The Bentinck Project

Woolloongabba Art Gallery, Brisbane
7 April - 28 May 2006

Published June 2006

State of the Art New Zealand

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.

Published June 2006

Seeking Origins - Whakapapa Genealogy

Published June 2006

Braided Rivers: Regionalism in New Zealand Art

Andrew Paul Wood focuses on some of the issues pertaining to New Zealands regionalist tensions, particularly the obvious division of the North and South Islands. Furthermore he looks at some of the opposing aesthetic qualities to have come from artists of the North and the South regions. This is here discussed through reference to artists Colin McCahon, Don Binney, Pat Hanly, Bill Sutton, Rita Angus, Gordon Walters, Milan Mrkusich, Gretchen Albrecht, Ronnie van Hout, Bill Hammond, John Pule, Elizabeth Allan, Dorothy Irvine, Sandy Gibb, Billy Apple, Sofia Tekela-Smith, Ani ONeil, Niki Hastings-McFall, Shigeyuki Kihara, Peter Robinson, Shane Cotton, Ralph Hotere, Robyn Kahukiwa, Tony de Latour, Seraphine Pick, Saskia Leek, Grant Takle, Peter Wheeler and James Robinson.

Published June 2006

Reality-technicians: everyday sorcery in installation art in New Zealand

'There was a flash of light, a smell of laundry and the penetrating fumes of a powerful cleanser, then a neutral nothing-smell, not even the usual substituted forest glade or field of lavender or carnation, and all that remained of Tommy were two faded footprints on the floor.'

Published June 2006

Other(wize)

Fire-Works Gallery
Brisbane
25 November - 24 December 2006

Published June 2006

2006 Contemporary Commonwealth

Australian Centre for the Moving Image:
24 February - 21 May

National Gallery of Victoria
24 February - 25 June
Festival Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games

Published June 2006

New Arrival: Brian Butler, Director of Artspace

Interview with Brian Butler, the new Director of Artspace, Auckland. Questions are raised regarding Butler's decision to leave his position at the Los Angeles cutting edge art gallery 1301PE in order to direct a publicly funded space in Auckland and his visions for the future of Artspace.

Published June 2006

You And Me And Everyone We Know: Photography

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.

Published June 2006

Visions and Revisions: Recent Work by Shane Cotton

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.

Published June 2006

An Artist's Economy: Madden, Stevenson, Upritchard

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.

Published June 2006

Excess: Penny Mason

Academy Gallery, Inveresk, Tasmania
13 February - 7 April 2006

Published June 2006