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Images (top to bottom): Leigh Davis, Madonna of Gowns, Do Not Construct, Space of Mouthing, 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
Billy Apple's Waipero Swamp Walk opened to the public last weekend. Utilising the golden ratio and two famous sports colours – black (rugby) & white (cricket) – Apple has created a visually striking walkway to the Eden Park Stadium, one of the venues for the 2011 Rugby World Cup.
This link takes you to a review of Martin Basher's current exhibition STATES OF PEACE AND CALM W. PERSONAL TOUCH which runs at Starkwhite until 27 November 2010.
Jae Hoon Lee's video Chiang Mai Family is screening in Nomad at Sydney's 4A Contemporary Asian Art. Filmed in rural Thailand, his video of a family's daily life creates a sense of spatial distance between their native home ground and the tourists gaze towards an exotic playground.
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First recipient of Victor Pinchuk's Future Generation Art Prize announced
Cinthia Marcelle, a Brazilian artist who makes films, photographs and installations, is the winner of the first Future Generation Art Prize from the Victor Pinchuk Foundation. She receives USD$60,000 in cash and USD40,000 to be invested in the production of new work.
Marcelle was seleted by a jury consisting of Daniel Birnbaum, Okwui Enwezor, Yuko Hasegawa, Ivo Mesquita, Eckhard Schneider, Robert Storr and Ai Weiwei.
You can see her work here.
Image: Cinthia Marcelle, O Conversador (The Speaker), 2005, photograph, 50 x 70cm
Andy Warhol Foundation steps into art censorship debate
The Andy Warhol Foundation has threatened to to end Smithsonian funding unless the David Wojnarowicz video A Fire in My Belly is restored to the exhibition Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, but the Smithsonian is refusing to budge.
Image: Protestors hold mask in support of artist David Wojnarowicz on the steps of the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery
Whitney Bedford: From here to there
Whitney Bedford: From here to there runs at Starkwhite to 24 December 2010 and from 4 – 19 January 2011. During the Christmas/New Year period (27 December – 3 January) the gallery will be open by appointment.
This link takes you to our exhibition release.
Image: Whitney Bedford, Untitled shipwreck (touched), 2010, ink and oil on panel, 15″ x 18″
Seung Yul Oh awarded the Harriet Friedlander Residency in New York
Seung Yul Oh has been awarded the 2011 Harriet Friedlander Residency. The Friedlander award sends an artist to New York, with no strings attached, for as long as $80,000 will last them.
Sacrilege and the sacred
The New York-based Catholic League, a self-described civil rights organisation at the forefront of the fight to remove David Wojnarowicz's video A Fire in My Belly from the exhibition Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, has changed tactics this week. Originally objecting to the video that League president William Donohue described as “anti-Christian”, the organisation now says that museums should have all federal funding pulled because “they cater to the affluent and well educated rather than to the working class”.
The controversy surrounding Wojnarowicz's video echoes the furore that erupted in New Zealand in 1998 when Te Papa Tongarewa the Museum of New Zealand presented Tania Kovats' Virgin in a Condom in the Pictura Britannica exhibition. New Zealand's Catholic community was outraged by the small statuette of the Virgin Mary sheathed in a condom. This followed the 1997 closure of the Andres Serrano exhibition at Melbourne's National Gallery of Victoria after a second attack on the artist's controversial work Piss Christ, death threats to staff and an alleged concern for a Rembrandt exhibition that was on at the time.
The Catholic League's latest move (going after the museum project) also echoes the tactics of Catholics and evangelical Christians in New Zealand who questioned the national museum's double standards, pointing out that Te Papa (Maori for Our Place) had engaged in a lengthy process of consultation with Iwi aimed at developing a bicultural museum, but was unwilling to do the same for other communities of interest. They said the museum took great care to observe Maori spiritual values but ran roughshod over Christian values.
