News | Page 48 of 57

A private collection goes public

Built in the late 1870s as a 'gentleman's residence' for Auckland businessman James Williamson, Auckland's historic Pah Homestead will soon become the home of the James Wallace Art Trust's collection and be known as the TSB Bank Wallace Arts Centre. The new Centre opens in August 2010 with an exhibition drawn from the Trust's collection.

Image: Pah Homestead, Auckland NZ, soon to become the TSB Bank Wallace Arts Centre

A toxic brand

BP has announced that it will continue its arts sponsorships as pressure grows for damages arising from its disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The announcement comes in the wake of concerns amongst UK arts organisations that the cost of the clean up operation in the Gulf might force BP to scale back its support for the arts at a time when Government spending on the arts is about to be slashed amid efforts to cut public debt.

When questioned about the sponsorships the British Museum, the Royal Opera House, Tate Britain and the National Portrait Gallery in London rallied around BP issuing a joint statement praising the oil company for its contribution to the arts and cultural life of the country. And in another attempt to put a positive spin on the sponsorships the chief executive of Arts & Business in the UK, Colin Tweedy, said: “If they were spending billions on it some people might say it was a waste of shareholders' money which should be spent on cleaning up beaches. Saving that money will not do anything to the coastline of America.”

As oil from the Deepwater Horizon rig continues to gush into the Gulf of Mexico and pressure mounts for cultural institutions to distance themselves from the oil giant, it seems likely that sponsored museums and galleries will face more spirited attempts from arts and environmental activists to position BP's arts sponsorships as a toxic brand, despite the best efforts of their spin doctors.

Image: oil continuing to gush from the broken wellhead at the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil well in the Gulf of Mexico

2010 Shanghai Biennale

The curatorial committee of the Shanghai Biennale recently held a conference in which curators Fan Di'an, Li Lei, Hua Yi and Gao Shiming revealed their vision for the upcoming biennale scheduled for late October 2010. Titled The Tournament Art Exhibition, the 8th Shanghai Biennale will feature several collaborative projects. Working with Long March Project the Biennale will launch a programme called Ho Chi Minh Trail in which international and local artists, curators and scholars will be invited to participate in panel discussions in each historic city on the itinerary. Other highlights include a collaboration with NY-based Performa and an experimental drama co-produced with Manifesta.

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

Contraflow review

This link takes you to a review of Matt Henry's exhibition Contraflow, which runs to 17 July 2010.

Image: Matt Henry, Contraflow, Starkwhite, June 2010

Guggenheim and You Tube search for the World's best online video

The Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation and You Tube have announced the launch of You Tube Play. A Biennale of Creative Video which aims to discover and showcase the most exceptional talent working in the realm of online video. A jury of experts comprising celebrated figures from the worlds of art, design, film and entertainment will select up to 20 videos submitted from around the world to be presented at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum on October 21, 2010 with simultaneous presentations at the Guggenheim museums in Berlin, Bilbao and Venice. The works will also be available to an international audience on the special You Tube Play channel. You can find out more about the project here, including how to participate.

Image: You Tube Play. A Biennale of Creative Video. Design by Jeff Baxter adapted from a photograph by David Heald. Sourced from artdaily.org, Courtesy of the Guggenheim Museum

Contraflow installation views

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Matt Henry: Contraflow runs to 17 July 2010.

Art Basel: Art Parcours

Art Parcours is the lastest entry to Art Basel's lineup of sections, one that Sarah Douglas says gave “a whiff of biennale spirit to the centre of art-world commerce” with nine installations deposited in various sites throughout the city. Curated by Jens Hoffmann, director of the CCA Wattis Institute in San Francisco, the project paired each urban locale with a “rhyming piece” by the artists involved. This link takes you to Sarah Douglas' ARTINFO article on Art Parcours.

