News | Page 45 of 57

A sign of the times?

Arts Council England has said it will cut most recipients grants by 15% by 2015 and shrink its own staff to meet government belt-tightening requirements. The Council's operating costs, of which staff account for 56%, will be halved to 12 million pounds in real terms by 2015. Chief Executive Colin Davey says “it will quite a different Arts Council with fewer people doing things in a different way”.

The cuts take in Arts & Business, the 34-year-old nonprofit group that helps cultural organisations get funding from companies, trusts and foundations, and wealthy individuals. Arts & Business will see its 3.8 million pound grant halved in 2011-12, then cut off completely. The move has taken CEO Colin Tweedy by surprise who says, “it's not what you would normally do if you want to encourage the private sector to do more.”

New Zealand's Minister of Arts, Culture & Heritage, Chris Finlayson would agree. He has set up a taskforce to investigate ways to improve philanthropic giving. “The Cultural Philanthropy Taskforce is interested in finding out how to increase charitable giving by private individuals over and above – not instead of – Government funding”, he says. Mind you, the Minister's commitment to maintaining arts funding could be put to the test as the economy continues to stutter along and the Government faces the possibility of an election year recession on its watch.

The Cultural Philanthropy Taskforce is headed up by Peter Biggs (former chair of Creative New Zealand) and the other members are Margaret Belich, Carolyn Henwood, James S Hill, Dame Jenny Gibbs and Dayle Mace.

Installation views of The Story Of A Window

This link takes you to installation views of The Story Of A Window at Neon Parc, Melbourne. Staged in association with Starkwhite and Altman Siegel (San Francisco), the exhibition by Matt Keegan & Dane Mitchell runs to 20 November 2010.

Image: Matt Keegan & Dane Mitchell, The Story Of A Window, installation view, Neon Parc, Melbourne, 2010. Photograph courtesy of the artists and Neon Parc.

Last few days of BEYOND

Our current exhibition BEYOND closes on Wednesday at 6.00pm.

Image: installation view of Tamar Guimaraes' A Man Called Love (2007) in the exhibition BEYOND, Starkwhite, Auckland, 2010

Unnerved: The New Zealand Project at the NGV

Curated by Maud Page, Unnerved: The New Zealand Project closed recently at GoMA, Brisbane and will open at the National Gallery of Victoria on 25 November 2010.

Unnerved includes Gavin Hipkins' The Homely, which has been described as a post-colonial gothic novel. Through a cinematic run of 80 images, which are often slightly blurry and filled with the colours of a dreamscape, Hipkins re-presents monuments and memorials of Australia and New Zealand nationalism with fragmented glimpses of domestic interiors and museum dioramas. He also says: “Although New Zealand has an international reputation for being clean, green and beautiful (a mythology that New Zealanders often call on to represent ourselves) it is the treatment and conquest of nature as an adventure playground that interests me with this project”.

Images: Gavin Hipkins' The Homely (1997-2000), installation view at Brisbane's GoMA in the exhibition Unnerved: The New Zealand Project. Photograph by Natasha Harth

Coming up at Starkwhite

BEYOND closes on Wednesday 3 November and will be followed by a Martin Basher exhibition of works made during his recent residency at the Colin McCahon House in Titirangi. We'll post more details on the show and the opening date next week.

Image: a recent work photographed in Martin Basher's McCahon House studio

Jae Hoon Lee stages an interplay of real and virtual experiences at 4A

Jae Hoon Lee's exhibition NOMAD opens tonight at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. The exhibition, which follows his recent Ground Zero show at Starkwhite, has been developed with 4A director and curator Aaron Seeto.

Located on two floors of an historic building in Sydney's Chinatown, 4A began as an initiative of the Asian Artists' Association Inc and evolved into a public artspace dedicated to presenting contemporary Asian art in Australia. Under Seeto's directorship, 4A has become a high-profile hub for cross-cultural discussion and debate.

Image: Jae Hoon Lee, One of these days, 2008, digitally manipulated photograph, 900 x 900mm

Review of BEYOND, artists who engage the paranormal in their practices

This link takes you to a review of our current exhibition BEYOND, featuring works by Tamar Guimaraes (BR), Dane Mitchell (NZ) and Georgina Starr (UK).

Image: Georgina Starr, I am the Medium (2010), sound installation, locked groove vinyl record, turntable, amp and parabolic speaker.

