New Zealand pavilion at the Venice Biennale

This link takes you to a video clip of Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota talking about Bill Culbert's installation at the Venice Biennale.
Image: installation view of Bill Culbert's installation at the New Zealand pavilion, Venice Biennale, Photo Jennifer French

Art meets luxury shopping in Shanghai

Chinese billionaire and art patron Adrian Cheng unveiled a new retail concept in Shanghai last week - a mall where art meets luxury shopping. He launched his new K11 mall (which includes a dedicated art space) with a 45 minute multimedia performance by Ryoji Akeda, saying "sound art is very avant garde."

Cheng plans to roll out 19 art/shopping malls over the next five years, despite a slowdown in the Chinese economy and a government-led austerity drive that has led some analysts to caution against expansion. He says China's luxury market is multi-layered and the ultra-luxury market, which he is targeting with his new retail concept, is resilient.

His faith in the ultra-luxury market was evident at Art Basel Hong Kong where, with Modern Media's Thomas Shao, he hosted a champagne-fueled, celebrity-studded post-vernissage party at the Grand Hyatt.
Image: Ryoji Akeda's performance at the K11 shopping mall, Shanghai

Paul Schimmel teams up with Hauser & Wirth

Paul Schimmel, the former chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles whose departure from the financially-troubled museum added to its woes, has teamed up with Hauser & Wirth to open a LA branch under the name Hauser Wirth & Schimmel.

"I think it is going to be quite different in respect that it will be developed on a larger scale, have fewer exhibitions and a combination of selling and non-selling shows, he says. The exhibitions will "feel more museum-like in terms of scale, scholarship and complexity" and be supported by "museum-like amenities" such as an education program and public events. Read more...
Image: Paul Schimmel

ARTINFO Q&A with Seung Yul Oh on his installation at Art Basel Hong Kong

This link takes you to an ARTINFO  interview with Seung Yul Oh on his installation in the Encounters section of Art Basel Hong Kong, which was curated by Yuko Hasegawa, Chief Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo and curator of the recent Sharjah Biennale.
Image: Seung Yul Oh's Periphery (2013) presented in the Encounters section of Art Basel Hong Kong by ONE AND J Gallery, Seoul

This week at Starkwhite

Our current exhibition Bazinga! continues this week to 8 June. You can read an exhibition review here.

Image: Stuart Ringholt, Starring William Shatner as Curator, 2010. Curated by Robert Leonard, Bazinga! is a joint project by Starkwhite and the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane.

Starkwhite at Art Basel Hong Kong

Images: Installation views of The Immortalisation of Billy Apple® presented by Starkwhite at Art Basel Hong Kong, booth 1D19 with the assistance of Creative New Zealand.

Starkwhite presents immortalisation project at Art Basel Hong Kong

We'll be at Art Basel Hong Kong this week presenting THE IMMORTALISATION OF BILLY APPLE®, a ground-breaking project by artist Billy Apple® and artist/scientist Craig Hilton where art is in the service of science — Apple’s immortalised cell line is being used in studies that will directly benefit cancer and immunology research — and science serves the artist to enhance and protect the artist’s brand by immortalising his biological tissue in perpetuity. This transaction ensures that the brand (and the artist) can last forever, unconstrained by death. Read more...

Our presentation at Art Basel Hong Kong is with the assistance of Creative New Zealand.

This week at Starkwhite: Bazinga!

Our current exhibition Bazinga! continues this week to 8 June.

Image: Antoinette J. Citizen Sims Needs Meter, installation view. Curated by Robert Leonard, Bazinga! is a joint project by Starkwhite and the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane.

Anne Landa Award exhibition opens at the Art Gallery of New South Wales

The fifth Anne Landa Award exhibition opens tonight at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The space between us considers the relation between video and performance and features work by Lauren Brincat, Alicia Frankovich, Laresa Kosloff, Angelica Mesiti, Kate Mitchell, James Newitt and Christian Thompson. The artists are all eligible for the the acquisitive award of AUD$25,000, which sees the winning work enter the Gallery's collection.

Guest curator Charlotte Day says: "The seven artists are connected through their interest in the artist as performing body, the artist as creator /director of performances, and the viewer's role in relation to the works and as active participant. The resurgence in performative art continues out of a desire to question established exhibition and viewing habits, as well as the relative distinctions and distances between artist, artwork and audience." Read More...

New director of the Auckland Art Gallery announced

Rhana Devenport is the new director of the Auckland Art Gallery. Currently the director of the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth, Devenport takes up her position at the end of July.
Image: Rhana Devenport

This week at Starkwhite

Our current exhibition Bazinga! continues this week to 8 June.
Image: Ross Manning, The Fixational Eye, 2011, installation view. Curated by Robert Leonard, Bazinga! is a joint project by Starkwhite and the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane.

