Leigh Davis flag poems at JAR

The images above are of Leigh Davis flag poems presented in the JAR exhibition Time, Text & Echoes, a 300-day project of 30 poem flags presented one at a time in a sequence of ten-day hoists. The exhibition runs to March 2011. 

Images: Leigh Davis flag poems presented in the JAR exhibition Time, Text & Echoes (2010 - 2011), New North Road, Kingsland, NZ. From the top: Hau (red), Macoute, Temptation of the World, all works dyed polyester knit appliqued onto dyed woven bunting, with canvas head, sisal halyard and brass clips, 1.5 x 3.5 m

Coming up at Starkwhite

From Wednesday 1 September 2010 we are running a programme of presentations for new collectors and art collectives in conjunction with the exhibition Nice Work. Please contact us at starkwhite@starkwhite.co.nz if you would like to know more about the programme.

Image: Whitney Bedford, Weather (2010), ink on canvas, 7' x 10' 

Upstairs at Starkwhite

Image: Jim Speers, Untitled (2009), digital/screen print, 800 x 1200 mm edition of 3

Ground Zero: last day

Jae Hoon's exhibition Ground Zero closes today at 4.00 pm.

Image: Jae Hoon Lee, Spacetree 2 (2010), digitally collaged photograph, 1200 x 1200, edition of 8

JAR presents a 300-day exhibition of Leigh Davis flag poems

Jar is a small not-for-profit trust for promoting strong, singular work for public consumption. The first Jar space is 589 New North Road, Kingsland, NZ where projects have been staged by Auckland-based artists Stephen Bambury and Peter Robinson.

Jar is currently presenting a sequence of thirty exhibitions, entitled Time, Text & Echoes, each devoted to a single Leigh Davis flag poem. All but the last of the flags to be shown at Jar were previously exhibited as single installations under the title Station of Earth-Bound Ghosts in the Auckland Railway Station (1998) and the Gisborne Army Hall (1999). Both were contextualised in Te Tangi a te Matuhi, Jackbooks 1999, edited by Davis and Wystan Curnow.

You can read more about the current Jar exhibition here.

Image: Jar, New North Road, Kingsland, NZ

Alicia Frankovich takes up Kunstlerhaus Bethanien Residency in Berlin

Alicia Frankovich has taken up a 12-month residency at the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin as her exhibition Effigies draws to an end at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery (it closes on 19 September 2010). You can read a review of Effigies here.

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

Going virtual: are traditional art fairs history?

VIP Art Fair, the first fair to mobilise the collective force of many of the world's leading galleries with the unlimited reach of the the Internet, will take place exclusively online in January 2011 at www.vipartfair.com. VIP Founding galleries include Sadie Coles, Xavier Hufkens, Gagosian, David Zwirner, Hauser & Worth, Anna Schwartz and White Cube.  

The design of VIP allows art collectors to view artwork online in relation to other works and in relative scale to the human figure. Visitors can zoom in to examine details of a painting's surface, get multiple views of a three -dimensional work, and watch videos of a multi-media piece. 

Another feature is the interactivity between dealer and collector. Each dealer has the ability to hold conversations with collectors via instant messaging and Skype. Dealers can also provide access to their back room inventory, sharing works in real time with clients in specially created private rooms on the client's computer screen.

The fair opens on Saturday 22 January 2011 at 8.00 a.m. EST and closes on Sunday 30 January at 7.59 a.m. EST. Browsing the Fair is free of charge but visitors must have a VIP ticket to access interactive capabilities.

Yin Xiuzhen's Black Hole on New Plymouth's foreshore

Yin Xiuzhen's Black Hole has been installed alongside New Plymouth's waterfront walkway as an extension to the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery's current exhibition China in Four Seasons: Song Dong + Yin Xiuzhen, which runs to 12 September 2010.  

Known for her interest in forms of globalisation (and its movements) the artist has converted a worn shipping container - heavily relied upon in the port town of New Plymouth as a mode of transport - into a round signature-cut diamond and positioned the sculpture in the local environment, adjacent to Len Lye's Wind Wand. Emanating light from within, the work is conceptually grounded in ideas about light, purity, progress, trade and desire. 

