Animated Book - NZ

Film for NZ Book Council Produced by Colenso BBDO Animated by Andersen M Studio



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_jyXJTlrH0

Rita Angus - NZ

Rita Angus (1908-70) is one of New Zealand’s most significant artists. A pioneer of modern painting in this country, she created some of our most memorable and best-loved images.

To honour the centenary of her birth, Te Papa presents this major exhibition, which is now touring to Dunedin, Christchurch and Auckland. It includes sketchbooks, studies and unfinished works, some of which have never been seen in public before.

Explore this website to find out what can be seen and experienced in the exhibition.

Early Years 1929-39
A Pacifist Vision 1939-58
Later Journeys 1958-70

http://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/exhibitions/RitaAngus/Default.aspx

audioguide tracks, podcasts and radio interviews, all available to be downloaded for free.

You can also watch our TV ad, featured on Youtube.

21 paintings have audio tracks available. Drawing on the writing and letters of Rita Angus, they give a unique insight into the thoughts and motivation behind these 21 works.

Download all 21 audio tracks (zip, 11 MB).

more
http://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/exhibitions/RitaAngus/Downloads.aspx?sender=home

1 August - 1 November 2009

Alexis Hunter - NZ

The image used on the poster for Alexis Hunter's show Radical Feminism in the 1970s seems almost a parody of aggressive masculinity.

By Adam Gifford

It's a side-on shot of a male torso, naked from the waist up, leather trousered below, hand on hip holding a cigarette, New York's twin towers in ghostly shadow behind.

Treating the male as a sexual object was unusual in the early 1970s when the photo was taken.

"There is always a journey to making a piece of work," says Hunter, now back in her home in Camden, London, after spending the summer in New Zealand.

The photos were source material for a photo-realist painting now owned by the Auckland City Art Gallery, and on loan to a survey of feminist art touring North America. Her original impetus was a study of European tattoos embarked on when she arrived in London in 1972, after studying painting at Elam.

"I heard a lecture at the Royal Academy which described tattooing in a very denigrating way - that it was primitive. I was angry because I know from New Zealand culture that tattooing was a very important part of Maori social structure.

"After the lecture I decided to go out on to the street and take photos of people with tattoos, and ask why they had them. That was the project. Sometimes you do something because you are interested, and the art comes later."

When she showed the tattoo photos, she was challenged for taking sexist photos of men.

"That's because when you take a close shot of an arm by the side, you take in the pelvis. I thought, how can you take a sexist picture of a man if men have that power in society? Sexism comes from being in a position to look at a person and make them into an object. Art history does that to women."

Hunter looked further at the new feminist ideas about what words like sexism mean.

"It was just at the beginning of talking about those things. A lot of us were working in the dark. People think you get art from ideas but the fact is the art is the idea. Sometimes the painting is the theory. The way people look at it completes the theory."

Interest in early feminist art has prompted requests for Hunter to dig into her archives.

"There was a lot of interest a couple of years ago in early conceptual art, so the feminist art came just after that and is seen as part of that movement," she says.

"In the 1970s we felt empowered to change society, and thought we could do so by making art. People now don't feel that, and they want to learn how we did it."

Part of how Hunter did it was remembering the lessons of her tutor and mentor at Elam, painter Colin McCahon.

"Though my work does not look like his, I think it follows his ethics in the sense that you have to see yourself as a social being in society and that you have responsibilities as an artist."

She says the Art of the Feminist Revolution show, which opened in Los Angeles last month, "has people so excited because the work is so raw, so hard, so to the point. Some of the stuff cannot be surpassed in the way of bravery or breaking taboos".

Artists like Hunter used themselves as raw material to explore how the culture controlled how women could look and behave. "We were ridiculed in the press. We couldn't get work."

She says friends coming to the end of tenured careers in art schools have offered her sorts of apologies for not getting her jobs. "They said, 'We couldn't, you were a feminist artist'."

She also encountered problems getting her images printed, including one of a woman cutting her nails with a razor blade and another of a woman burning a pair of silver high heel shoes.