Bazinga! opens with a Botborg performance

Bazinga! opens on Saturday at 5.30pm with a live demonstration by the audio-visual performance group Botborg at 7pm. "Botborg present public demonstrations of the occult science of 'photosonicneurokineasthography', as pioneered by Dr Arkady Botborger sometime last century," says exhibition curator Robert Leonard. "Equal parts techno-boffins, psychic explorers, and experimental video-and-music makers, their pataphysical performances use video and sonic feedback to generate a Gesamtkunstwerk of synesthetic audio-visual effects in real time, coaxing patterns out of scrambled, collapsed signals."

Bazinga! is a joint project by Starkwhite and the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane.
Image courtesy of Botborg

Gavin Hipkins' The Dam (O) premiers at international film festival

Gavin Hipkins' new short film The Dam (O), 2013 will premier at the Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, an international film festival dedicated to short film as cinematic art. The Dam (O) stars leading New Zealand actor Matthew Sunderland and  incorporates naturalist and abstracted footage from Auckland’s five dams built during the 1920s.
Image: film still from Gavin Hipkins' The Dam (O), screening as part of CIRCUIT Artist Film and Video Aotearoa Market Screening at  the Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen

John Zorn live performances at the Met

In September the Metropolitan Museum will celebrate composer-performer John Zorn's birthday. A fixture on the downtown music scene since the 70s, Zorn has been an inveterate Metgoer since childhood and says he has drawn inspiration from a number of artworks there. His day will consist of 11 performances in 11 different rooms, in some cases in rooms by the very objects that inspired him and allowing visitors to see the Met through his eyes - not to mention hearing it through his ears!
Image: Cover for John Zorn's torture garden

Bazinga opens at Starkwhiite this weekend

IMA Director Robert Leonard has curated an exhibition for Starkwhite to coincide with the opening of the Auckland Triennial in May. Titled Bazinga!—the notorious catchphrase of Dr Sheldon Cooper from the TV sitcom The Big Bang Theory—the show will explore a nerd sensibility in recent Australian art. It will feature work that touches on science (especially astrophysics) and science fiction (particularly Star Trek); on mathematics and statistics; on technology, computers, computer games, and the internet; and on obsessive fandom, autistic behaviour, social awkwardness and inane pranks. The artists are Rebecca Baumann, Botborg, Antoinette J. Citizen, Gabrielle de Vietri, Danielle Freakley, Daniel McKewen, Ross Manning, Grant Stevens, and Stuart Ringholt.

Bazinga! opens Saturday 11 May at 5:30pm, with an audio-visual feedback performance by Botborg at 7pm, and runs until 8 June.
Image:Rebecca Baumann, Automated Monochome, 2011 (detail)

International Award for Public Art launched in Shanghai

Initiated by Shanghai University and co-founded by the two magazines Public Art (China) and Public Art Review (USA), the International Award for Public Art (IAPA) was launched in Shanghai last month with the aim of propagating knowledge about the practice of public art globally.

The theme of the first award was place-making and 141 projects from around the world were researched, including temporary and permanent projects. Six projects were shortlisted by an international jury with the award going to Venezuela's Tiuna el Fuerte Cultural Park, which the jurors described as "a vibrant work of creative genius."

The jurors for the inaugural award were: Lewis Biggs, chair of the organising committee of the IAPA and former director of the Liverpool Biennale; Jacker Becker, director of Forecast and publisher of Public Art Review; Fulya Erdemci, former director of SKOR/Foundation for Art and Public Domain and artistic director of the 2013 Instanbul Biennale; Yuko Hasegawa, chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary art in Tokyo and curator of the 2013 Sharjah Biennale; Katia Canton, professor of art theory and criticism/curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, University of Sao Paulo; and professor Wang Dawei, dean of the Fine Arts College, Shanghai University and chief editor of Public Art (China).
Image: Tiuna el Fuerte Cultural Park, Caracas, Venezuela

Shanghai's international art fair cancelled or postponed?

As Shanghai continues to roll out new museums like the China Palace of Art and Powerstation (another 15 will open by 2015) SH Contemporary seemed poised to capitalise on the city's ambition to become a new global cultural hub. But a notice on ChinaExhibtion.com stating the 7th edition scheduled for September has been cancelled has raised questions about the future of the fair. A spokesperson for Bologna Fiere, which organises the show, told Art Radar Asia there are scheduling problems with when and where to hold the event, but offered no further detail saying updates would be posted on the event website at a later date.
Image: SH Contemporary 2012