In a rare honor, photographer Fiona pardington will be named a Knight (Chevalier) in the Order of Arts and Letters (Chevalier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres) by the French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, in a ceremony at the Auckland War Memorial Museum on 1 May.        

She is the first New Zealand visual artist to receive this honour, which recognises eminent artists and writers who have contributed significantly to furthering the arts in France and throughout the world. Other recipients include Sir Peter Jackson (who will also be named at the ceremony on 1 May), George Clooney, Olafur Eliasson, Hou Hanru, Cate Blanchette, Uma Thurman, Tim Burton, Rudolf Nureyev and William S. Burroughs.      

Pardington is receiving the award for her extraordinary, in-depth photographic work and research of the collections held in multiple French museums, recognized also in 2009 when she was awarded the Quai Branly Laureate award, La Residence de Photoquai.      

During her Laureate, which she completed in 2010, she created several bodies of work from the various museum collections, the most renowned being The Pressure of Sunlight Falling were she photographed the casts taken by French phrenologist Dumoutier who was on board Dumont d'Urville's voyage through the Pacific in 1837-1840.      
Fiona Pardington, Portrait of a life-cast of Matoua Tawai (right profile), Aoteroa/New Zealand 20101, courtesy of the Musee de l'Homme, Paris

Gavin Hipkins' latest short film New Age (2016) will have its world premiere in the prestigious International Competition at the 62nd International Short Film Festival Oberhausen.  Oberhausen is one of the leading international film festivals dedicated to short film as a specific medium of artistic expression. In New Age, Hipkins calls on passages from a nineteenth century spiritualist manual. Set within the ritual landscape of Avebury’s stone circles, Hipkins' film imagines a solstice celebration in which spiritualism and spirit photography are revisited in the twenty-first century.

Seung Yul Oh was one of six artists invited to San Francisco recently to experiment with Google Chrome's latest Tilt Brush app that enables artists to use virtual reality to paint space around them. This link takes you to Oh's session.

Gavin Hipkins is represented in Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph at the Govett-Brester Art Gallery. Curated by Geoffrey Batchen, the exhibition explores the cameraless mode of photography from its inception in the 1820s through to contemporary practice by artists like Hipkins. The show runs from 29 April to 14 August 2016.
Gavin Hipkins, The Coil 1998. 32 silver gelatin pints each 510 x 400 mm

Matt Henry shares the physical and aural boundaries of Goya Curtain (Tokyo) with Madoka Kouno in the exhibition Personal Recordings, opening 22 April 2016.

In January we presented a solo exhibition by Michael Zavros at Art Los Angeles Contemporary (ALAC). It's the third solo Zavros show we have presented at art fairs – it follows presentations at at the Melbourne Art Fair in 2014 and Art Basel Hong Kong in 2015 – and it was our fourth participation in ALAC. You can also read our release and see more images of artworks presented at ALAC here. And we have a piece of writing on Zavros by Robert Leonard, published as a PDF, which is available on request (email us at contact@starkwhite.co.nz)
Images: Installation views of Michael Zavros' solo exhibition at Art Los Angeles Contemporary (2016).

Rebecca Baumann is nearing the end of her three-month, Australia Council-funded residency at the Helsinki International Artists Programme where she is researching new works stemming from her interest in color, light and time.
Image: Rebecca Baumann, Improvised Smoke Device, 2010

Daniel Crooks is showing in Bullet Time at the City Gallery Wellington. Curated by Robert Leonard, the exhibition showcases two artists (Crooks and Steve Carr) who explore themes of time. It also places them in conversation with two historical photographers and pioneers of motion study Eadweard Muybridge and Harold Edgerton. Read more…

Crooks is represented by Starkwhite and will present his first solo show at the gallery at the end of June.
Image: Daniel Crooks, Train No. 10 (Onwards Backwards), 2012, currently showing in Bullet Time at the City Gallery Wellington

The Christchurch Art Gallery has acquired Fiona Pardington's Still Life with Wild Wheat and Freesias, one of the works presented recently by Starkwhite at Art Basel Hong Kong (2016).
Image: Fiona Pardington, Still Life with Wild Wheat and Freesias, 2011, dimensions variable

The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation has selected Michael Zavros' Bad Dad as its 2016 appeal acquisition, enabling QAG | GOMA to acquire one of the artist's finest (and most famous) paintings for its collection. Bad Dad was a finalist in the 2013 Archibald Prize (Art Gallery of New South Wales) and featured in the exhibition Bad Dad at Starkwhite in 2014 and in our solo show of Zavros' work at Art Basel Hong Kong 2015. 
Image: Michael Zavros, Bad Dad, 2103, oil on canvas 110 x 150 cm

Our next exhibition, lowercase by Clinton Watkins, runs from 19 April to 14 May. There won't be an opening for this exhibition, but we will be hosting events with the artist throughout the show. Watch this space for more information.
Image: Clinton Watkins, Mono (2015) video still

 

Installation views of Whitney Bedford's exhibition Lost and Found which closes on Thursday 14 April. Read more…

Michael Zavros' The Phoenix is the centerpiece of his installation of still life paintings in the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Magic Object, which opened this weekend at the Art Gallery of South Australia. The installation includes The Twins, two arrays of flowers that perform (slowly) for viewers. Over a period of days the pure white flowers undergo a transformation, hybridising into exotic strains, tipped and striped with painterly washes of pink and blue. 
Image: installation view of Michael Zavros' room in the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art.   

Fiona Pardington has been selected for the inaugural edition of the Honolulu Biennial, scheduled for Spring 2017. The biennial is being curated by Fumio Nanjo, director of the Mori Art Museums, Tokyo. He has served as commissioner of the Japan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (1997), member of the jury for the Turner Prize (1998), co-curator of the 3rd Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (1999), jury member of the Golden Lion Prize of the Venice Biennale (2005) and artistic director of the Singapore Biennale (2006, 2008).
Image: Fiona Pardington, Still Life with Rabbit. Grass and Unicorn Blood, Ripirpo Beach 2014.

