Sunday, March 18, 2012

Estuary Exhibit moves to Fo Guang Shan Buddhist Temple NZ 紐西蘭佛光山

Albatross Hunting is currently on show at Fo Guang Shan Buddhist Temple in Flat Bush, NZ. 

 
It was selected as part of the traveling portion of the Uxbridge Art Gallery Estuary show 2012.

17th March - 15th April 2012

Fo Guang Shan Art Gallery
16 Stancombe Road
Flat Bush, Manukau 2016, NZ
Tel: +64 9 274 4880
www.facebook.com/fgsnz
 

Friday, March 9, 2012

Paper-Jams @ Gus Fisher Gallery.

Back in Auckland, an interesting show opened at the University of Auckland's Gus Fisher Gallery this evening.
Paper-Jams: Artists Between the Covers is curated by Andrew Clifford and acknowledges the substantial history of text in art.

Peter Madden - Golden Retriever, 2007. Reconfigures images found in Auckland Art Gallery's quarterly publication.
From the press release:
Paper-jams looks sideways from that legacy to foreground those artists who address the page itself as a compelling context, rather than focusing on the content of the words c...ontained within. These works challenge the materiality of the page and the creative potential of its limitations to break through the conventional ways we absorb and present information. Influenced by the collages and cut-ups of cubism, dada, fluxus and pop, they explore paper as a rich surface to scrutinise or excavate.
Similarly, publications become objects with their own history, value and meaning, and a site not only of linguistic dexterity but also physical construction and craft. Their printing, distribution or design is revealed to have political implications, which artists amplify through processes of obliteration that puts pressure on supporting structures. This has impacted on the worlds of art, literature and music, where established methods for communicating ideas have been torn up to allow a more graphic or conceptual approach.
Now, in an age of online information and electronic tablets, where ‘anything’ is possible, the threatened extinction of the conventional book brings renewed poignance to the physical systems that have supported publishing since the invention of the codex and the printing press.

Artists include Gretchen Albrecht, Bruce Andrews, Billy Apple and Wystan Curnow, Dan Arps, Elliot Collins, Fiona Connor, Lyell Cresswell, Paul Cullen, Philip Dadson, Johanna Drucker, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Marco Fusinato, Tony Green, Robert Grenier, Fiona Jack, Tessa Laird, Alan Loney, Peter Madden, Allan McDonald, Teri Moon, Patrick Pound, Ed Ruscha, Katrina Van Roon and Ivan Zagni.


Paul Cullen


Teri Moon

Wellington Vist.

Finally made it back down to Wellington for a more focused look around.

The highlight for me, was The Obstinate Object: Contemporary New Zealand Sculpture at City Gallery, (Welllington).

From the Press Release:
Sculpture has re-established itself as one of the most vital art forms for today. The Obstinate Object: Contemporary New Zealand Sculpture calls together recent New Zealand sculpture which foregrounds the making of and engagement with objects and object-ness as central to the experience of the medium. The artists in this exhibition rework conventional sculptural modes and materials, insisting that sculpture is something to be made and physically encountered by its audience in real space and real time.
Spilling out of City Gallery into its non-spaces, surrounds and the city, The Obstinate Object brings together recent work by some of New Zealand’s most compelling artists. Working in a variety of sculptural modes, with a wide range of materials and concerns, each reinforces the ‘object-ness’ of sculpture as a pressing concern. Questioning the increasingly blurred line between sculpture, installation and performance, this exhibition empowers the sculptural object at a time when the value of objects is under constant scrutiny.

I also caught Heather Straka @ Paige Blackie, The Horrorscope show @ Enjoy, Irene Ferguson @ Suite (on Cuba St), Andrew McLeod @ Peter McLeavey, Warwick Freeman @ Bowen Galleries and the inaugural group show at a new space on Cuba St. called the Ramsey Mortimer Gallery. Hamish McKay Galley and Robert Heald were closed/installing and the Dowse Art Museum was only half open, which was a disappointment.
Rohan Wealleans at the Dowse Art Museum

Looking forward to my return (hopefully) in more ways than one.