"A few were out of focus because I was using focus to suggest intellectual awakening. When I took them to the printer, they would refuse to do them because they suspected they were feminist work. They would claim they could not print out of focus work. I would have to take the manager out for a drink and get them done at night."

The Whitespace show is a small selection from a large survey last year at the Norwich Gallery in England.

What: Radical Feminism in the 1970s, by Alexis Hunter

Where and when: Whitespace Gallery, 12 Crummer Rd, to April 14

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/story.cfm?c_id=544&objectid=10432382

3rd Auckland Triennial

Opening 9 March 2007

The 3rd Auckland Triennial addresses the condition of turbulence - the complex and unpredictable cultural and political environment in which we live.

The Auckland Triennial is New Zealand's premier international contemporary art exhibition providing a window into the art of today. turblence is presented at 5 different venues. Auckland Art Gallery - New Gallery, ARTSPACE, The Gus Fisher Gallery, St PAUL ST and Academy Cinemas.



Click here for more information

Call - Exhibition Proposals Wellington

Toi Poneke, Wellington Arts Centre is seeking exhibition proposals from emerging artists and curators who wish to show their work in a gallery that celebrates and supports new and experimental work.

Toi Poneke Gallery formally known as Wellington Arts Centre Gallery is located on the ground floor of Toi Poneke, Wellington Arts Centre, 61 Abel Smith Street, in the Te Aro precinct.

The Arts Centre was established in 2005 to support emerging, early career artists and provide meeting, rehearsal and working space for Wellington’s creative community.

the 2006 Walters Prize - Auckland

The Auckland Art Gallery has announced the four works by the artists who have been shortlisted for the 2006 Walters Prize.

The finalists are:

Stella Brennan for Wet Social Sculpture 2005, first shown at St Paul St Gallery, Auckland
Phil Dadson for Polar Projects 2004, first shown at Dunedin Public Art Gallery
Peter Robinson for The Humours 2005, first shown at Dunedin Public Art Gallery
Francis Upritchard for Doomed, Doomed All Doomed 2005, first shown at Artspace, Auckland
Each finalist will receive $5,000 thanks to major donor Dayle Mace. The finalists were selected by a jury of four experts appointed by the Auckland Art Gallery.

HIGH TIDE - Lithuania

SUMMER 2006
HIGH TIDE: new currents in art from Australia and New Zealand
2 June – 13 August, 2006

Curators:
Magda Kardasz and Simon Rees

CAC
Vokieciu g. 2, LT-01130
Vilnius, Lithuania
info@cac.lt
T: +370 5 262 3476
F: +370 5 262 3954
http://www.cac.lt

Tuesday – Sunday 12.00 – 19.30

The Contemporary Art Centre’s major summer exhibition HIGH TIDE is the largest bi-national exhibition of contemporary art from Australia and New Zealand presented internationally. HIGH TIDE which includes 29 artists and 5 collaborative groups has traveled to the CAC following its popular and critical success at Zach?ta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw (February – April 2006).

HIGH TIDE presents Australian and New Zealand art from a European point of view locating themes and motifs that match a European popular imagination — with a focus on works that make humorous/political commentary or reveal the hidden underbelly of this imaginary. For instance, artist Daniel Malone leaves no doubt in the audiences’ minds that many intelligent New Zealanders revile the concept that their nation is in anyway associated with Tolkien’s ‘Middle Earth’ in the wake of the Lord of the Rings movie experience. There is a strong environmental theme within the exhibition as several artists signal the impact that human contact is having on the unique and often fragile ecologies of both geographies. Ironically, the more people who visit this nature the faster its beauty fades. Similarly, the Aboriginal, Maori, and Pacific Island artists in the exhibition chart the complicated impact that European colonization has had on their homelands and peoples.

The CAC exhibition includes 8 newly commissioned works as 15 artists traveled to Vilnius for the occasion. Melbourne artists Callum Morton and Danius Kesminas produced a large-scale performative architectural ‘happening’ reflecting historical links between the cities of Melbourne and Vilnius: since the first decade of the 20th Century Melbourne has been a site of major Lithuanian emigration. Australian Wiradjuri artist Brook Andrew investigated local engagements with notions of ‘blackness’ (when Lithuania is a resolutely white and culturally homogeneous nation). Equally ‘alienated’ when in Vilnius for two months, New Zealand artist Jim Speers has produced a new three-channel video scanning the outer-spaces of the city and grey-zones of male social interaction.

