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Image: Leigh Davis, Ishmael and Epitaph, flag poems 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
Images (top to bottom): Leigh Davis, Un Guerrier and St Joy of Compassion, flag poems 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
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SCAPE Christchurch Biennale will not go ahead
The 6th SCAPE Christchurch Biennale will not go ahead as planned from 4 March 2011. The Trust and SCAPE team will meet to discuss the future of the event once the city has settled and the healing process has begun.
Originally scheduled to open on 24 September 2010, SCAPE was postponed last year due to the massive earthquake that hit Christchurch on 4 September 2010.
Seung Yul Oh at ggooll
Seung Yul Oh opens a post-residency show tonight at ggooll, an artist-run space in Seoul founded and managed by artist Choi Jeong Hwa.
Waiting for news from Christchurch
Over the past 24 hours we have received emails and texts from people around the world asking about friends and colleagues in the Christchurch art community. There's not much we can say. The flow of information from the earthquake-ravaged city is patchy – even people on the ground are in the dark and having to wait for news to circulate via informal networks.
Unfortunately, the news vacuum is unlikely to be filled for a while. Phone networks are still plagued by power outages and people have been advised to text when using cellphones to free up the network for emergency responses.
A dark day in Christchurch
Today our thoughts are with family, friends and the art community in Christchurch.
Image: Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetu, currently the Civil Defence HQ in the earthquake-ravaged city of Christchurch
Artists support new artist-run space on Auckland's K Road
A fundraiser will be held tomorrow evening for PERSONAL BEST, a new artist-run space scheduled to open on Auckland's Karangahape Road in early March. PERSONAL BEST will raffle artworks donated by Dan Arps, Cushla Donaldson, Peter Madden, Louise Menzies, Dane Mitchell, Rohan Wealleans and others, with all proceeds going to the space to assist with renovation costs.
Raffle tickets will be available at the door (456d K Road) and online at the PERSONAL BEST website. The fundraiser starts at 6.00pm and the raffles will be drawn at 8.00pm.
MoMA curator to direct the 30th Sao Paul Bienal
Venezuela-born Museum of Modern Art curator Luis Perez-Oramas will direct the 30th Sao Paulo Bienal, which will be held in 2012. Perez-Oramas is currently the curator of Latin American Art at MoMA and he previously served as a guest curator at the 23rd Sao Paulo Bienal in 1998.
Image: curator of the 30th Sao Paulo Bienal Luis Perez-Oramas
Turkish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale
Selected by curator Fulya Erdemici, Ayse Erkmen will represent Turkey at the 54th Venice Biennale. The pair will be working with London-based curator Danae Mossman as curatorial collaborator. Erdemici and Mossman co-curated Wandering Lines: Towards a New Culture of Space for the 2008 SCAPE Christchurch Biennial of Art in Public Space. Mossman is also a former director/curator of The Physics Room in Christchurch.
Image: 2001, Shipped Ships, Three ferries from Italy, Japan and Turkey with Crews, Passengers, Ship
Indian art scene on the rise
India is about to launch its first-ever art biennial. Set to debut in 2012, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale will take place in the port city of Kochi on the southwest coast of India, and in neighbouring Muziris, known for its rich historical heritage that reaches back to the days when it was a centre for spice trading with the Roman Empire. The news follows the announcement of India's first dedicated pavilion at the Venice Biennale and reports of the continuing growth of New Dehli's India Art Summit fair.
Image: The port city of Kochi, India
Deep Water review
“Dadson has a long history of being passionately interested in Chinese culture – as evidenced by many of the From Scratch projects – so in Starkwhite the Beachhaven images seem to demonstrate the Taoist view of heaven and earth reflecting each other. Like Yin and Yang they are intimately connected.” Read more...
Image: Phil Dadson, Deep Water (2011), video still
UCCA Beijing handover
Guy Ullens is to hand over the management of the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art (UCCA) in Beijing to long term partners and divest himself of the institution. He will also sell in stages the extensive collection of Chinese contemporary art he amassed with his wife Myrian. Once he has done this he says he intends to spend more time on his charitable education work in Nepal and return to collecting young artists, this time with a focus on Indian rather than Chinese artists. Read more…
Image: Yan Pei-Ming, installation view of Landscape of Childhood, UCCA, 2005
Art HK and Art Basel to join forces?
The Art Newspaper reports that the increasingly blue-chip fair Art HK is in talks with Art Basel about a possible collaboration. Tim Etchells, one of the owners of ART HK, has confirmed that discussions are underway, but also says the fair has been approached by other people and that it's definitely not a done deal.
