On Wednesday 15 April Starkwhite will present a concert from acclaimed Auckland-based musician Dean Roberts which will be performed with a cast of collaborators including Matthew Sunderland (Vocals), Chris O'Connor (Drums, Percussion) and Paul Williams (Cello). Roberts is one of New Zealand’s leading practitioners in the field of contemporary music and has produced a number of albums to critical acclaim. His releases on Staubgold, Mille Plateaux and Kranky Records are regarded as touchstones of contemporary experimental music. He weaves elements of rock, electro-acoustic, minimalism and free improvisation into unusually affecting song cycles that sound equally avant-futuristic and hauntingly ancient, like the ghost of songs past. His album The Black Moths Play the Grand Cinema was described by the Wire Magazine as: “A tremendous achievement where everything fits, less of an attempt to blend genres than a demonstration of how for the truly imaginative, genres remain utterly meaningless.” Roberts plays Red Memory song-cycle at Starkwhite on Wednesday 15 April at 8.00pm. Entry: $10 suggested donation.
Image: Dean Roberts and collaborators in concert

Hye Rim Lee's video Lash is screening at Te Papa The Museum of New Zealand in the exhibition We are unsuitable for framing. The exhibition runs to 26 July 2009.
Image: Hye Rim Lee, Lash, 2005, single channel video

New York blogger Zach Klein with Peter Stichbury’s Zach Klein, one of a suite of Stichbury paintings presented by Starkwhite at artLA 09.

Dane Mitchell is on his way to Berlin to take up a one-year residency in the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Programme. He is the first New Zealand artist to be awarded a place in this internationally renowned programme since its beginning in 1968. He joins a line up of DAAD artists that includes: Carl Andre, Daniel Buren, Douglas Gordon, Dan Graham, Damien Hirst, Ilya Kabakov, On Kawara, Nam June Paik, Bridget Riley, Pippilotti Rist, Lawrence Weiner and Rachel Whiteread.
Image: Dane Mitchell, Particulate Analysis, 2006, C-type print

Free Spirit No Interest runs to 4 April 2009
Images: Martin Basher, Free Spirit No Interest, 2009, installation views, Starkwhite, Auckland, NZ

Starkwhite artist Gavin Hipkins is one of the contributors to a round table discussion on The State of Art and Discourse in New Zealand published in issue/03 2009 of Reading Room A Journal of Art and Culture. Editor Christina Barton says: “The purpose of this round table was to focus on the situation for art and discourse in New Zealand at this historical juncture. Given that the globalisation of the art world is one of the contemporary’s strongest rhetorical claims, the editors of Reading Room (Christina Barton, Natasha Conland and Wystan Curnow) believed it was timely and worthwhile to situate the discussion within a local frame.” The other contributors were: Emma Budgen Director of Artspace (Auckland); Peter Brunt, art historian; Greg Burke, Director of the Power Plant (Toronto); Robert Leonard, Director of the Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane); and Damian Skinner, freelance curator and writer. Reading Room A Journal of Art and Culture is published by the E.H. McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki.
Image: Luis Jacob, A Dance for Those Whose of Us Whose Hearts Have Turned to Ice, video (DVD), 2007.

<2008>Interstitial Zones
Historical Facts, Archaeologies of the Present and Dialectics of Seeing
Argos, Centre for Art & Media

2008 the social meaning of things, Cloudlands, Aotearoa Digital Arts,
substation in association with ISEA Singapore, July 08

2008 altruistic studies _vote more than once, Art Unlimited
Art 39 Basel, Switzerland. June 2 – June 9. Starkwhite et al.

2007 attempting to engineer a telepathic exchange – instance 2714, Project Arts Centre, Dublin, Ireland, 2 NOV – 1 DEC 2007.

http://etal.name

Hye Rim Lee's work will feature in Glass Stress, an exhibition organised by the Mjellby Konstmuseum for the Collateral Events Programme of the 53rd Venice Biennale. The line up of artists includes: Louise Bourgeois, Tony Cragg, Dan Graham, Mona Hartoum, Roni Horn and Joseph Kosuth.
Image: Hye Rim Lee, from the Crystal City series, 2008, C-type photograph

Starkwhite will present Table of Dynasties by John Reynolds at the Hong Kong International Art Fair (ART HK 09) from May 14 – 17 2009. The title of the work is a reference to its organising strategy and a term from Edward Lucie-Smith’s Dictionary of Art Terms, designed to serve as a field guide to the arts. From 'abacus' and 'adhocism', to 'ex-voto' and 'eye-catcher', and 'terrazzo' and 'Ting ware, Ting yao', the book covers the vocabulary of visual art in all its forms. Its entries include non-Western terminology and tracks contemporary approaches to art. Staged as a tableau of 1800 canvas blocks mounded up on a group of table tops, the work will read as a collision of competing words, terms, periods and materials – not unlike the art world itself.
Image: John Reynolds, Table of Dynasties (detail), 2009, oil paint marker on acrylic on canvas

Over the past few years Starkwhite has worked occasionally with John Reynolds, staging The Book of Hours, a collaborative project between Reynolds and Leigh Davis (2002), WORKS END (2008) and commissioning two large outdoor works (Snow Tussock and Golden Spaniard) for a park in East Otago. Recently the artist and gallery formed a partnership enabling them to work together on international projects. While Reynolds will continue his longstanding relationship with his New Zealand galleries, Starkwhite will represent him internationally.

Boris Dornbusch's project In All Applications, In All Departments is currently showing at the Te Tuhi Centre for Contemporary Art.
Image: Boris Dornbusch, In All Applications, In All Departments, 2009, video projection, helium, latex, metal chain, fool's gold

Oddooki, an installation of five egg-shaped sculptures by Seung Yul Oh is showing on Te Papa's Sculpture Court to May 2009. Each sculpture contains internal elements, such as bells, to produce sounds as the sculptures rock in the wind or through interactions with visitors to the courtyard. Oh views them as performance sculptures – akin to a small orchestra waiting to be played by the wind or people in the space.
Image: Seung Yul Oh at the Te Papa opening of Oddooki

Glen Hayward and Dane Mitchell are represented in F for FAKE which runs at the Te Tuhi Centre for Contemporary Art to 12 April 2009.
Image: Glen Hayward, Paint Tins, 2005, acrylic on carved wood

Martin Basher's exhibition Free Spirit No Interest is showing at Starkwhite to 4 April 2009.
Image: Martin Basher, Free Spirit No Interest, 2009, Installation shot

Dane Mitchell's exhibition Bent Light is showing in Starkwhite's space for occasional projects to 4 April 2009.
Image: Dane Mitchell, Bent Light, 2008, reaction vessel, pencil, water

Jae Hoon Lee leaves Auckland at the end of March for a four month stint in Korea, Japan and India researching and creating work for exhibitions in Auckland and Sydney in 2010.
Image: Jae Hoon Lee, Escape Velocity, 2008, digitally collaged photograph

Starkwhite is committed to showcasing the work of new artists in its annual programme, mostly through solo exhibitions staged in the upstairs galleries. This year the gallery opened with a downstairs group show by Akiko Diegel, Boris Dornbusch and Trenton Garratt, accompanied by a piece of writing by Genevieve Allison.
Image: Works by Trenton Garratt & Boris Dornbusch from the new artists' exhibition, February 2009.