John Reynolds' Tiwatawata: a procession of charred poles across the landscape

Taking its cue from nineteenth century illustrations of local Maori demarcation poles and photos of the eventual fencing of boundaries with the arrival of more recent communities at site of the new Hobsonville Point Park, John Reynolds' recently installed work Tiwatawata dramatises the process of marking off the land.

Consisting of 188 charred and stained wooden poles of various diameters closely staged at irregular distances apart and at differing heights, Reynolds says “Tiwatawata is an artwork IN the landscape rather than ON the landscape, and crucially, a localised drama of edges and site.”
Images: John Reynolds, Tiwatawata (2010), 188 charred and stained poles, installation views, Hobsonville Point Park, Auckland, NZ

BEYOND continues at Starkwhite

Our current exhibition BEYOND runs to Wednesday 3 November 2010.

Image: Dane Mitchell, Apport, 2008 (cinematography by Duncan Cole), 16mm film loop

Shanghai Biennale opens

The 8th Shanghai Biennale, which opens to the public today, defines itself as a 'rehearsal' and as a reflective space of performance. The curators say the Biennale “aims to invite a wide range of participants – artists, curators, critics, collectors, museum directors and members of the audience – to rehearse in the Biennale a fertile theatre to reflect on the relations between art experimentation and the art system, between individual creativity and the public domain.” This link takes you to a full outline of the curatorial thinking of the Biennale, which runs to 23 January 2011.

Image: The 8th Shanghai Biennial Curatorial Committee (from left) Li Lei, Fan Dian, Hua Yi and Gao Shiming

Colin Chinnery moves on from ShContemporary

Colin Chinnery has moved on from ShContemporary to devote more time to his own work, but will remain involved with the fair working as an advisor. Chinnery introduced a fresh vision to Shanghai's international art fair enabling it to become a producer of ideas as well an Asian outpost of the art market. His recent fair included Discoveries: Re-Value a thematic exhibition highlighting the confrontation between different ideas of artistic and commercial value and a conference co-organised with Hou Hanru on the theme Collecting Asian Art: What, When and How?

Chinnery will be replaced by Massimo Torrigiani, co-founder and director of Boiler Corporation, a publishing company and creative agency focused on contemporary visual art and culture, which also produces the Milan and New York-based Fantom – Photographic Quarterly.

Image: Colin Chinnery

Martin Basher sculpture commissioned by the Public Art Fund, NYC

Earlier this year Martin Basher was selected to produce a new public sculpture for the Public Art Fund, New York's premiere public arts organisation. The sculpture will be on view for ten months, beginning 3 November 2010, as part of TOTAL RECALL, a five-person show at MetroTech Plaza in downtown Brooklyn. He is the first New Zealander to be invited to work with the Public Art Fund.

This link takes you to a report on TOTAL RECALL published in the New York Times (see Futuristic Public Art).

The Public Art Fund is New York's leading presenter of artists' projects, new commissions and exhibitions in public spaces. For over 30 years it has been committed to working with emerging and established artists to produce innovative exhibitions of contemporary art throughout New York City. By bringing in artworks outside the traditional context of museums and galleries, the Public Art Fund provides a platform for public encounters with the art of our time. Key works commissioned by the Fund include those by Jeff Koons, Rachel Whiteread, Olafur Eliasson and Anish Kapoor.

Images from Martin Basher's Public Art Fund proposal

Matt Keegan & Dane Mitchell at Neon Parc

Layla Rudneva-Mackay at Artspace

Layla Rudneva-Mackay's photograph Taking a moment to lose himself, when found most unexpectedly squashed between a mattress and its base, features in the exhibition A Rock That Thought It Was A Bird at Artspace. Curator Emma Bugden says: “The work is from a series in which the subjects are literally masked by their interaction with simple domestic elements – a curtain, a bed, a sheet. A tableaux is performed, one in which the protagonist is somehow consumed and integrated into the environment.”

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.

ART HK on the rise

“Lots of people have their eye on Hong Kong – it is the best performing market and China's bonded warehouse”, Iwan Wirth told the The Art Newspaper earlier this year. ART HK director Magnus Renfrew is rapidly establishing himself as one of the gatekeepers of this haven for tax-free art sales and this year takes 92nd place on The Power 100, ArtReview's guide to the general trends, networks and forces that shape the art world.

We presented John Reynolds' A Table of Dynasties at ART HK 2009 and a group show at ART HK 2010 and we'll be announcing our lineup for the 2011 edition of the fair in the New Year.