Te Papa officials dug in, refusing to budge in the face of daily protests outside the museum and a 33 thousand-signature petition demanding the removal of Virgin in a Condom. But while the art world supported the museum's refusal to bow to pressure, many also felt that by its unwillingness to enter into an open debate Te Papa lost an early opportunity to foreground the museum's role as a forum – a place where ideas could be presented, tested and contested.
The trans-Tasman responses in the late 90s (closing an exhibition in Melbourne v. an unproductive stand-off in Wellington) were less than ideal so it'll be interesting to see how the current controversy generated by Wojnarowicz's searing meditation on aspects of the AIDS pandemic plays out in the States.
This link takes you to a Backchat panel discussion screened by TVNZ in 1998 on Virgin in a Condom, the sacred and the profane, and art museums and controversy.
Images from the top: David Wojnarowicz, A Fire in My Belly (1987), video still; Tania Kovats, Virgin in a Condom (1992); Andres Serrano, Piss Christ (1989)
Leigh Davis Flag Poems in Time, Text & Echoes
Images (top to bottom): Leigh Davis, Madonna of Gowns, Do Not Construct, Space of Mouthing, 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
A new public art walk by Billy Apple
Billy Apple's Waipero Swamp Walk opened to the public last weekend. Utilising the golden ratio and two famous sports colours – black (rugby) & white (cricket) – Apple has created a visually striking walkway to the Eden Park Stadium, one of the venues for the 2011 Rugby World Cup.
Image: Billy Apple's Waipero Swamp Walk (2010), commissioned under Auckland City's Public Art Programme. Photographs courtesy Peter Fell Ltd
The Physics Room announces new director
Stephen Cleland (formerly curator at the Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts) is the new director of the Physics Room in Christchurch.
Mercedes Vicente article on Ann Shelton in Camera Austria
The current edition of Camera Austria includes an article by Govett-Brewster Art Gallery curator Mercedes Vincente on the work of Ann Shelton and Mark Adams.
Decision to censor video draws flak
The Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) has issued a strongly worded rebuke to the Smithsonian Institution and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC, for censoring a video by David Wojnarowicz in the critically acclaimed exhibition Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, reports Christopher Knight for the Los Angeles Times.
The video, A Fire in My Belly, is a searing meditation on aspects of the AIDS pandemic and the decision to remove it came in the wake of calls by the House speaker-designate John Boehner and incoming majority leader Eric Cantor to dismantle the privately funded exhibition.
The AMMD statement described the Smithsonian's decision as having resulted from political pressure.
“More disturbing than the Smithsonian's decision to remove this work is the cause: unwarranted and uninformed censorship from politicians and other public figures, many of whom, by their own admission, have seen neither the exhibition as a whole or this specific work. The AAMD believes that freedom of expression is essential to the health and welfare of our communities and our nation. In this case, that takes the form of the rights and opportunities of our art museums to present works of art that express different points of view.”
Image: video still from David Wojnarowicz's video A Fire in My Belly
India to go to the Venice Biennale for the first time
For the first time in the history of the 150-year-old event, India will showcase an exhibition of younger artists at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011. Curated by Mumbai-based art critic and writer Ranjit Hoskote, the exhibition will be presented in a space in the Arsenale.
Image: Arsenale di Venezia
Turner Prize winner announced
Susan Philipsz, whose melancholy song loops were first exhibited in secret walkways in Glasgow, has won the the 2010 Turner Prize. Philipsz uses her own voice to create sound installations that play on and extend “the poetics of specific, often out of the way spaces”. You can follow live comment and chat surrounding this year's prize at the Channel 4 News live blog.
Art Basel Miami Beach
This link takes you to an upbeat report on Art Basel Miami Beach published in the New York Times.
Image: The Gagosian booth at the Miami Convention Centre, Art Basel Miami Beach 2010. Photograph from the NYT
Winner of the 2010 Turner Prize announced tomorrow
The winner of the 2010 Turner Prize will be announced tomorrow. Susan Philipsz is the odds-on favourite this year for her sound installations.
