Charles Merewether: Director of 15th Biennale of Sydney

This essay draws on some of the themes and issues raised by the 1997 report 'New Vision: A Critical View of the Visual Arts Infrastructure', commissioned by Creative New Zealand and the Chartwell Trust to document the state of New Zealand's visual arts infrastructure of the time. It is here used in reference to offer a series of (partial, personal and biased) snapshots that consider the state of the visual arts scene in New Zealand. Some key figures here referred to include Gordon H. Brown, Lee Weng Choy, Greg Burke, John Maynard, Cheryll Sotheran, Priscilla Pitts, John McCormack, Pae White, Sam Durant, Lee Bul, Peter Robinson, Ann Shelton, Fiona Clark, Giovanni Intra, Fumio Nanjo, Jonathan Watkins, Mercedes Vicente, Tyler Cann, Robert Leonard, David Hatcher, Louise Garrett, Simon Rees, Michael Stevenson, Ronnie van Hout, Francis Upritchard, Denise Kum, Yuk King Tan, Joyce Campbell, Hamish McKay, Andrew Jenson, John Gow, Gary Langsford, Michael Lett, Heather Galbraith, Jenny Todd, Brian Butler and others.

Strongman here looks at the recent works of New Zealand artist Shane Cotton. Issues of transformation - of an ebb and flow of changes in form and meaning over time, of visions and revisions of and between cultures - have been central concerns of Cotton's work for more than a decade. Through extensive reference to Maori and Christian culture, Cotton explores what he describes as the 'collision and collusion' of New Zealand's two official cultures.

New Zealand artists Peter Madden, Michael Stevenson and Francis Upritchard have each worked within disparate environments and local economies for some years, in Auckland, Berlin and London respectively. Each of them self-consciously explores alternative economies available to them through the production of art. Between them Madden, Stevenson and Upritchard have participated in such art events as the Venice Biennale and exhibited at the Tate Gallery, Darren Knight Gallery, the Museum of New Zealand, Herbert Read Gallery and the Bart Wells Institute.

This article looks at the controversy that surrounded Ans Westra's pictorial essay Washday at the Pa, published during the 1960's, as a way of addressing the current trends in New Zealand photography. Emma Bugden uses this example to raise issues of Maori and Pekeha representations in New Zealand art and the renewed interest in social realism among New Zealand photographers in recent years. Artists included in this discussion are Edith Amituana, Andrew Ross, Marti Friedlander, Peter Black, Peter Peryer, Anne Noble, Laurence Aberhart, Greg O'Brien, Justin Paton, Ava Seymour, Joel Peter Witkin, Fiona Amundsen and Neil Pardington.

Cuckoo was formed in January 2001 by dreamers Ani O'neill, Daniel Malone, Judy Darragh (artists), Jon Bywater and Gwyneth Porter (writers). Collectively they created this space as a means for discussing ways to present artist's projects outside the traditional method of running a gallery space. Some of the artists involved with cuckoo are Dan Arps, Kate Newby, Sriwana Spong, Ben Tankard, Janet Lilo, Fiona Connor, Seung Yul Oh and Nick Austin.