In mid-December Starkwhite will launch Fiona Pardington's new suite of photographs fired onto ceramic plates, cups and saucers. The works document The Popular Recreator A Key to Indoor and Outdoor Amusements, an illustrated encyclopedic work on popular recreations published in the 1890s by Cassell, Petter & Galpin. Watch this space for the launch date.
Image: Fiona Pardington's Shadow Bunny (2015), photograph fired onto ceramic plate

Gavin Hipkins' exhibition Block Paintings continues this week to 5 December. You can read a review of the show here.

Rebecca Baumann's Reflected Glory is showing in NEW ROMANCE at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), South Korea. Curated by Anna Davis (Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney) and Houngcheoi Choi (MMCA), the exhibition runs to 9 March 2016. Read more…

We'll be showing again at Art Basel Hong Kong 2016 – our fourth presentation at this fair, starting with The Immortalisation of Billy Apple® (2013) and followed by solo shows by Gordon Walters (2014) and Michael Zavros (2015). In 2014 we also presented an installation by Rebecca Baumann in the Encounters section of the fair curated by Yuko Hasegawa. You can see a full exhibitor list for Art Basel Hong Kong 2016 here.
Images (from the top): Michael Zavros, installation view; Gordon Walters, installation view; Rebecca Baumann (Automated Colour Field (Variation V), detail; and The Immortaliatisation of Billy Apple®, installation view 

Fiona Pardington's survey show A Beautiful Hesitation continues at the City Gallery Wellington until 22 November. Read more…
Image; installation view of A Beautiful Hestation at the City Gallery Wellington.

Alicia Frankovich is in the lineup of artists for A SPACE IS A SPACE IS A SPACE, an exhibition, lecture and performance program at Deutsches Architect Centrum DAZ, Berlin from 11 September – 8 November 2015. Read more…

Next week we'll be at the second edition of Sydney Contemporary, the new fair launched by ART HK founder Tim Etchells in 2013 and directed by former gallerist Barry Keldoulis. This year we have taken one of the larger booths, which will be divided to create an exhibition space for a group show, which we will change over the course of the fair, and a smaller room, more akin to a stockroom, with a salon hang of artworks. We will also be represented in Installation Contemporary, the curated section of the fair, with a piece by Melbourne-based artist Laith McGregor.

Fiona Pardington's exhibition Childish Things opened last night at Starkwhite (6-8pm) and runs to 22 September. Read more…

This link takes you to Claudia Arozqueta's review of our exhibition In Motion published by art-agenda.
Images: installation views of works by Alicia Frankovich, Lazslo Moholy-Nagy and Grant Stevens in the Starkwhite exhibition In Motion.  

Our exhibition In Motion continues this week and through to 8 August. You can read an insightful review of the show here.

Image: Noah Horowitz

Maria Lind has been appointed artistic director for the 2016 Gwangju Biennale. “I will make sure next year's Gwangju Biennale will be a place where artists, the public, people working in the art industry , and local residents gather to discuss, relate and communicate in the name of art,” Lind said during a precent press conference. The previous edition of Gwangju Biennale, curated by DIA Art Foundation director Jessica Morgan, was marked by controversy and led to the resignation of Biennale Foundation president Lee Yong-Woo.
Image: Maria Lind

John Reynolds' Epistomadologies opened at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki last night and runs to i November. Read more…
Images: from John Reynolds', Epistomadologies series 2001

Reparative Aesthetics: Rosangela Renno and Fiona Pardington is showing at the University of Sydney Art Gallery to 25 September. Curated by Sue Best, the show addresses the question: how do artists confront troubling national histories? Renno and Pardington are positioned as artists who have have pioneered a reparative approach to the representation of the colonized and disenfranchised.
Image: Fiona Pardington, Portrait of a life cast of Koe (front), Timor, 2011; Rosangela Renno Three Holes 1998, from the Vulgo series (Alias) 1998-99

Jin Jiangbo's interactive projection Rules of Nature was launched recently on Auckland's Dominion Road. The work is in the manner of Chinese ink and wash painting, presented as a video projection with software that allows it to respond to the movement of viewers on the street. Commissioned by the Auckland City Council and the Albert-Eden Local Board, the projection runs each night after dark at the New Zealand Chinese Bookshop, 672 Dominion Road, Mt Eden.
Images: stills from Jin Jiangbo's Rules of Nature (2015).

In Motion runs at Starkwhite this week and through to 8 August. The show includes work by Rebecca Baumann and Brendan Van Hek (AUS), Alicia Frankovich (DE), Len Lye (NZ) Laszlo Moholoy-Nagy (US) and Grant Stevens (AUS). Read more here…
Images (top to bottom): Rebecca Bauman & Brendan Van Hek, Untitled (2015), acrylic and aluminum; Alicia Frankovich, Becoming Public: Actor (2015), C-print & The Female has Undergone Several Manifestations (2015), curtain, ribbon, fan, cord, plug; Len Lye, A COLOUR BOX (1935), Laszlo Moholy-Nagy,  Ein Lichtspiel: schwarz weiss grau (A Lightplay: Black White Grey), (1930), film still; Grant Stevens, Particle Wave (2013), six lenticular panels. A COLOUR BOX(1935) is presented in In Motion courtesy of the Len Lye Foundation and the British Postal Museum and Archive, from material preserved by the BFI National Archive and made available by Nga Taonga Sound and Vision. The Len Lye Foundation also acknowledges the support of Technix Group Ltd. Ein Lichtspiel: schwartz weiss grau (A Lightplay: Black White Grey)is presented in In Motion courtesy of the Moholy-Nagy Foundation.