Image: the site of a sound installation in Scotland by Susan Philipsz
Post-recession austerity measures pose a threat to public art collections
Art News reports that leading international museum directors have restated their opposition to the financially motivated sale of works of art from public collections when the proceeds are used for “anything other than acquisitions or the direct care of the collection”. The call comes at time when post-recession austerity measures pose a significant threat to arts funding.
Manuel Borja-Villel, speaking as president of the International Council for Museums and Collections of Modern Art, has said his Council was concerned by cases when money from sales was diverted to things that had little to do with collections such as expansions. “It is important to restate that a public collection is different from a private collection,” said Borja-Villel. “The public collection has an element of memory – we must respect what colleagues have collected before us”. He added decisions need to be made by directors, “not by politicians or just managers”.
This follows a hardening of the US Association of Art Museum Directors opposition to deaccessioning to raise funds for operating expenses and expansion projects. Concern is also rising in the UK at the the lack of safeguards to protect collections when the pressure on local authority finances will increase following the coalition government's austerity drive.
Stephen Deucher, the director of the Art Fund, summed up the growing concerns, saying “we are implacably opposed to councillors pointing to a Picasso and seeing a short-term solution to a funding crisis”.
Image: Ernest Normand's Bondage (1895), 'privatised' recently by a UK regional museum
Recalling and revisiting history in downtown Brooklyn
This link takes you to Benjamin Sutton's review of TOTAL RECALL, the Public Art Fund exhibition of five commissioned sculptures presented at the MetroTech Commons, downtown Brooklyn. The works in TOTAL RECALL are by Martin Basher, Zipora Fried, Sam Moyer, Matt Sheridan Smith and Kevin Zucker.
Image: Zipora Fried, Armchair (2010). Photograph by James Ewing
A new site for speculative projects
altsprojects is a new project space that aims to “test out interventions and proposals for new exhibition formats”. Richard Frater's project, Alternative, opens today at 11.00am. This link takes you to the altsprojects site.
Image: from the altsprojects site
Wind-powered art picks up sponsorship award
The recipients of this year's NBR Sponsorship Awards include Meridian Energy, with the Wellington Sculpture Trust, for a suite of wind sculptures located along Evan's Bay close to Wellington airport. The sculptures combine public art with a celebration of Wellington's best-known natural characteristic (the wind), bringing together notions of wind power in New Zealand's energy future and the creative use of wind.
The suite of sculptures includes Phil Dadson's Akau Tangi. The title (the Maori name for Evan's Bay) references the lamenting sounds of the wind in the bay, which is reputed to be one of New Zealand's windiest locations.
Images: Phil Dadson, Akau Tangi (2010) installation views, ten poles ranging between 6 to 6.8m, aluminium, stainless steel, black steel, LED lights and paint
Seung Yul Oh project at Artspace
Seung Yul Oh's project POKPO runs at Auckland's Artspace from 4 December 2010 – 19 February 2011.
Surprise gift of $500,000 for the arts
Philanthropist Sir Eion Edgar has announced that his family is donating $500,000 to the Arts Foundation of New Zealand. His surprise announcement was made last night on the occasion of the Arts Foundation's AGM and his retirement as a Trustee.
Sir Eion said: “I believe that the arts are a vital part and integral part of our society. I also believe strongly in the vision of the Arts Foundation, which is to encourage private patronage for the arts and to celebrate and support our hard working artists.”
Turner Prize to leave Britain in 2013
The Tate Britain, the founder and customary host of the Turner Prize, has announced that the 2013 prize exhibition will be held in the Northern Irish city of Derry, a city perhaps most familiar as a symbol of political strife, having been the site of the 1972 “Bloody Sunday” massacre. The decision to move the Turner Prize is an attempt by the Tate Britain to “attract new audiences around the country and bring the prize to a wider and more diverse audience outside the capital.