David Watson: Parade experimental music and multi-media performance
New York-based composer and performer David Watson premieres a multi-media performance piece, Parade, at New Plymouth's Govett-Brewster Art Gallery tomorrow night. Inspired in part by Allan Thomas' ethnomusicological study of Hawera in 1946, Watson's new work is a meditation on New York's traditional street parades.
Phil Dadson's Deep Water
Phil Dadson's Deep Water installation runs at Starkwhite to 5 March 2011. You can read the exhibition release here.
Image: Phil Dadson, Deep Water (2011), installation views, Starkwhite
Iraq's looted National Museum reopens
The Iraq national Museum, which was vandalised and looted following the US-led invasion of the country, has reopened. At the time, US troops were criticised for not securing the museum. When asked why American forces did not stop the looting, Donald Rumsfeld, then defence secretary, famously said “stuff happens … and it's untidy and freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.”
Director Amira Edan has said that the museum's first priority is to bring back antiquities that have been smuggled abroad. The museum estimates that around 15,000 priceless items are still being traded throughout the art underworld. Edan also said an international tour of Iraq antiquities may be planned and (surprisingly) that it would most likely include in venues in Britain (the British Museum) and the United States (Chicago's Field Museum).
Image: A shot of the newly-reopened Iraq National, Museum
Mona Hatoum awarded the 2011 Joan MIro Prize
The jury of the 2011 Joan Miro Prize has granted the award to Palestinian-British artist Mona Hatoum for her great skill in connecting personal experience with universal values. Awarded biennially, the prize is worth €70,000. Previously it has gone to Olafur Eliasson (2007) and Pipilotti Rist (2009).
Art hoists at JAR
Over the past few months we have been running images of Leigh Davis' Flag Poems in the exhibition Time Text & Echoes. The works are being exhibited at JAR in a series of thirty, ten-day hoists.
JAR exhibitions are presented in a small, single-room building at 589 New North Road, Kingsland. The front of the building has been removed and replaced by a transparent wall, allowing exhibitions to be viewed from the street. Before embarking on the current exhibition, JAR staged projects by Auckland-based artists Stephen Bambury and Peter Robinson.
Image: Jar, New North Road, Kingsland, NZ
Leigh Davis Flag Poems in Time, Text & Echoes
Image: Leigh Davis, Ishmael and Epitaph, flag poems 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
De-Building at the Christchurch Art Gallery
De-Building is inspired by a moment usually hidden from viewers when an exhibition ends and the de-build begins. Described as an exhibition full of surprises and architectural double-takes, it presents new installations and commissioned works by artists including Glen Hayward. De-Building runs at the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetu to 15 May 2011.
Image: Glen Hayward, Yertle (2011), acrylic paint, metal, wood, installation view, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetu
Image: Glen Hayward, Yertle (2011), acrylic paint, metal, wood, installation view, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetu
There's something about Barbie
Barbie is heading for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The iconic doll with a new outfit for every occasion has been acquired by the Museum for its big Fall show California Design, 1930 -1965: Living in a Modern Way. Wendy Kaplan, who is co-curating the show, says that Barbie helps tell the story of how mid-century manufacturers sold toys, furniture and fashion alike by selling the idea of a leisurely California lifestyle. “Barbie is emblematic of aspirations of the mid-century. Her house is a suburban ranch home, and her first outfit, so appropriate for California, is a bathing suit”, says Kaplan. Read more…
Image: 1959 Barbie Teenage Fashion Model (Mattel)
Is the art market entering a new age of volatility?
Outwardly, the art market looks the picture of perfect health. But ARTINFO asks whether it is all as rosy as it seems. “Some analysts believe that the increasing readiness of investors – rather than art lovers – to sink money into art are turbo-charging a boom that might lead to busts. In its latest analysis of the contemporary art market, London-based art market research firm ArtTactic warns that this bull market trend could go on for some time, supported by China's rising class of super-wealthy, but eventually the bubble will burst, as it did in Japan in the early 90s and the global art market crash in 2008.” Read more…
Image: David Hockney's Hotel L'abois Sainte-Maxime at Sotheby's Auction House in London, estimated to reach $2.3 million
Phil Dadson at Starkwhite tonight
Phil Dadson's exhibition Deep Water opens at tonight at Starkwhite, from 5.30 pm.
Image: Phil Dadson, Deep Water #8 (2011), pigment inks on ilford paper, 900 x 500 cm
Does the VIP Art Fair have a future?
After 10 days of mixed success and technical malfunction, the VIP Art Fair closed with, as fair organiser James Cohan put it, “some very sore feelings”. But he also believed the first fair was “a big success” and referred to the website as an “enormous resource” – one that was not to be dismantled at the end of the fair but that galleries will use on an ongoing basis (the details of which are yet to be confirmed).