Alicia Frankovich has been awarded the CNZ-funded 2016 International Studio and Curatorial Programme (ISCP) residency in New York.
Image: Alicia Frankovich, Becoming Public: Actor, 2015, C-type print, 75.2 x 50.3cm, and The Female has Undergone Recent Manifestations, 2015, curtain, ribbon, wood, cable and cord, dimensions variable.

Starkwhite is collaborating with Artspace, presenting a parallel exhibition that runs alongside THE BLL, a program of exhibitions and events marking the 30th anniversary of the 1986 Homosexual Law reform Act in New Zealand Aotearoa. THE BILL begins with a solo exhibition by Taranaki-based artist Fiona Clark, with other photographs upstairs at Starkwhite where she performed as an art student when the gallery space was the home of the infamous Pink Pussy Cat. The Starkwhite exhibition runs from Saturday 20 February. All photographs in our exhibition are courtesy of the artist and Michael Lett.

Image: Michael Zavros, The Phoenix, 2016, oil on canvas, 220 x 200 cm

Jin Jiangbo's interactive video projection Rules of Nature is showing in Chinese Whispers at the Kunstmuseum Bern and Zentrum Paul Klee (Bern). The exhibition is drawn from Uli Sigg's collection of contemporary Chinese art, most of which has been gifted (including Jin Jiangbo's piece) to M+, the Herzon & de Meuron-design art museum scheduled to open in Hong Kong in 2017.
Image: Installation view of Jin Jiangbo's  Rules of Nature at Starkwhite

The New Zealand section of the latest Asia Pacific Almanac (a round up of the high points of exhibitions in 2015) covers three Starkwhite shows: Martin Basher's Jizzy Velvet, Fiona Pardington's Childish Things and Gavin Hipkins' Block Paintings.
Images: Martin Basher, Jizzy Velvet, installation view; Fiona Pardington, Believe, 2015, pigment ink on Hahnemuhle Phot Rag; and Gavin Hipkins, Block Painting, 2015, pigment in on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag, 60 x 80cm

The latest issue of Art Collector also features articles mentioning Starkwhite's participation in Art Los Angeles Contemporary (a solo show by Michael Zavros) and Art Basel Hong Kong (a group show with Fiona Pardington, Gordon Walters and Arnold Manaaki Wilson) along with an article on Collecting and Dealing Trends, including the way artists like Michael Zavros use Instagram.
Image: Michael Zavros, The Mermaid, oil on board, 22 x 30 cm

The latest issue of Art Collector has a double-page spread on Seung Yul Oh in the Curator's Radar section – “those artists who are currently attracting curatorial interest in Australia, New Zealand and further abroad via inclusion in public exhibitions and major acquisitions.”

Starkwhite will present an installation by Richard Maloy in the Encounters section of Art Basel Hong Kong (2016) curated by Alexie Glass-Kantor.
Image: The installation of an earlier work by Richard Maloy for the Asia Pacific Triennial at QAGOMA, Brisbane,

Starkwhite is delighted to present The Female has Undergone Several Manifestations by Berlin-based artist Alicia Frankovich, from 6 February to 5 March 2016. This is the artist’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. She will be present at the opening preview on Friday 5 February from 5.30 – 8pm.

These links take you to more on The Female has Undergone Several Manifestations and THE BILL.
Image: Alicia Frankovich, Portrait of a Lady, 2016, inkjet print

Starkwhite reopens in February with an exhibition by Berlin-based artist Alicia Frankovich. Her exhibition opens on Friday 5 February, 5.30 to 8pm. Jim Speers' exhibition Hold 'til Wednesday continues upstairs.
Image: studio shot by Alicia Frankovich

We'll be at Art Los Angeles Contemporary next week presenting a solo exhibition by Michael Zavros. You can read more about our show here and follow us on @starkwhite and @ALAContemporary. The fair runs at the Barker Hangar, Santa Monica, from 28-31 January. You can find us at B13.
Image: Michael Zavros, We dance in the studio (to that shit on the radio), 2010, digital video, 5 mins duration

From 28-31 January we will present a solo show by Michael Zavros at Art Los Angeles Contemporary, LA's international art fair. Read more…

Image: Michael Zavros, The Sunbather (2015), oil on canvas, 1200 x 1200 mm

Seasons greetings from the team at Starkwhite. We'll be closed from 23 December and open by appointment from 11 January. Please call us on 3070703 or 0275 777128 if you would like to visit the gallery.
Image: Billy Apple, The Divine Proportion, 1996, pigment ink on archival papaer, 594 x 420 mm

Billy Apple is represented in International Pop, a groundbreaking historical survey that chronicles the global emergence of Pop Art from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s. Organized by the Walker Art Centre it is currently showing at the Dallas Museum of Art to 17 January 2106 before a final showing at the Philadelphia Museum of Art from 18 February to 15 May 2016. Read more…
Image: Billy Apple, “A” for Apple, 1964, UV impregnated ink on canvas, Argon gas, mercury vapor, 15 mm coated yellow glass tubing, 30″ x 25″ x 3″ (762 x 635 x 75 mm

We are showing an installation of works on paper by Jim Speers upstairs in tandem with Fiona Pardington's The Popular Recreator downstairs Speers' exhibition runs to 19 December and then again from mid to late January following our summer break. We'll post our reopening date and summer hours next week.

Fiona Pardington's The Popular Recreator opens at Starkwhite on Friday 11 December, 6-8pm.
Image: Fiona Pardington, Owl, photograph fired onto steelite coupe plate, 30cm