Image: The scene at Martha Rosler's garage sale, part of the new Art Parcours section at Art Basel 2010

Art Basel 2010

These links take you to articles on Art Basel 2010: The Art Newspaper, New York Times and Bloomberg.

Image: Messeplatz, courtesy Art Basel

Matt Henry: Contraflow opening

Matt Henry's exhibition Contraflow opens tomorrow (Monday 21 June) at 5.30 pm. You can read the exhibition release here.

Image: Matt Henry, Control 2010, acrylic on linen, frame, perspex, 305 x 305 mm

Moving on

Heather Galbraith has stepped down from her curatorial position at the City Gallery Wellington to become the new Senior Curator Art at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.

Image: Forecourt and entrance to The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

Asian art hubs

This link takes you to a Sydney Morning Herald article by John McDonald on the emergence of ART HK as a powerful new Asian art hub and what it means for Australia, and in particular for the Melbourne Art Fair and Australian collectors.

Charlotte Huddleston on the move

Charlotte Huddleston is the new director of AUT's St Paul Street Gallery. She replaces Leonhard Emmerling who left earlier this year to take up a position with the Goethe Institut in Munich. For the past four years Charlotte has been the curator of contemporary art at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.

LIQUID STATE

Reading Room is a peer-reviewed journal of contemporary art and culture published annually by the E H McCormick Research Library at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki. Each issue is themed and features essays from local and international writers, artists' commissions and an archive section.

The theme for the latest issue springs from the idea of the Pacific as a non-place because it cannot claim identity in relation to a land mass. It addresses our liquid state as a problem and a possibility and as a counter to 'solid' thinking.

Reading Room 4 presents essays that treat liquidity as a tool to rethink nation, as a means to envisage new notions of connectivity and mobility, as a metaphor for being, or quite literally to focus on water as both medium and resource, suggesting as Sean Cubitt does in his essay The Ordering of Worlds: Two Recent Video Works by Stella Brennan “that this non-place offers a perspective from which to reconsider the 'order of the world'.”

The issue also has a section dedicated to Julian Dashper (1960 – 2009) with tributes from friends and colleagues around the world.

Image: Cover of Reading Room 4 LIQUID STATE, 2010, published by the E H McCormick Research Library at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki

Upstairs at Starkwhite

This week we are installing Matt Henry's Contraflow exhibition downstairs, but we have works from stock on display in our upstairs galleries.

Images: Whitney Bedford, Pink Iceberg (Odessa), 2010, ink and oil paint on panel, Gavin Hipkins, New Age (Falls), 2009, archival pigment print, 800 x 800mm

Coming up at Starkwhite

Matt Henry's exhibition Contraflow runs in our downstairs space from 21 June to 17 July 2010. We'll post the preview date and link to the exhibition release later next week.

Image: Matt Henry, Untitled relief from the series 16:9 (Green) 2010, acrylic on linen, 1294 x 1150mm

Review of Bible Studies exhibition

This link takes you to an EyeContact review of Gavin Hipkins' exhibition Bible Studies (New Testament).

Image: Gavin Hipkins, Abducted Young, Bible Studies (New Testament) 2008 -2009 series, C-type print, 1200 x 1300mm

Lehman Brothers art collection goes to market

Liquidators of the world's most notorious failed bank have announced that another slice of the Lehman Brothers' art collection will go under the hammer in September at an auction expected to raise $10m. The proceeds will go to creditors who are still owed billions of dollars following the bank's collapse in September 2008.

Lawrence McDonald, a former Lehman vice-president whose book A Colossal Failure of Common Sense chronicled the bank's collapse, said Lehman's art was off limits to the vast majority of the bank's workforce. “There was no art on the trading floors – and out of 25,000, very few ever saw the 31st floor,” said McDonald who believes senior executives' penchant for art was a result of “becoming consumed with legacy, with power and with projection of power”.