Image: Yin Xiuzhen, Black Hole (2010), installed at New Plymouth's waterfront walkway with Len Lye's Wind Wand in the background

Six new ideas for the Fourth Plinth commission

Over the past four years the 'empty' fourth plinth in the Northwest corner of Trafalgar Square has featured works by Marc Quinn, Thomas Schutte, Anthony Gormley and the current commission Yinka Shonibare's Nelson's Shop in a Bottle. You can see six new ideas for the next Fourth Plinth commission here.

Image: Katharina Fritsch's Hahn/Cock, shortlisted for the Fourth Plinth commission, Trafalgar Square, London

Ground Zero: final week

Jae Hoon Lee's exhibition Ground Zero runs for one more week, closing on Saturday 28 August 2010. This link takes you to an eyeCONTACT review of the show.

Image: Jae Hoon Lee, Hajodae (2010) digitally collaged photograph, 1500 x 2000 mm, edition of 8

Upstairs at Starkwhite

Images: Martin Basher, THE EASE AND COMFORT OF WEIGHTLOSS IN YR HOME (2009), used light box, shoes, jump-rope

Blockbuster paves the way for Turrell's new skyspace installation

Love them or hate them, blockbusters continue to be staged by art museums under pressure to deliver huge audiences, publicity and revenues for their stakeholders as well as museums in the blockbuster delivery game, like the Guggenheim which as Time magazine once put it has already taken the notion of global franchises further than any other American palace of culture. 

The press around blockbusters always reflects the numbers game with reports of record-breaking attendances, giving audiences a once-in- a-lifetime opportunity to see masterpieces and so on, as was the case with the Australian National Gallery's April 2010 release headed Au revoir to 'Masterpieces from Paris' the most successful exhibition in Australian history. 

More recently though ANG director Ron Radford put a novel spin on the numbers saying James Turrell's skyspace installation Within without was partly funded by profits from the Masterpieces from Paris exhibition adding "it's been paid for by the people of Australia that came to visit that show, the half million people, so in a sense this is a reward for them and the people of Australia".

Images: James Turrell, Within without (2010), lighting installation, concrete and basalt stupa, water, earth, landscaping. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

NGA unveils James Turrell installation

The National Gallery of Australia has unveiled Within without, a monumental 'Skyspace' installation by James Turrell who is best known for his ambitious work-in-progress the Rodin Crater, a naked-eye observatory located in a dormant volcano in the Painted Desert of northern Arizona. The only work of its kind in Australia, the partly subterranean installation creates an immersive viewing experience that uses space, shape and light to affect perception of the sky. You can read more about the work here.

Images: James Turrell, Within without (2010), lighting installation, concrete and basalt stupa, water, earth, landscaping. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Do you really expect to get paid?

It has been eight years since Macquarie University economist David Throsby last reported on the financial status of artists for the Australia Council and found a third of them living below the poverty line. Based on 2006 census data, Throsby's latest report (the fifth in the series) on the topic Do you really expect to get paid?, concludes that the income gap between artists and the general workforce has widened.

Throsby says Australia's artists are adapting to changing circumstances by mixing up their work with arts-related work in occupations such as advertising or online development, seeing their working life made up of short-term engagements rather than a "traditional linear trajectory beginning with training, passing through an emerging phase, arriving at establishment and continuing with a life devoted exclusively to a core creative practice".

The numbers game:

The average income of artists is well below the average wage - just $37,000 compared with $43,400 and the gap is widening.
16% of artists earn less than $10,000 a year directly from their art, although 5% earn more than $100,000.
A third to half of Australia's artists put their skills to use in other industries.
Arts bureaucrats and administrators have a higher and more secure income than artists.

You can read an article on the Throsby report here.