Image: Magnus Renfrew, director of ART HK

Jim Speers: Te Tuhi to Titirangi

Jim Speers moves into the McCahon House today for a 3-month residency and his exhibition Numerology and Territories runs at the Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts, Manukau to 5 December 2010.

Images: Jim Speers, Hanger #1 (2010), brass, 800 x 300mm; VeilSide (2010), steel, 60 x 200 x 90mm; Numerology House (2010) steel, 80 x 100 x 200mm

Glen Hayward awarded a McCahon House Residency

Glen Hayward has been awarded a place in the 2011 McCahon House Residency Programme. He will move into the McCahon house and studio in July after completing a three-month residency at Altes Spital in Solothurn, Switzerland courtesy of a Kaipara Foundation Wallace Arts Trust Award.

Images: McCahon House, Titirangi, designed by Pete Bossley; Glen Hayward, Closed Circuit, 2010, acrylic on carved wood

Superflux at Starkwhite

Vitamin-S presents Superflux at Starkwhite on Sunday 17 October at 7.00pm (admission is $10).

Superflux is a quartet of artists from Grenoble, France, who for the last fifteen years have been engaged in exploring the relationship between performance and the screen image. The members of the collective employ digital technology with treated analogue sound and film, and present this through equally customised equipment. Through sound and film, Superflux efface boundaries between performance art and documentation, questioning the idea that aural and visual art media function only as frames – either subservient to performance or invisibly conditioning performance.

A Rock That Was Taught It Was A Bird opens tonight at Artspace

Layla Rudneva-Mackay is one of the four artists presenting stand-alone projects in the exhibition A Rock That Was Taught It Was A Bird, which opens tonight at Auckland's Artspace.

Image: Poster still from Simple Gesture and Temporary Sculpture, Koki Tanaka, DVD, 2008, courtesy of the artist and Aoyama Meguro Gallery, Tokyo

Apple and Hockney chatting about the 60s

Image: Billy Apple chats to David Hockney at The Mayor Gallery, London which is currently showing Billy Apple – British and American Works 1960-69.
Image: Billy Apple with David Hockney at The Mayor Gallery. Photo courtesy of Murray Crane.

Leigh Davis Flag Poem at JAR

Image: Leigh Davis, A Suspension Bridge, flag poem, presented in the JAR exhibition Time, Text & Echoes (2010-2011) New North Road, Kingsland, Auckland, NZ

Alicia Frankovich in residence at the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien's new premises

Alicia Frankovich has taken up a 12-month, CNZ-funded residency at the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien's new premises located between Fraenkelufer and Kottbusser Tor. The refurbished building provides more space for events, more artists' studios (25) and better workshops.

Previous recipients of the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien residency award are: Peter Robinson (2000), Michael Stevenson (2002), Ronnie van Hout (2004), Mladen Bzumic (2006) and Sara Hughes (2008).

Image: Alicia Frankovich, Piston (2010), found objects, hook, ball from Milan, Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki; Christoph Tannert and Peter Funken at the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien's new premises

Wystan Curnow in Tuscany to work on a new book on Colin McCahon

Wystan Curnow will spend the next six weeks in Tuscany under the Seresin Landfall Residency, awarded to enable him to work on a new book on Colin McCahon. This follows two significant publication projects in 2009. He co-edited with Tyler Cann a new book on Len Lye published by the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery and the Len Lye Foundation, and collaborated with Lawrence Weiner on his book The Other Side of a Cul-de-Sac.

Joint artistic directors for the 2012 Biennale of Sydney

The Biennale of Sydney has announced the appointment of of Catherine de Zegher and Gerald McMaster as joint artistic directors of the next event in 2012. It is the first time a curatorial duo has been appointed to direct the exhibition and programme, but not the first time the two have worked together. Recently they collaborated at the Art Gallery of Ontario, where they participated in the re-installation of the Gallery's collection, and they worked together on the exhibition Draw and Tell: Lines of Transformation at the Drawing Centre in New York.

Gerald McMaster has been the Frederik S. Eaton Curator, Canadian Art, Art Gallery of Ontario since 2005 and Catherine de Zegher is currently Guest Curator at, Department of Drawings, Museum of Modern Art, New York and Visiting Curator, Tapies Foundation Barcelona.