Image: The town of Derry, Northern Ireland
Living Room 2011: Metropolis Dreaming
Andrew Clifford will curate the next Living Room project, which will take place in Auckland's CBD from 8 – 17 April 2011.
Taking a lead from the Futurists, METROPOLIS DREAMING will explore the imaginative possibilities of the city. Clifford says: “The dynamism of sound and light were important phenomena for the futurists and it is in this audio-visual terrain that METROPOLIS DREAMING will predominantly take place – a perfect genre for temporary and ephemeral projects. This will be a mix of installations, performances, video projects, activities and a poster project. Acknowledging that the city is both a cultural and technological hub, there will also be social projects that bring a new, contemporary angle to these ideas.”
Artists confirmed so far for Living Room 2011 are: Ujino Muneteru (Japan), Young Hae Chang Heavy Industries (Korea/USA) Sam Hamilton (NZ) with John Reynolds (NZ), Gregory Bennett (NZ) with Mike Hodgson (NZ) and Ani O'Neill (NZ/Rarotonga). Contributing to the poster project are Sara Hughes (NZ), Peter Madden (NZ), Ruban Nielson (NZ/USA) and David Shrigley (UK).
Andrew Clifford is the curator at the Gus Fisher Gallery, which is part of Auckland University's National Institute of Creative Arts and Industries.
Image: John Reynolds, Small Magnetic Cloud (2001) , vinyl on aluminium
Review of Jim Speers' Numerology and Territories show
This link takes you to a review of Jim Speers' exhibition Numerology and Territories at Te Tuhi Centre for Contemporary Arts. The exhibition runs to 5 December 2010.
Image: Jim Speers, VeilSide (2010), laser cut steel, 27 x 6 x 9.5cm
Celebrating the launch of Martin Basher's new work in NYC
We are hosting a function tonight (from 6.00pm) to celebrate the launch of Martin Basher's artwork in the Public Art Fund exhibition Total Recall, which features five large-scale sculptural commissions. We will also be screening installation views of the work in situ at the MetroTech Plaza in Brooklyn.
Image: Martin Basher's Minimal Consumption/Reflective Sublime/Aspirational Sunset Art, MetroTech Plaza, NYC
Billy Apple's 48th Birthday
In 1962 the artist who was known then as Barrie Bates changed his name and appearance (with the aid of Lady Clairol Instant Creme Whip) becoming Billy Apple in a self-conscious art action that doubled as a canny exercise in re-branding. Billy Apple celebrates his 48th birthday today shortly after returning from a trip to London to be present at his exhibition Billy Apple: The British and American Works 1960 – 69 at The Mayor Gallery.
Image: Billy Apple bleaching with Lady Clairol Instant Creme Whip November 1962
Former art dealer and seasoned curator to co-curate 2012 Whitney Biennial
Following on from Jeffrey Deitch's appointment as the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles comes the news that the Whitney Museum of American Art Art has appointed Jay Sanders as a co-curator of its 2012 biennial, acknowledging that he has recently worked as a director of the Chelsea gallery Green Naftali. Sanders has been teamed up with seasoned Whitney curator Elisabeth Sussman. This link takes you to the Whitney Museum's Biennial release.
Image: Whitney Museum of American Art
The auction as self-portrait
This month Phillips de Pury & Company launched a new kind of contemporary art auction, one in which a single major player in the art market was invited to create the sale of his dreams. The player was Philippe Segalot, an art consultant and private dealer who persuaded sellers to consign 33 works to the “Carte Blanche” auction, a title The Economist says “is a reminder of the art market's lack of regulation”.
Segalot says: “I have always been interested in the concept of curated sales, where the artworks are selected not for their market value but for their artistic quality, historical importance and coherence within the group. Here I tried to push the idea further by bringing together a small collection of my favourite works by my favourite artists. The result is a true self-portrait, a close representation of my life as an art lover, an art collector and an art advisor.”