Alienation and cultural distanciation are cultural affects, often associated with Australia and New Zealand (and post-Soviet Europe), that HIGH TIDE goes some way to overcoming.

Participating artists: A.L.A.N., Brook Andrew, Guy Benfield, Mladen Bizumic, Lisa Crowley, Bill Culbert, Destiny Deacon and Virginia Fraser, eX de Medici, Mikala Dwyer, Shaun Gladwell, Matthew Griffin, Peggy Napangardi Jones, The Kingpins, Maddie Leach, Daniel Malone, MINIT (Jasmine Guffond and Torben Tilly), Tracey Moffatt, TV Moore, James Morrison, Callum Morton and Danius Kesminas, Ani O'Neill, Michael Parekowhai, Patricia Piccinini, Rachael Rakena, Scott Redford, Ann Shelton, Jim Speers, Kathy Temin, Yvonne Todd, Francis Upritchard, Ronnie van Hout, Suzann Victor, Louise Weaver, Boyd Webb

HIGH TIDE is accompanied by an extensive catalogue that includes installation photography of the exhibitions and texts by: Brook Andrew, Gregory Burke, Destiny Deacon and Virginia Fraser, Robert Drewe, Simon During, eX de Medici, Blair French, Jeff Gibson, Ihor Holubizky, Magda Kardasz (ed.), Kestutis Kuizinas, Agnieszka Morawinska, Scott Redford, Simon Rees (ed.) plus an interview with the artists Daniel Malone, Ani O’Neill, Michael Parekowhai by the curators.

HIGH TIDE is a collaboration between the CAC and Zach?ta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw
And has received generous support from: the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts its arts funding and advisory body; Creative New Zealand Arts Council of New Zealand, Toi Aotearoa

With assistance from the Embassies of Australia and New Zealand to Lithuania

Australian Art Sales Digest

The Australian Art Sales Digest is a database of past auction results of over 280,000 works by more than 11,000 artists who have either lived or worked in Australia or New Zealand, offered for sale in Australia and New Zealand over the last thirty years. Our data covers over 1,350 auction sales from over 50 auction houses, and extends back to the early 1970s.

statistics: sales by nationality

artforum - australia & NZ guide

link

high tide - warsaw

"High Tide: New Currents in Art from Australia and New Zealand"

ZACHETA NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART
WARSAW
February 17–April 09

HIGH TIDE is a bi-national survey exhibition presenting work by 32 artists and two collectives from Australia and New Zealand.

It is the first major exhibition of its kind presented in Poland and the largest-scale exhibition combining artists from both nations staged internationally. The exhibition presents work across a range of media including drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, video and performance. As a special feature of the exhibition a number of artists have traveled to Warsaw to produce newly commissioned site-specific art works, some of them reflectingon the artists" engagement with Polish culture.

HIGH TIDE is loosely framed by three themes "Popular Visions", "the Suburban", and "New Outlooks" and collects three generations of artists from Bill Culbert (b. 1935) to A.L.A.N. Hsu (b. 1981).

The starting point for the exhibition, "Popular Visions", looks at Australian and New Zealand art from a Polish point of view and locates themes and motifs in the work that match expectations, such as: big and beautiful nature; "exotic" and strange nature; the ocean; and the importance of indigenous people in both cultures. Even though many artists from both nations make work that reflects the popular imaginary it is often for the
purpose of making humorous commentary or revealing a hidden underbelly of this imagination. Environmental concerns are repeated in the exhibition as artists point to the impact that human contact is having on the unique and often fragile ecologies of both geographies. Ironically, themore people who visit this nature the faster its beauty fades. Similarly, the Aboriginal, Maori, and Pacific Island artists in the exhibition chart the complicated impact that European colonization has had on their homelands and peoples.