Laith McGregor's exhibition Somewhere Anywhere closes at Starkwhite on Saturday, 3pm. You can read a review of the show here.
Image: Laith McGregor, Somewhere Anywhere, installation view

Billy Apple®: The Artist Has To Live Like Everybody Else closes at the Auckland Art Gallery this weekend with a performance. Jazz musician Nathan Haines leads a quartet assembled for a sound performance of the Billy Apple-Jonathan Besser score Quartet. The performance is in the gallery's North Atrium, 1-2pm, free admission.
Image: Billy Apple@, January 2012, acrylic on canvas, 800 x 800mm 

Martin Basher's exhibition A Guide to Benefits is showing at ANAT EBGI in Los Angeles from 13 June to 25 July.
Images: Installation views of A Guide to Benefits at ANAT EBGI, June 2015

This link takes you to a review of Billy Apple Sound Works at Te Uru, a satellite exhibition curated by Andrew Clifford and staged at the time of the Billy Apple® survey exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, which closes this weekend.
Image: installation view of Billy Apple Sound Works at Te Uru

Billy Apple and Alicia Frankovich are represented in Art as a Verb, which opened last night at Artspace, Sydney. Curated by Charlotte Day, Francis E Parker and Patrice Sharkey for Monash University of Art, the exhibition takes as its departure point the concept of art as action, presenting projects from the 1990s to the present challenge the traditional role of the artist and the site of the museum. What constitutes the work of an artists? How do the varying roles of artist (an instigator, facilitator, teacher, performer, consumer or visionary) for within broader society? And how does the museum support art forms that function beyond the art object?
Image: Alicia Frankovich, Not Yet Titled, 2014, stainless steel, Thera bands, drink bottle, shoe lace, 80 x 90 x 45 cm. Exhibition view, Kunstverein Hildeheim

On Saturday 6 June, the Mangare Arts Centre Nga Tohu o Uenuku presents Gavin Hipkins' feature length film Erewhon, which is based on the 1972 novel by Samuel Butler. The film's narrator Mia Blake and composer Rachel Shearer will deliver a live soundtrack and voice performance in conjunction with the screening which takes place from 1-2pm.

Erewhon: the Book of the Machines, which combines photographs from the film with a 26 minute film extract, is also showing at the Forrester Gallery, timed to coincide with Oamuaru's 2015 Steampunk festival.
Images: Gavin Hipkins Erewhon (Mountains), Erewhon (Planet) and Erewhon (Forest) 2014, archival pigment prints, 600 x 337mm  

Laith McGregor's exhibition Somewhere Anywhere opens at tonight Starkwhite, 6-8pm, and runs to 4 July 2015.
Image: Laith McGregor, Terry (2015), pencil on paper, 30 x 40 cm; installation view of Somewhere Anywhere, Starkwhite July 2015 

Seung Yul Oh's OnDo, a temporary public sculpture at Ballantyne's Park on Auckland's Dominion Road, which is known for its Asian restaurants. You can read a review of the piece here.

Len Lye's Wind Wand is a striking and much-loved feature of New Plymouth's coastal walkway, which also includes John Reynolds' Big Wave Territory. This work celebrates Taranaki's rich cultural landscape, directing passers by to various local and regional destinations – the Mountain, Paritutu Rock and Sugar Loaf Island, SPOT X and The Forgotten World Highway. Using Transit New Zealand's road design format and materials, the high reflection sign also provides cultural points of departure, including artistic legacies, such as the writing of celebrated author Ronald Hugh Morrieson and Len Lye's kinetic sculpture.

Visitors to the new Len Lye Centre and refurbished Govett-Brewster Art Gallery have another treat in store for them – New Plymouth's coastal walkway. Like many New Zealand cities, New Plymouth was cut off from its waterfront by a four-lane highway and railway line until a plan was hatched to buy up properties along the foreshore and create an elegantly landscaped walkway for local residents and visitors to the city. Created through a multi-disciplinary approach (urban design, landscape architecture, environmental heritage, public art and town planning) it is a brilliant example of how to create social space for residents and support other creative city agendas such as tourism. It's a must-see piece of social engineering.
Image: New Plymouth's coastal walkway offering views of the sea and back over the city to Mt Taranaki

The new Len Lye Centre will open in new Plymouth on 25 July alongside the refurbished Govett-Brewster Art Gallery. The complex will combine a museum of contemporary art with New Zealand's first institution dedicated to a single artist, the pioneer filmmaker and kinetic sculptor Len Lye. Designed by Patterson Associates, the new Centre features a mirror-finished, light-reflecting facade inspired by the movement of light in Lye's sculptures and films – a pitch-perfect research and exhibition centre for an artist who once said: “My work I think is going to be pretty good for the 21st century.”
Image: Len  Lye Centre designed by Patterson Associates, Auckland

As the exhibition Rebecca Baumann + Brendan van Hek: Colour Restraint draws to and end at Campbelltown Arts Centre, the Museum of Contemporary Art has announced that Baumann will curate the next MCA Art Bar which takes place during VIVID, Sydney’s festival of light, music and ideas. Working with a collective of artists, Baumann has also created a new work for VIVID that will transform the MCA facade into a series of sound and colour ‘machines’ that create a continuously morphing listening and viewing experience. We will report on the Art Bar and Festival later this month.