Catherine David's Transmission

Renowned French curator Catherine David visited Auckland to judge the Walters Prize; she awarded the $50,000 prize to Peter Robinson. John Hurrell artist, curator and blogger of NZ art reviews and critical discussion site eyeCONTACT spoke to Catherine about her curating of the Lyon Biennial which touches down in late 2009, and the relationship between artists and curators.

Published December 2008

Places and contexts in two Singapore Biennales: curating courtrooms, containers and camps

Curator of the 2008 Adelaide Biennale Felicity Fenner discriminates between site-specific and site-responsive art practices in an analysis of the last two Singapore Biennales. She suggests that responding to the site may be the best way for a biennale to become more than an expo.

Published December 2008

Shards: Judy Watson, Yhonnie Scarce, Nici Cumpston

Shards: Judy Watson, Yhonnie Scarce, Nici Cumpston
Curator: Mary Knights
South Australian School of Art Gallery (SASA)
30 September - 24 October 2008

Published December 2008

To curate or not to curate, 2008 in Europe: urban BB5 and post-industrial Manifesta 7

London-based Macedonian artist and writer Nadja Prlja compares the urban and modern 5th Berlin Biennial BB5: When Things Cast No Shadow (5 April - 15 June 2008) with Manifesta 7 (19 July - 2 November 2008) which occupied the whole arae of Trentoni in Italy. Prlja pays particular attention to the differences in the ways the projects were curated.

Published December 2008

Firing across the gaps

In May 2008 Wagga Wagga Art Gallery's new Director Cath Bowdler curated Crossfire, an exhibition of resonating artworks from the Gallery's two major collections, the National Art Glass Collection and the Margaret Carnegie Print Collection, as a way of introducing herself to both the space and the place. Bowdler was initially inspired by the glass work Salt on Mina Mina by Dorothy Napangardi.

Published December 2008

Throwing voices

Senior Curator at Christchurch Art Gallery Justin Paton reflects on curating the exhibition that he remembers most fondly and that speaks to him of the magic of curating - the show of wall paintings called Big Talk by US word- artist Kay Rosen in 2004 at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.

Published December 2008

Emerging, educating and unruly: Vivonne Thwaites

Hahndorf Academy Curator Melinda Rankin reflects on the recent work of legendary freelance curator Vivonne Thwaites who introduced Rankin to the deep levels of research, the surprises, the risks and the sheer hard work of being a curator.

Published December 2008

Beyond the temples: the way of idiosyncracy

Professor and artist Pat Hoffie interviewed highly creative, innovative and idiosyncratic curator Kevin Wilson, once Director of Linden, Director at Noosa Gallery where he devised The Floating Land project and most recently Program Director with the Queensland Artworkers Alliance and their ARC Biennial that opens in October 2009.

Published December 2008

Spatsville: Memoirs of a failed painter: Alasdair Macintyre

Splatsville: Memoirs of a Failed Painter: Alasdair Macintyre
Ryan Renshaw, Brisbane
23 September - October 11 2008

Published December 2008

Artrave

Published December 2008

Back from the brink: culture in Timor-Leste

The Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT)'s Curator of Southeast Asian Art and Material Culture Joanna Barrkman curated Husi Bei Ala Timor Sira Nia Liman /From the Hands of Our Ancestors which is on at MAGNT in Darwin from 21 November 2008 to 12 July 2009. The show celebrates the survival of Timor-Leste's cultural inheritance and asks whether traditional art forms and techniques have a role to play in the formation and assertion of Timor-Leste's national and cultural identity.

Published December 2008

Hello Tokyo! Good to see you again

Artspace curator Reuben Keehan reflects on the Australia-Japan Visual Art Forum convened by Asialink in June 2008 as the Biennale of Sydney opened.
The thirty delegates concluded the stimulating forum with recommendations about ongoing collaborations between curators using a variety of models, as well as the new ideas to be pursued of audience-in-residence programs and an Asian version of Manifesta.

Published December 2008