SEXUAL PUNS, A SCULPTURAL BEACH PARTY, FLORAL ARTISTRY, A PROTEST MARCH FOR KIDS: VISUAL ARTS SHOWCASED IN AUCKLAND ARTS FESTIVAL 2011
Major International artists Sarah Lucas (UK), Héctor Zamora
(Mexico/Brazil) and Daniel Crooks (Melbourne-based New Zealander)
headline a spectacular visual arts programme for Auckland Arts
Festival 2011 (2-20 March), which includes exhibitions,
public projects, events, artist talks and workshops.
The full 2011 Visual Arts programme, whose dedicated guide
booklet hits the streets today, is characterised by a number of
themes and connections: a focus on the body and performance, the
use of moving image, issues of community, identity and ecology.
Auckland Arts Festival Visual Arts Manager, Ariane Craig-Smith
says the strength of the 2011 programme is testament to the
sophistication of Auckland's Visual Arts scene, and the strong
partnerships the Festival enjoys with the wider arts community.
"I'm particularly excited that artists with the international
reputations of Sarah, Héctor and Daniel are spending time here
during the Festival, and creating work that responds to the city,
its people and environment," she says.
"The opportunities for artistic exchange generated by their
visits to New Zealand - and the participation of the other local
and international artists, art galleries and institutions involved
in this terrific programme - are what the festival is all
about."
Celebrated British sculptor, photographer and installation
artist, Sarah Lucas (part of the notorious and celebrated YBAs -
Young British Artists such as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin who rose
to prominence in the early 1990s) will be artist in residence at
Two Rooms gallery. Her works are characterised by
confrontational humour, sexual puns and an ironic exploration of
Englishness. As her debut exhibition in New Zealand Lucas
will show NUDS, a new sculptural series that references
the formative, gender-orientated works of her early practice, and
plans to create some new NUDS during her time here.
Héctor Zamora, also showing in New Zealand for the first time,
is one of the most exciting artists to emerge from Mexico in the
last decade. He will produce a unique site-specific work for
the Festival that will take two forms. The first is a
temporary public sculpture - made through public action - at Te
Henga (Bethells Beach). The second will be the attendant
installation and documentation of that work at Shed 6. Zamora
visited Auckland in 2010 to research the project and returns to
Auckland for the Festival, both visits in association with the Elam
International Artist in Residence programme at Auckland
University.
Australian-based Daniel Crooks returns to his home city to
present two distinct works in very different Auckland venues.
Crooks' ongoing investigation of motion and time in public space is
explored in a new series of stills for the street level Bledisloe
Walkway Light Boxes. The works are produced from footage
captured in Auckland during Crooks' December 2010 visit. Two
Rooms also presents Crooks' stunning film work Static No. 12
(Stillness Seeks Movement), previously shown at the
17th Sydney Biennial, along with two new works.
The relationship between art and performance is strongly present
in the Festival's re-staging of Jim Allen's seminal 1974
performance series Contact and several
other exhibitions, including performance design survey Fly-Tower
and group show Alicia
Frankovich / Laresa Kosloff / Ruth Proctor at Starkwhite, which
brings together the work of three international artists who address
the relationship between performative body and artwork object.
Environmental concerns are explored in an exhibition curated by
Lisa Reihana at Snowhite Gallery, Upstream, Midstream,
Downstream, featuring the work of John Malcolm (UK/NZ) and the
Center for Land Use Interpretation CLUI (USA). The
exhibition provides an arresting view of the world's largest
industry: the production, distribution, refining and retailing of
petroleum. Australian artists Josephine Starrs and Leon Cmielewski
focus on landscapes at risk from global warming with their
installation at MIC Toi Rerehiko, Incompatible
Elements.
Manukau-based Leilani Kake's Ngā Hau e Whā - The Four
Winds, a video installation, powerfully examines the
relationship between the body, identity and the politics of health.
Kake focuses on the taboo of nudity and explores the politics and
histories related to perceptions of the body for Māori and Pacific
women. This provocative video installation was inspired by
startling statistics that revealed the unusually high incidence of
preventable cancers in Māori and Pacific Island women.