Image: funding by art form delivered by the Australia Council 2006 - 2007

NZ curators head to Asia

Three contemporary art curators will travel to Asia in October to build their professional networks and working relationships with artists, curators and arts institutions. Funded by Creative New Zealand and the Asia New Zealand Foundation, the trips are timed to coincide with biennales in Busan, Gwangju and Shanghai. The three curators are Stephen Cleland (Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts, Manukau city), Aaron Kreisler (Dunedin Public Art Gallery) and Hanna Scott (Auckland-based independent curator). You can read more about the trip here.

Image: Busan city

Upstairs at Starkwhite

Image: Boris Dornbusch, Slow Change (2010), digital print, paper, wooden framing, 455 x 423 mm

Upstairs at Starkwhite

Image: Glen Hayward, Closed Circuit, 2010, acrylic on carved wood

A private collection goes public today

A private collection goes public today with the opening of the TSB Bank Wallace Arts Centre at Auckland's Pah Homestead. Originally built in the late 1870s as a gentleman's residence for businessman James Williamson, the historic Homestead has been refurbished by the Auckland City Council at a cost of $10m to house and display the collection of James Wallace. The Auckland-based philanthropist has formed a collection of over 5,000 artworks since he picked up his first Toss Woollaston watercolour in the early 1960s. Wallace contributed $500,000 to the fitout costs and will meet the Arts Centre's annual operating costs.

Wallace doesn't review and refine his collection by selling off works that have lost some of their lustre over time and will continue to develop it as "a diary collection". Wellington dealer Peter McLeavey, who has worked with Wallace for 40 years, says this gives it a big point of difference. "It is a unique take on the culture. He is not buying art, he is buying cultural memory. In a sense, he is also collecting a portrait of a life."

Wallace has other plans for the new arts centre, many of which will be realised through partnerships with educational and arts institutions, citing one with Otago University that will see the recipients of arts fellowships taking up residencies at TSB Bank Wallace Arts Centre and curated shows from the university's Hocken Collections featuring in the Centre's exhibition programme.

Image: Pah Homestead, Auckland NZ, now the home of the TSB Bank Wallace Arts Centre

Art Gwangju 2010

Another art fair has surfaced in the Asia/Pacific region. The first edition of Art Gwangju 2010 takes place from 1 - 5 September at the KimDaeJung Convention centre. Art Gwangju will be a curated art fair with selected commissioners shaping the vision and organisation of the event, one that marries up the art market and public space in one location. In keeping with the vision of Art Gwangju, participating galleries will present solo or two-person shows.

The event will also include two special exhibitions. Emerging Asian Artists will highlight the contribution of top emerging Asian contemporary artists who have contributed to bringing Asia to the forefront of the international art world. Platform Project will showcase the works by leading artists including Michelangelo Pistoletto. Ai Weiwei, Shilpa Gupta, Yayoi Kusama, Xiadong Liu, Sun Yuan & Peng Yu, Giuseppe Stampone, amongst others.

Image: KDJ Exhibition Centre, Gwangju, venue for Art Gwangju 2010

Grant Stevens: Horizons

Grant Stevens' exhibition Horizons opened at GBK last night and runs to 4 September 2010.

Image: Grant Stevens invitation image for Horizons, GBK, Sydney, August 2010

NZ writer picks up MoMA internship

Artist and writer Genevieve Allison (currently based in Berlin) has been awarded a MoMA internship from September through December 2010. Allison will be the intern for MoMA's Department of Publications working on upcoming books and exhibition catalogues. She will also work part-time for Artforum. 

Seung Yul Oh at the Melbourne Art Fair

Seung Yul Oh was one of two artists (the other being Campbell Patterson) exhibited by Artspace in the Project Rooms at the Melbourne Art Fair, which closed on Sunday. Art spaces selected for the Fair are provided with an exhibition space and a monetary grant from the Melbourne Art Foundation, which also funds a work for the Fair to be gifted to an Australian institution. This year's commission by Jon Campbell was gifted to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.