In the lead up to VIP, Jane Cohen said the fair's success would be measured against the traffic generated by other international art fairs. Because users would have to register with the site to enter the fair, she said, the VIP Art Fair would have accurate numbers. The final count was 41,000 registered users – pretty good, but not a spectacular result for a fair that could be attended by people dressed in their pyjamas. Both Frieze and the Armory Show claim 60,000 attendees for their 2010 events and Art Basel topped the head count with 62,500.
Participating dealers would have had other measures in mind, like sales, but only a few galleries have reported sales outcomes. You can read Art Market Monitor's VIP sales round-up here.
It's difficult to judge whether the world's first virtual art fair was a great idea marred by imperfect execution, or a sign that there is no substitute for experiencing art in the flesh in a real art fair. But a second edition of VIP has been scheduled for 2012, so it's a case of watch this space.
A take on the Google Art Project
With 17 great museums, Google's Art Project will take art lovers on a virtual grand tour. But can a digitised masterpiece possibly match being face to face with the original? Read more…
Image: Google Art Project, detail from Pieter Bruegel's The Harvesters
NZ artist-led project at the Grimmuseum, Berlin
Trenton Garratt is one of six New Zealand artists represented in I Could Have Sworn I at the Grimmuseum, an artist-run space in Berlin. This follows the first iteration of the project at Daire Sanat, an open art space in Istanbul.
Image: Trenton Garratt, Cast out/in (2010), MP3 player, radio transmitter, receiver set, ink jet prints on A3 paper,Daire Sanat, Istanbul, 2010. Photograph: Ralph Nashawaty
Coming up at Starkwhite
Phil Dadson's Deep Water runs at Starkwhite from 9 February to 5 March 2011. You can read our exhibition release here.
Image: Phil Dadson, Deep Water #8 (2011), pigment inks on ilford paper, 900 x 500 cm
Google touts “game changer” in online art viewing
Google aims to bring the world's great art galleries into the home with a new website that offers virtual tours using Street View technology. Read more…
The Year of the Rabbit
Today is the first day of the Chinese New Year, the Year of the Rabbit. Last year we celebrated the Chinese New Year with Jin Jiangbo's exhibition Shanghai Ye! Shanghai. This year he is back again, this time as a visiting scholar at Auckland University's Elam School of Fine Arts.
LAST WORDS on contemporary art in an age of cultural diversity and globalisation
Published by Sydney's 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, LAST WORDS is the culmination of a year-long project of exhibitions, artists' projects and performances that set out to tackle some of the issues of language, communication, memory and history in an age of cultural diversity and globalisation.
In the introduction to the publication 4A director Aaron Seeto writes:” The artists in this project illustrate that it is no longer straightforward to answer questions such as who are you, where are you from, how do you fit in? It seems we have entered a period where traditional forms of identification are neither consistent or certain, particularly as our ideas about place and location are increasingly defined by the intersection of local, national and global references – colliding histories, traditions and politics are what define our contemporary experiences.”
Jae Hoon Lee was one of the artists represented in the year-long project with NOMAD, an exhibition of large-scale photographs and videos from his travels through India, Nepal and Korea. While on the road, Lee collected images that were subsequently digitally stitched together to create fictional landscapes and a visually compelling interplay of real and virtual experiences.
Seeto has written on Lee's work in LAST WORDS in a piece titled Intimate Camera. You can order a copy of the publication here.
Image: Jae Hoon Lee, Becoming (Self Portrait), 2002, digitally collaged photograph, 100 66 cm
VIP Art Fair draws fire
Reports are beginning to circulate on the VIP Art Fair. This link takes you to the latest Bloomberg article World's first online art fair draws fire as top works go unsold.
Image: in front of Pierre Huyghe's Untitled (2010) at Marian Goodman at the VIP Art Fair
Gambling wizard's Museum of Old and New Art launched in Hobart
MONA, the $150m Museum of Old and New Art built by gambling wizard David Walsh to house his private collection, has opened in Hobart. MONA is directed by Mark Fraser, who was the managing director of Sotheby's Australia for 19 years before leaving to take up his new position.
15,000 people requested invitations to the opening but only 2,500 were lucky enough to to be selected. They were randomly chosen by a computer which is fitting as Walsh owes his millions to games of hazard.
This link takes you to a Sydney Morning Herald article on Walsh and his new museum.
Image: MONA (Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, Australia
2010 auction records set by mainland Chinese collectors
In 2010 mainland Chinese collectors really began to make their presence felt at auction houses around the world, showing what a game-changer the relatively new pool of buyers has become. Recently ARTINFO China looked back on the year and selected their picks for the top key lots of the year. Read more…
Image Xu Beihong's Ba People Fetching Water (detail), 1937, which sold for $25.8m, a record price for Chinese painting at auction
Bust to boom?