The auction was certainly distinctive. The Economist reports that on a number of lots Segalot was seen to be bidding against his assistant and his business partner, all of whom would have been representing collectors. Asked whether acting for buyers as well as sellers on the same lot might constitute a conflict of interest, Segalot insisted it was not a problem.
Financial guarantees were also back in the mix with 7 of the lots in “Carte Blanche” being secured by irrevocable bids from anonymous third party investors. This practice, which was widespread before the global financial crisis, ensures that works sell for a minimum price with the investor taking a larger cut of the price if it exceeds the guarantee.
The so-called ground-breaking “Carte Blanche” series will continue with other sales to be curated by artists, collectors, curators or gallery owners. You can read The Economist article here and another on Segalot's favourite works here.
Image: Thomas Schutte's Grosse Geist No. 16 (2000), one of the lots in the “Carte Blanche” auction
An unusual partnership between Christie's and an affiliate of China's Ministry of Culture
Recently Christie's invited collectors, scholars and art patrons to its New York headquarters in the Rockefeller Centre for what it described as a special exhibition and symposium about the rise of Chinese contemporary art. However, as the NYT reports, the 29 works in the show were not produced by the politically focused Chinese artists who had helped Christie's earn millions of dollars at auction over the past five years. They were mostly by a group of realist painters whose work had been ignored by collectors and curators outside the country, and they were selected by a Chinese government-appointed panel.
The show, Trans-Realism, is part of a partnership between Christie's and an affiliate of China's Ministry of Culture which began just a year after the Chinese Government denounced Christie's for trying to sell two Qing dynasty bronzes that Beijing insisted were looted from the country 150 years ago. As part of the partnership, Christie's is considering financing a series of exhibitions with Chinese institutions like the Ministry of Culture's Centre of International Cultural Exchange.
Christie's art diplomacy is drawing criticism on the grounds that moves to promote artists selected by the Chinese government would alter the the role of the auction house and undermine its credibility with collectors. Others believe that Christie's has bowed to pressure from a government that often tries to silence critics and politically focused artists. But none of this is likely to deter Christie's as it moves to gain entry to China's booming auction market, which the Beijing-based group Artron says has grown to from $1.1 billion in 2004 to about $3.2 billion in 2008.
Image: the two disputed Chinese Qing dynasty bronzes
Upstairs at Starkwhite
Image: Matt Henry, Signal Yellow from the series 16:9 (2011), acrylic on linen, frame, acrylic glazing, 618 x 1001 x 69mm
Review of Martin Basher's exhibition STATES OF PEACE AND CALM W. PERSONAL TOUCH
This link takes you to a review of Martin Basher's current exhibition STATES OF PEACE AND CALM W. PERSONAL TOUCH which runs at Starkwhite until 27 November 2010.
Image: Installations views of Martin Basher's exhibition STATES OF PEACE AND CALM W. PERSONAL TOUCH + EASY ORDERING, Starkwhite, Auckland NZ, 2010
A weekend of art from the studios of this year's Elam graduates
Featuring work by more than 120 graduating students, the annual Elam show runs from Saturday 20 to Sunday 21 November 2010, from 10.00am to 5.00pm. This link takes you to a map of the exhibition venues.
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Rosanna Albertini's hand-made book NEW ZEALAND WITH AN ITALIAN ACCENT – on the wings of artists – will be launched on Saturday 20 November 2010 from 5.00 – 7.00pm in Christopher Wilde's solo exhibition at Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Bergamot Station, Santa Monica. You can order a copy of the limited edition book (made in 100 numbered copies) at rosanna@albertini.ws
Image: cover image and binding conceived by Christopher Wilde
Leigh Davis Flag Poems in Time, Text & Echoes
The images above are of Leigh Davis flag poems presented in the JAR exhibition Time, Text & Echoes, a 300-day project of 30 poem flags presented one at a time in a sequence of ten-day hoists. The exhibition runs to March 2011.