Despite the important role nature plays in the characterization of Australia and New Zealand they are both urban cultures; more than 85% of the population in both nations live in cities. Sydney the region"s largest city has a population approaching 4.5 million people so can truly be considered a metropolis. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that a number of artists in HIGH TIDE make work that refers to urban/street culture relating to "the Suburban" theme. As is often the case with art made in large cities there is even a tendency to withdraw from the space of the city itself to the privacy of domestic, truly "suburban" spaces: what are known in Australia and New Zealand as the "living room" and the "the back yard".

In the last five years an increasing number of artists from Australia and New Zealand have begun to live and work internationally; concentrated in the United States and western Europe. Naturally, artists belonging to this group have begun to make art works that reflect their new living spaces and the cultures and art histories they are now engaging with. A different version of this process is artists who emigrate to Australia and New Zealand from elsewhere in the world, often as art students, whose work makes new cultural connections or reflects multi-national concerns. This group of artists produces "New Outlooks" on the art produced in both countries.

HIGH TIDE is an exhibition that aims to introduce Polish audiences to contemporary art from Australia and New Zealand and reflect upon culture from both countries in an insightful and humorous fashion.

The exhibition is co-organized with the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius, where it is going to be presented from June till August 2006.

Artists presented at the exhibition:

Brook Andrew, Guy Benfield, Mladen Bizumic, Lisa Crowley, Bill Culbert, Destiny Deacon and Virginia Fraser, Ex de Medici, Mikala Dwyer, Shaun Gladwell, Matthew Griffin, A.L.A.N. Hsu, Peggy Napangardi Jones, The Kingpins, Maddie Leach, Daniel Malone, MINIT (Jasmine Guffond and Torben Tilly), Tracey Moffatt, TV Moore, James Morrison, Callum Morton, Ani O'Neill, Michael Parekowhai, Patricia Piccinini, Rachel Rakena, Scott Redford, Ann Shelton, Jim Speers, Kathy Temin, Yvonne Todd, Francis Upritchard, Ronnie van Hout, Suzann Victor, Louise Weaver, Boyd Webb

contemporary maori art

Out of The Blue features the work of 18 Maori and Pacific Island artists from Aotearoa. Using contemporary mediums and images they create work that bridges the world of their ancestors with their global urban reality. Like their ancestors these artists manipulate available materials in the innovative practices you see here. These works tell the stories of experiences, people, ideas and issues important to the artists, their families and their communities today.

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Marian Maguire

Showing at Auckland Gallery

25 June - 30 October 2005

Marian Maguire's suite of etchings recasts the story of Ajax and Achilles from Homer's Iliad, in the New Zealand landscape. She reflects that Greek myths are part of the cultural 'baggage' European colonisers brought to this country. By imagining the scenes in our hills and by our lakesides she demonstrates the universal relevance of the story which is ultimately about friendship, loyalty, death, isolation and despair.

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Essay by Dr Anna Smith from the catalogue 'The Odyssey of Captain Cook.


ODE ON A SOUTH SEAS URN: THE ART OF MARIAN MAGUIRE

Tiwhatiwha te po, Dark, dark is the po
Ko te Pakerewha, It is the Pakerewha
Ko Arikirangi tenei ra te haere nei. It is Arikirangi that is coming.

What do the Ancient Greeks have in common with the South Seas? A lot, if a certain master printmaker from Christchurch has anything to do with it. Artist Marian Maguire has been working on bringing the Greeks to New Zealand for a number of years now. Inspired by the designs of classical artefacts: urns, bowls and jugs, Maguire has reworked the meeting of English colonizers and Maori through the medium of classical shapes and figures. In this new show, the collision of three cultures, not two, takes the viewer by surprise. The Odyssey of Captain Cook takes radical liberties with the history of this country, for we discover that Pakeha and Maori have now been joined by chiefs from the heavens (Arikirangi): Achilles, Athena, and boatloads of Greek soldiers. Using the voyages of Captain Cook as the pretext, Maguire explores how a nation remembers and represents its history. By implication, she also explores what a nation leaves out when it remembers; and how its vision is always skewed in favour of one race or the other. Every time we seek to understand these engravings and lithographs as the story of two nations, or two races, the artist presents a third perspective: a sleight of hand which, in a climate that favours biculturalism, makes for troubled viewing indeed.

continues



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