Catherine de Zegher believes Australia is on the verge of taking a central stage in outlining a new world view for the future. She says: “With large shifts happening on a global scale, from East to West and North to South, I think Sydney and its Biennale are best positioned to epitomise the transition of divisive modernist structures and systems into fluent dynamics of a 21st-century thinking that is connective and independent, and to showcase an art that shapes and corresponds to these recent processes of changing awareness.”

Critics' Picks: Billy Apple

This link takes you to Anthony Byrt's review of Billy Apple – British and American Works 1960-69 published at Art forum's Critics' Picks.

Image: Billy Apple at The Mayor Gallery London in the exhibition Billy Apple – British and American Works 1960-69

Anthony Haden-Guest in conversation with Billy Apple

Anthony Haden-Guest, editor of Charles Saatchi's online magazine, talks to Billy Apple about his current exhibition at The Mayor Gallery, New York in the 60s and other things.

BEYOND opens tonight at Starkwhite

At 5.30pm tonight we open Beyond, an exhibition of works by three artists who engage the paranormal in their practices – Tamar Guimaraes' A Man Called Love, works from Dane Mitchell's Conjuring Form project and Georgina Starr's I Am The Medium.

If you would like more information on the exhibition, please contact us at starkwhite@starkwhite.co.nz

Image: Georgina Starr, I am the Medium (2010), sound installation, locked groove vinyl record, turntable, amp and parabolic speaker. Photograph courtesy of the artist

Peter Stichbury at Tracy Williams Ltd, NY

Peter Stichbury's first solo exhibition at Tracy Williams Ltd New York runs to 30 October 2010. This link directs you to The New Yorker's take on The Proteus Effect.

Images: Peter Stichbury, The Proteus Effect, installation views, Tracy Williams Ltd, New York. Photos courtesy of Tracy Williams

The 2010 Walters Prize

On Friday night Vicente Todoli (former director of the Tate Modern) will announce the winner of this year's Walters Prize.

In a comparatively short time the Walters Prize has become one of the country's most prized art awards. Founding benefactors Erika and Robin Congreve and Dame Jenny Gibbs established the Walters Prize with the Auckland Art Gallery in 2002, positioning themselves as patrons with ideas about how to support artists, not just art gallery benefactors with deep pockets. They were joined in 2006 by art patron Dayle Mace whose contributions ensure that each of the shortlisted contenders receives a finalists prize.

Named after one of New Zealand's greatest artists (Gordon Walters), the Prize is awarded every two years to an artist who has made an outstanding contribution to contemporary visual art in New Zealand. A jury of New Zealand curators and critics select four finalists who present their work in an exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery. On the basis of this presentation an international judge selects the winning artist. The previous judges have been Harald Szeeman (2002), Robert Storr (2004), Carloyn Christov-Bakargiev (2006) and Catherine David (2008). And the Prize has gone to Yvonne Todd, et al., Francis Uprichard and Peter Robinson.

In addition to the $50,000 prize the winner receives an all-expenses-paid trip to New York to exhibit their work in the exhibition space at Saatchi & Saatchi's world headquarters, and thanks to Dayle Mace each of the finalists receives $5,000.

Image: Marti Friedlander's photograph of Gordon Walters

Artist to curate the next Berlin Biennale

Artur Zmijewski has been appointed curator of the 7th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, which will take place in early 2012.

The artist is particularly interested in the power of art and its relation to politics and is well-known for orchestrating social experiments – as in two pivotal works Them (2005) and Repetition (2007) – and for his controversial video art, which involves the participation of people in extreme situations and that often represents historical traumas and catastrophes. From an almost anthropological viewpoint he investigates social norms, morality and representations of power in today's society and the effects that art have on it.

Zmijewski is not the first artist to take the job. Maurizio Cattelan was at the helm of the fourth Biennale, assisted by curators Massimiliano Gioni and Ali Subotnick.

Image: Artur Zmijewski, curator of the 7th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art

Murakami v. conservatives at Versailles

The Art Newspaper reports the director of the Palace of Versailles denies he has caved in to the demands of traditionalist protest groups opposed to his contemporary art programme by agreeing to no longer use the chateau's royal apartments as an exhibition space. Jean-Jacques Aillagon has decided, instead, to mount future shows in other areas of the the 17th century site, following the furore over the current exhibition of works on show there by Takashi Murakami.

Over 12,000 people have signed two anti-Murakami petitions initiated by conservative factions opposed to the “Disneyfication” of the former residence of Louis XIV, a trend they say was kickstarted by the Jeff Koons show launched there in 2008.