Unnerved publication

With essays by exhibition curator Maud Page and independent curator/critic Wystan Curnow, this publication accompanies the exhibition Unnerved: The New Zealand Project, which runs at Brisbane's Gallery of Modern Art and Australian Cinematheque to 4 July 2010. You can read Maud Page's introductory essay here.

Image: cover image for Unnerved: The New Zealand Project, published by the Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, image from the QAG/GoMA website

Merewether on the move

Charles Merewether is the new director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore (ICAS), the curatorial division of the LASALLE College of the Arts. ICAS runs LASALLE's gallery, which has 1500 square metres of exhibition space dedicated to exploring new and experimental art from Asia.

Following a ten-year stint as collections curator at the Getty Research Centre in Los Angeles, Merewether was the artistic director and curator of the 15th Biennale of Sydney, Zones of Conflict. His lineup of artists included Auckland-based artists Stella Brennan and John Reynolds.

Merewether's most recent publications include Under Construction: Ai Weiwei (2008) and Art, Anti-Art, Non-Art: Experimentations in the Public Sphere in Postwar Japan 1950-1970 (2007).

Sarah Douglas on ART HK

This link takes you to an article on ART HK 2010 by Sarah Douglas. Like many commentators, she sees ART HK as the regional front-runner to become the Art Basel of Asia, citing the lineup of blue-chip galleries from the West at this year's edition (many for the first time) and a record attendance figure of over 46,000 (up from 30,000 in 2009) as signs of a fair on the rise.

Sales also appear to be up. She says: “The spirit at ART HK hardly harkened back to boom time buying mania – collectors weren't dashing through the aisles frantically making purchases, but rather were taking their time with decisions. Many sales were finalised on the last day, and the fair benefited from a jolt of market optimism toward the end when Christies conducted a rousing auction of modern and contemporary art at the convention centre that brought in over $213m.”

Image: visitors photographing the Tracey Emin neon at Lehmann Maupin, ART HK 2010, photograph by Sarah Douglas

Bible Studies final week

Gavin Hipkins' exhibition Bible Studies (New Testament) closes on Saturday 12 June.

Image: Gavin Hipkins, Flock and Pack, Bible Studies (New Testament) 2008-2009, C-type photograph, 1700 x 1200mm

Alicia Frankovich: Effigies

Alicia Frankovich's exhibition Effigies opens tonight at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery and runs to 19 September 2010. The exhibition is the result of eight intensive weeks of researching and building a series of discrete sculptural elements relating to the body.

Image: Alicia Frankovich, Rapture 2010, neon, cord, plugs, t-shirt and string

Ready to Roll

Curated by Heather Galbraith, Ready to Roll is an exhibition with a straightforward premise – great art being made now by artists with a clear sense of direction and an individual voice. The exhibition, which includes works by Layla Rudneva-Mackay, runs at the City Gallery, Wellington to 12 September 2010.This link takes you to the Ready to Roll page on the Gallery website.

Images: Ready to Roll Masthead; Layla Rudneva-Mackay, 2009, Light Pink, C-type photograph

An art magazine for contemporary China

LEAP is the bilingual art magazine of contemporary China with an editorial team headed by independent curator Philip Tinari. You can read Tinari's magazine manifesto here. Launched last week at ART HK, the third issue of LEAP features extensive coverage on China's emerging relationship with Africa and a section on how museums are hewed from former industrial and infrastructural spaces.

Image: Cover LEAP 1, February 2010. Shown: Huang Yong Ping, Sand Bank/Bank of Sand, 2000

Showcasing Hirst at ART HK

ARTRON.net reports that Hirst is still a major brand name in the East – where brand names are all-important. As any visitor to Hong Kong knows, the city-scape is awash with designer hoardings and Hirst is one of the names, along with Warhol and Picasso, that rings the right bells for new Asian buyers.