Identity is also central to Te Tuhi group exhibition,
Pūrākau, featuring the works of artists from New Zealand,
Cuba and Mexico, and The Heart of Everything, an
exhibition of Aboriginal painting from the Mornington and Bentinck
Islands at the Tim Melville Gallery.
The impact of moving image and digital technology is also a key
refrain. In addition to the work of Daniel Crooks, the
international contingent includes pioneering video artist, Ko
Nakajima. In 1998 Nakajima was invited to New Zealand by TVNZ
and commissioned to create a work for the programme
Kaleidoscope. The resulting work,
RANGITOTO, was the first piece of video art to be
broadcast full-length on national television. Nakajima
returns to New Zealand with his young protégé, Kentaro Taki, and
both will lead a workshop, perform live and participate in public
conversations alongside their exhibition, Video Life, as
AUT's ST PAUL St Gallery. South African photographer, Pieter
Hugo, gives an intriguing look behind the scenes of Nigeria's
famous B-grade films industry (the third largest in the
world). Look out also for a special edition of
Viewfinder at the Auckland Library, curated by the New
Zealand Film Archive.
The theme of community is prominent within the Festival's
programme, lead by Zamora's public project. Also centrally
engaged with community is The Letting Space's Shopfront by
the Suburban Floral Association. Acollaboration between
Monique Redmond and Tanya Eccelston, the project recalls the floral
artistry of festivals of the 1960s and 70s and will bring together
people and plants through an abundance of "flowering events."
Craig-Smith cites John Reynold's I'm Just Saying, a
participatory project for Family Day - a call for kids to "make art
not war" - as a personal pick. "I'm Just Saying
promises to be hilarious and entertaining - a classically Reynolds
idea brought to life by kids on the day."
Finn Ferrier's Look Here, a work in its own right
within the Visual Arts Guide, invites audiences to look again at
the city that surrounds them and the history that is literally
embedded in the landscape. And New Zealand's rich ceramics
tradition is celebrated with a retrospective of master maker
Richard Parker at Objectspace, and an exhibition that looks at the
groundbreaking work of the Auckland Studio Potters.
The 2011 Festival will also see the first Australasian White
Night event. White Night (aka Nuit Blanche)
was introduced in Paris in 2001 and has spread through the world's
cultural capitals. White Night events are
celebrations of visual arts and culture, where galleries and
museums stay open late into the night with special programming that
transforms the central city into a huge art gallery
"We hope that White Night will become an annual event,"
says Festival Artistic Director, David Malacari, "it's a fantastic
opportunity to showcase the city's museums and galleries and to
build public engagement with the arts."
With 56 galleries, museums and other venues open on one night,
free buses connecting the six city precincts, as well as MOTAT and
venues in South Auckland, and an incredible array of unique events
and exhibitions on offer over six hours, Craig-Smith notes that
"it's a festival within the Festival and a night not to be
missed."
White Night, the visits of Lucas, Zamora and Crooks and
the wealth of Visual Arts content in the 2011 Festival is the
result of extensive sector cooperation.
"The Visual Arts programme is made possible by collaboration
right across Auckland's arts scene," says Craig-Smith. "It has been
a real joy to work with galleries, artists and arts organisations
and feel the developing enthusiasm for Auckland Arts Festival as a
platform for their work."
Auckland Arts Festival is the region's biggest celebration of
arts and culture. The biennial Festival, which began in 2003,
will celebrate its fifth birthday in 2011 with a dazzling line-up
of more than 75 separate events involving over 500 artists -
concerts, productions, arts exhibitions, seminars, workshops and
family activities. Tickets to the 2011 Festival (2-20 March)
are now on sale.
For information on individual events, including venues, times
and ticketing information, visit www.aucklandfestival.co.nz.
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MEDIA CONTACT: Rachel Lorimer, Senior Publicist,
Auckland Arts Festival
rachel.lorimer@aucklandfestival.co.nz, 09 374 0317, 021 436 503,
www.aucklandfestival.co.nz