project includes a panel programme examining topical issues facing art and society in East and South East Europe, including the Baltic States, Russia, former-Yugoslavia and Turkey. The panels will be moderated by Simon Rees, the curatorial coordinator of curated by_vienna 2011.

This link takes you to the curated by_vienna 2011 website.

A Way of Calling at the Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts

A Way of Calling opens tonight at the Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts, Melbourne. The exhibition highlights six practices (Dane Mitchell and Ann Shelton are in the lineup) that evoke, activate or engage mysterious forces, energies or sensations. This link takes you to the exhibition page on the Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts website.

Image: Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts, St Kilda, Melbourne

NEA brings video games in from the cold

The National Endowment for the Arts has embraced video games as an art form. Following on the heels of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's release for its upcoming The Art of Video Games exhibition, the NEA has renamed and rebranded its Arts on Radio and Television Grants, which will now be called Arts Media Grants. “We'll continue to support television and radio”, NEA director of media arts Alyce Myatt explains in a video about the change, “but we're also going to fund content development for the Web, for theatrical release, for mobile phones, content to be distributed via satellite, and even content for game platforms.”

Image: from Cory Archangel's tribute to Super Mario's clouds

Artists voyage to the Kermadec Islands

This week a group of artists from the South Pacific region, including Phil Dadson and John Reynolds, travel on HMNZS Otago to a place rarely explored – the Kermadec Islands.

The Kermadecs are the most remote part of New Zealand. Despite their historical, as well as mythological significance, public awareness of the islands and surrounding waters is slight. The voyage aims to change that by documenting an imaginatively-charged encounter with one of the least known natural wilderness areas on the planet.

Later in the year the Tauranga Art Gallery will present an exhibition of works produced by the artists. The Gallery was selected as the exhibition venue because the Kermadec Ridge (the undersea formation which includes Raoul Island where the artists will spend two days) is geologically linked with the Tauranga area.

The project is an initiative of the Pew Environment Group's Global Ocean Legacy programme, which promotes the designation of large, highly-protected marine reserves.

Image: NASA photograph of Raoul Island, the Kermadecs

Tender is the Night opens at Wellington's City Gallery

The City Gallery (Wellington) has opened Tender is the Night, an exhibition curated by Heather Galbraith that “brings together a selection of art works which explore the complex and intense nature of desire, love and the loss of a loved one.” You can read more about the exhibition and lineup of artists (they include Phil Dadson and Derrick Cherrie) at the City Gallery website.

Image: Phil Dadson, Breath 1976 (a statement about birth and death), b/w video for two monitors, 16'30″

Ai Weiwei's Zodiac sculpture unveiled in New York

Ai Weiwei's public art project Circle of Animals: Zodiac Heads has been unveiled at the foot of New York's Pulitzer Fountain. The work consists of 12 bronze animal heads representing different phases of the Chinese calendar installed in a semi-circle in the shallow, stepped pools of the fountain.

The bronzes are scaled up versions of heads that originally adorned a Chinese imperial the water-clock in the Garden of Perfect Brightness in Beijing, which was looted by Anglo-French forces during the second Opium War in the 1850s. The repatriation of the heads has become cultural priority and in 2009 the Chinese Government launched a PR offensive against Christie's when the auction house attempted to sell two of the imperial bronzes as part of its Yves St Laurent / Pierre Berge auction. Berge taunted that he would give the heads for free if China vowed to “observe human rights and give liberty to the Tibetan people and welcome the Dalai Lama.” Eventually at the sale, Cai Mingchao, the Chinese bidder who offered $14m for each head, refused to pay for them and described his sabotage of the auction as a patriotic act.

In an interview with filmmaker Alison Klayman, Ai Weiwei said he was playing with the idea of real and fake, and of national symbolism. “It's a new interpretation”, he said. “My work is always dealing with real or fake, authenticity, what value is, and how value relates to the current political and social understandings and misunderstandings.”

Image: Ai Weiwei's Circle of Animals: Zodiac Heads (detail), Pulitzer Fountain, New York

Curator finds his art in the slow, contemplative lane

This link takes you to a short article in the Sydney Morning Herald on Justin Paton's UNGUIDED TOURS exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Image: Justin Paton, curator of the UNGUIDED TOURS exhibition, in front of Ian Burns' From orbit

ART HK and Art Basel join forces

Asian Art Fairs Ltd has announced a new development for ART HK – Hong Kong International Art Fair. MCH Swiss Exhibition (Basel) Ltd, the organiser of Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach, will take a majority ownership in Asian Art Fairs Ltd.

Following ART HK later this month, next year's edition will take place from February 2 to 5 so that its timing fits better with the dates of Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach. Next year's edition will remain under the show's current ART HK name, with Magnus Renfrew remaining as director. In the mid-term ART HK is to be integrated into the Art Basel brand as the third platform for the international art show.