At this year's edition of ART HK, White Cube capitalised on the Asian fascination with brands by showing Hirst's work in a “special project stand”, separate to their main booth, dominated by a fluttering dove in formaldehyde, The Inescapable Truth (2005). According to director Tim Marlow, this is the first time any formaldehyde work has been shown in Asia and by the end of the first day it had been sold to an Asian collector for £1.75m.

This link takes you to an article on ART HK and more on White Cube's strategy to showcase Hirst at the fair.

Images: White Cube's special project stand at ART HK 2010

ART HK: last day

Thousands of visitors poured into ART HK over the weekend. Foot-traffic along the aisles slowed to a crawl and booths were jam-packed with viewers armed with cameras. Collectors making their final rounds had to battle crowds to get to works they wanted to see again and dealers prayed they'd get through to the end of each day with their works unscathed.

Starkwhite at ART HK 2010

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ART HK: Day 2

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ART HK Vernissage

The third edition of ART HK opened last night with a preview followed by a lively vernissage. Over 10,000 people poured into the event over a few hours fueling predictions that the fair will easily beat last years record attendance of just over 30,000 visitors. With many galleries reporting good sales on the first night, Art HK appears to be off to a good start.

The Real Art Roadshow

Founded by Fiona Campbell, The Real Art Roadshow moves contemporary art to schools around New Zealand in two customised trucks set up to display art and run education classes. You can read our earlier posting on the Real Art Roadshow here.

Last year the Real Art Roadshow visited 6 public places, 132 schools and had over 70,000 visitors through their doors. It's a great project, all funded by private patronage and contributions from supporters. But like all independently funded projects, it needs ongoing financial support. If you'd like to help, this link takes you to the Real Art Roadshow website where you can find out more about their programme and how to make a contribution.

Images: The Real Art Roadshow at Warbirds over Wanaka and the interior of one of the art trucks

Current shows and gallery hours

We are in Hong Kong this week for ART HK 2010. While we are away at the fair our gallery hours are Monday to Friday 11.00am to 5.00pm and Saturday 11.00am to 4.00pm. Downstairs we are showing Gavin Hipkins Bible Studies (New Testament) 2008-2009 and upstairs we have works from stock.

Image: Matt Henry, TPS-L2 (Naptholl Red), 2010, acrylic on linen, 90 x 135 x 30mm

ART HK

Next week we'll be at ART HK. The fair kicks off with a preview and vernissage on Wednesday 26 May and then runs from 27 – 30 May 2010. As usual, we'll be posting images and reports on the event from Hong Kong.

Singapore's Fort Knox for art

Singapore has opened a maximum-security vault for art, gold and valuables signaling the city-state's ambitions to match Hong Kong and and Beijing as an Asian centre for art. Singapore FreePort has 30,000sqm of strongrooms, which are inside Changi airport allowing non-resident collectors to store valuables without paying tax or filing customs forms. FreePort also has exhibition space launched with a by-appointment exhibition presented by a Geneva-based art dealer.

Tommy Koh, Chairman of the National Heritage Board, which runs Singapore's museums decribes the FreePort as “a golden link in the value chain to promote Singapore as a centre for art, culture and antiquities and for the storage and sale of such high value items.”

Lorenzo Rudolf says “It's like Fort Knox.” Rudolf also appears to be a prime mover in the plan to position Singapore as a regional art hub linked to the international art market. The former director of Art Basel, ShContemporary and creator of ArtParis+Guests has launched ART STAGE SINGAPORE, a new art fair scheduled for 12 – 16 January 2011.

Image: Singapore FreePort designed by Swiss architects Benedicte Montant and Carmelo Stendardo

Toxic memorabilia

A porcelain sign that marked the intersection of Wall and Broad Street, near the New York Stock Exchange, is to be sold by Christies in Manhattan next month and is estimated to fetch between USD80,000 – 90,000. Who would have thought a piece of contaminated memorabilia would be worth so much? For most of us, 'Wall Street' conjurs up the creators of the toxic financial instruments that triggered a worldwide recession sending the international art market into freefall.