And Murakami? He says in an official press statement: “I am the Cheshire Cat who greets Alice in Wonderland with his devilish grin, and chatters on as she wanders around the chateau.”

Image: Takashi Murakami at Versailles, installation view

Time/Bank: bypassing money as a measure of value

e-flux has launched Time/Bank, a platform initiated by Julieta Aranda and Anton Vidokle where groups and individuals can pool and trade time and skills, bypassing money as a measure of value. Time/Bank is based on the premise that everyone in the field of culture has something to contribute and that is possible to develop and sustain an alternative economy by connecting existing needs with unacknowledged resources.

Image: Time currency design by Lawrence Weiner

Coming up at Starkwhite

On Friday 8 October we open Beyond, an exhibition of works by three artists who engage the paranormal in their practices – Tamar Guimaraes' A Man Called Love, works from Dane Mitchell's Conjuring Form project and Georgina Starr's I Am The Medium.

Image: From Tamar Guimaraes' poetic slide show A Man Called Love (2007)

A collision of cultures at Versailles

Takashi Murakami is facing as much resistance for his Manga-inspired exhibition at Versailles as Jeff Koons did two years ago. Agence France-Presse reports a number of petitions are circulating against Murakami's exhibition at the former royal residence of the “Sun King” Louis XIV. According to the President of the public castle, Jean Jacques Aillagon, the protesters come from “extreme right fundamentalist groups and very conservative groups” who want make Versailles into a “reliquary of nostalgia for France of the Ancien Regime, or a France withdrawn into itself and hostile to modernism”.

Murakami says the exhibition is “a face-off between the Baroque period and postwar Japan” and that he hopes it will “create in visitors a sort of shock, an aesthetic feeling”.

Images: Takashi Murakami at the Chateau de Versailles, France

A biennial for artists living outside the mainstream art world

People's Biennial is a project conceived by artist Harrell Fletcher and exhibition-maker Jens Hansen. Organised by Independent Curators International (ICI), People's Biennial is an exhibition that examines the work of artists who operate outside the mainstream art world in the United States. It also proposes an alternative to the the standard contemporary art biennial, which the curators say mostly focuses on art from a few select cities (New York, Los Angeles, occasionally Chicago, Miami or San Francisco). This link takes you to the ICI website and further information on the event.

An outpost for photography

In his latest entry on Outpost curator Ron Brownson says: “I was wondering do many people know the difference between sheet fed gravure printing and platinum printing nowadays?” It's an unusual opening gambit for a gallery blog post, but not an unexpected one for followers of his writing.

Outpost began as a blog for the personal thoughts, opinions and activities of the Auckland Art Gallery staff, but Brownson is using it to publish a lot of writing on photography. Outpost also allows him to present images and writing to a readership while the Auckland Art Gallery's main building is closed for renovations.

It's a smart move. Brownson is developing an online research and publishing project with the potential to inform and enrich the exhibition programme of the Auckland Art Gallery when it re-opens in 2011. In the meantime, Outpost is well worth a visit if you are interested in the history of photography, viewed through a curatorial lens and packaged for a blog.

Image: Auckland Art Gallery renovations, 2010

A virtual museum dedicated to digital media

The Adobe Museum of Digital Media (AMDM) is a virtual space designed to showcase and preserve groundbreaking digital work and to present expert commentary on how digital media influences culture and society. This link takes you to the AMDM site and further information on the new museum project and opening exhibit by Tony Oursler.

Danish Pavilion at the 2010 World Expo, Shanghai

...

The Danish Pavilion at the World Expo in Shanghai is a class act. Bypassing propagandistic advertising, the Danes have combined art and architecture with an icon (Copenhagen's Little Mermaid) creating a spiral shape for visitors to explore while taking in photographs, films and Jeppe Hein's social bench and fountain. As well as animating the architectural space Hein's intervention functions as a barrier between the pedestrians and cyclists who use the cycling lanes that take them from the ground through two curves and up to a level of 12 metres and down again.

Images: from the Bjarke Ingels Group website, Danish Pavilion architects

ShContemporary 2010: a market for ideas

The following links take you to reviews of ShContemporary 2010, the art fair that styled itself as a market for ideas as well as an Asian outpost of the art market: ShContemporary opens with wary dealers and an academic cast and Shanghai's 'messiest' art show is back.

Image: Choi Jeong-Hwa's towering balloon installation at ShContemporary 2010