Christie's International has announced worldwide sales for 2010 of USD5 billion, up by 53% on the previous year. The highest sales total in the 245 year history of the firm, the figure is also the highest sales total ever recorded in the industry.
What does this mean for the art market? That it has moved from bust to boom in a sluggish global economy? Or is it a timely reminder that the day Damien Hirst abandoned the traditional method of selling art, going straight to Sothebys instead where the auction smashed top estimates to reach a record total of USD125m, was also the day Lehman's declared itself insolvent, triggering the credit crisis that left the global economy teetering on the brink of calamity and sent the art market into freefall?
Image Roy Lichtenstein's Ohhh… Alright… which sold at Christies for USD42.6 million to an anonymous buyer on the phone.
Leigh Davis Flag Poems in Time, Text & Echoes
Images (top to bottom): Leigh Davis, Un Guerrier and St Joy of Compassion, flag poems 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
Seung Yul Oh in residence at Choi Jeong Hwa's ggooll space
Seung Yul Oh is currently undertaking a residency in Seoul where he will produce a solo show at ggooll, an artist-run space founded and managed by artist Choi Jeong Hwa. Oh is also represented in the exhibition Top Ten: New Acquisitions of the University of Auckland at the Gus Fisher Gallery which runs to 15 March 2011.
Image: Choi Jeong Hwa's space ggooll in April 2010
Hans Ulrich Obrist on India's rising art scene
Hans Ulrich Obrist was recently in New Delhi to begin the Indian chapter of his marathon interview series. Sahar Zaman sounded him out about his views on the contemporary Indian art scene, it's growing international impact, and its place in his interview series. Read more…
Image: curator Hans Ulrich Obrist in India
Billy Apple at Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Paris
Billy Apple continues his run of international shows at Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Paris. He is represented in the second chapter of an exhibition dedicated to artists prefiguring the conceptual phenomenon. You can read the exhibition release here.
Image: Billy Apple, For Sale (1961), letterpress on canvas at Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Paris
Czech culture minister backs jury's Venice selection following national gallery director's decision to exercise his right of veto
The selection process for the Czech Republic's participation in this year's Venice Biennale hit the headlines after Milan Knizak, the director of the country's National Gallery, refused to accept the decision of the selection committee to run with installation artist Dominik Lang. As director of the country's leading gallery, Knizak has the right of veto over the Biennale entry. However, the minister of culture, Jiri Besser, stepped in to overrule Knizak, declaring that the selection committee's choice would stand.
After rejecting the jury's decision, Knizak (who is also an artist and is associated with the Fluxus movement) had proposed an alternative project by three young Czech artists for the Czech pavilion. The artists, however, rejected his offer and called for Lang to be reinstated as the country's official selection.
Image: Dominik Lang's Walking Blackboard, 2006
Venice Biennale to grant space for new pavilions at the Arsenale
The Guardian reports that the Venice Biennale is in talks to offer new permanent pavilion sites to Argentina, Chile, Mexico, the UAE and Bahrain. The newcomers will set up their pavilions in the 16th century barracks building at the Arsenale, the sprawling complex of docks and warehouses adjacent to the Giardini.
The President of the Biennale, Paolo Baratta, says for a 20 year concession the newcomers could be asked to pay between €1.5m and €1.7m towards the renovation works in the buildings, which are estimated at €20m.
When Australia snapped up one of the last pavilion spaces at the Giardini, New Zealand appeared to have missed the boat. However, the move to grant new permanent space for pavilions at the Arsenale may offer a new window of opportunity.
Lorenzo Ruldolf likens his experience of Art Stage Singapore to his early days at Art Basel
The inaugural edition of Art Stage Singapore drew 32,000 visitors and favourable press and seems set to take its place alongside ART HK and ShContemporary as one of the region's leading art fairs. You can read more on Art Stage Singapore here and here.
The continued presence of Lorenzo Rudolf is likely to be a critical factor in Art Stage Singapore's attempts to grow its reputation in the years to come. But as the Wall Street Journal reports, given the fair is backed by four prominent Singaporean government agencies, including the Singapore Tourism Board and the Economic Development Board – deeming it the “flagship” effort to turn the city-state into a contemporary arts hub – it's likely that Rudolf has been offered strong incentives to stick around.
Image: Lorenzo Rudolf at Art Stage Singapore, 2011
VIP Art Fair opens today
The VIP Art Fair opened today at 8.00 a.m. EST and closes on 30 January at 7.59 a.m. EST. You can browse the fair for free, but to access the interactive capabilities visitors must have a VIP ticket which on 22 & 23 January costs $100 and thereafter $20. You can register here to browse or purchase a VIP ticket.