Images: Leigh Davis flag poems presented in the JAR exhibition Time, Text & Echoes (2010 – 2011), New North Road, Kingsland, NZ. From the top: Consider Rosellas, Pacific's Disturbed, Speed Descends, all works dyed polyester knit appliqued onto dyed woven bunting, with canvas head, sisal halyard and brass clips, 1.5 x 3.5m
SCREENS online gallery for art interactives
SCREENS is a new online gallery for art interactives created and curated by Luke Munn and Jeff Nusz. Modeled on the practice of art galleries and taking advantage of digital distribution, SCREENS promotes this emerging art form by “commissioning new work, displaying it in a professional way, engaging a broad audience and fostering critical discussion.”
Upstairs at Starkwhite
Image: Layla Rudneva-Mckay, Blue (2009), C-type photograph, 470 x 470mm, starkwhite@starkwhite.co.nz
Layla Rudneva-Mackay floor talk at Artspace
Layla Rudneva-Mackay discusses her work in the exhibition A Rock That Was Taught it Was A Bird at Artspace today at 3.00pm.
Image: Layla Rudneva-Mackay, Taking a moment to lose himself, when found most unexpectedly squashed between a mattress and its base, 2006-2007, C-type print, installation view, Artspace, Auckland, NZ.
Installation views of Martin Basher's sculpture for the Public Art Fund, NYC
Martin Basher's three large-scale mirrored vitrines appear reflective and slightly translucent by day, revealing their contents only at night. Lit from within and stocked with both high- and low-end consumer products, fabricated structures, and hand-made paintings, the cubes begin to mimic retail spaces where strange paintings hypothesize a future satisfied by consumer desires. Blending together ideas of retail display, advertising and Modernism, Basher's work questions the environmental and social implications of consumption in our times. From the Public Art Fund website
Minimal Consumption/Reflective Sublime/Aspirational Sunset Art can be viewed at Brooklyn's MetroTech Plaza in the Public Art Fund exhibition TOTAL RECALL.
Image: installation views of Martin Basher's public art work Minimal Consumption/Reflective Sublime/Aspirational Sunset Art, commissioned by the Public Art Fund, NYC for the exhibition TOTAL RECALL at the MetroTech Plaza, downtown Brooklyn
What's the secret?
RCA secret is an annual contemporary art exhibition and sale of around 2,500 post-card sized artworks made and donated by artists, designers and illustrators, plus up-and-coming-students and alumni from the Royal College of Art. The cards are all sold to the public, with every postcard costing £45, regardless of whether it has been made by a famous name or a young student.
This year's exhibition takes place on 12 & 14-20 November and includes contributions from John Baldessari, Sir Anthony Caro, Jake Chapman, Olafur Eliasson, Tracey Emin, Grayson Perry, Yinka Shonibare and Franz West. You can view the postcards on-line at the RCA Secret website.
What's the secret? Each postcard is exhibited anonymously and is signed on the back so collectors don't know the identity of the artist until they have made their purchase. To date sales of postcards have raised over £1 million, all going to the Royal College of Art Student Award Fund.
Winning entry for the Frieze Writer's Prize 2010
Frieze has announced Erica Cooke as the winner of this year's Frieze Writer's Prize. She receives two thousand pounds and has been commissioned to write her first review for frieze magazine, to be published in the January/February issue. The judges for 2010 were writer and novelist A.M. Homes, philosopher and critic Boris Groys, along with frieze co-editor Jorg Heiser. You can read Cooke's prize-winning review here.
Jae Hoon Lee's Chiang Mai Family at 4A
Jae Hoon Lee's video Chiang Mai Family is screening in Nomad at Sydney's 4A Contemporary Asian Art. Filmed in rural Thailand, his video of a family's daily life creates a sense of spatial distance between their native home ground and the tourists gaze towards an exotic playground.
For further information on this work or others by the artist please contact us at starkwhite@starkwhite.co.nz
Images: stills from Jae Hoon Lee's Chiang Mai Family (2005), single channel video for monitor or projection, edition of 5