Image: visitor with Seung Yul Oh's work at the Melbourne Art Fair, August 2010

Record-breaking Biennale of Sydney

More than 517,000 are reported to have visited the 17th Biennale of Sydney, which closed last weekend. The record figures were fueled by visits to Cockatoo Island - more than 157,000 visited the former convict prison and shipyard where 120 artworks by 56 artists were presented. Based on the curatorial theme THE BEAUTY OF DISTANCE: Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age, artistic director David Elliot selected 444 works by 167 artists and collaborators from 36 countries, making it the largest exhibition staged in the organisation's 37-year history.
Image: Cockatoo Island, Sydney

More images from Ground Zero

These works can be seen in Jae Hoon Lee's current exhibition Ground Zero which runs to 21 August 2010. You can see images of other works in the show here.

Images (from the top): Jae Hoon Lee, A Mountain, Pebbles 1, Pebbles 2, 2010, all digitally collaged photographs

Upstairs at Starkwhite

Image: Jim Speers, Recording Angel, 2008, acrylic, vinyl and fluorescent tubes

Martin Basher: High Class Boner Meds / Paradise Sale

Martin Basher's exhibition High Class Boner Meds / Paradise Sale follows his three-month residency at the Colin McCahon House. You can see our earlier post on the residency here.

Taking his cue from internet spam emails selling Viagra, Martin Basher's exhibition uses iconic everyday images and objects to ask questions about what our consumer society wants and believes in. His work features exquisite photorealist paintings of beaches and hands, collages, cryptic placards and signs, and sculptural assemblages featuring a variety of consumer goods and fluorescent lights. His work plies the ocean of contemporary culture and the backwaters of spiritual deficit, focusing specifically on the way that desire (material, sexual and spiritual) is bound with consumerism belief and politics. Piling images and icons together in what look almost like haphazard arrangements, Basher's work destabilises straight hierarchies of taste, quality and class. Material goods are plentiful, lifestyle is easy, interest is low, but gratification is elusive. From the Lopdell House Gallery website

High Class Boner Meds / Paradise Sale runs at Auckland's Lopdell House Gallery until 6 September 2010

Image: Martin Basher's studio, Colin McCahon House, Titirangi, Auckland, 2010

Grant Stevens to take up a residency in China

Grant Stevens returns to China soon to take up the annual international residency at OCAT Contemporary Art Terminal, He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen. The residency runs from 16 August to 16 November 2010.

Image: Grant Stevens, It will be tonight (2009), digital print, custom cabinet, speakers audio track.

Jae Hoon Lee: Ground Zero

Jae Hoon Lee's exhibition Ground Zero runs to 21 August 2010. 

Images: from Jae Hoon Lee's exhibition Ground Zero, from the top, Spacetree 3, Trekking, A Garden, Hajodae, Window 2 (2010), digitally collaged photographs, editions of 8

Reference time...again

At certain points of the year people in the New Zealand art community brace themselves for a flurry of requests from artists for references to support their applications for grants and places in residency programmes. The requirement for references isn't new, but many artists are saying it's becoming harder to get them - partly because the pool of people who are called upon to write references is relatively small and partly because many in the pool feel they are only able to write a one or two for each round. It's not a problem for those asked to write them because they can say no, but it is for artists who say it's hard enough getting applications together without the added difficulty of tracking down high-profile referees willing to write glowing letters of support. 

A quick look at a few funding/residency programmes points up the problem. Creative New Zealand requires up to three referees for grant applications (two were required in the 80s) and it's not uncommon for some referees to be asked to write several letters of support for each CNZ funding round. Applicants for the ISCP, Kunstlerhaus Bethanien and McCahon House residencies are also required to submit three letters of support, and in the case of the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship one of the three referees should hold a university position. 

Perhaps it's time for funding agencies and those who administer residency programmes to review their reference requirements and consider ways to make the application process easier for artists.

Micro Sites art trail

Auckland's latest public art project was launched on Saturday 31 July 2010 with a guided tour of the commissioned artworks. Micro Sites is a series of 12 small, temporary art projects by 13 artists aimed at providing subtle and unexpected surprises for people walking through Auckland's Learning Quarter. You can find a Micro Sites location map here, along with descriptions and images of the works.

Image: Trenton Garratt, - . - (dash dot dash), 2010