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Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki

turbulence: the 3rd Auckland Triennial
Auckland / New Zealand
from 9 March 2007

Curator / Victoria Lynn

Presented by the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki in association with exhibition partners ARTSPACE / The Gus Fisher Gallery / ST PAUL ST / Academy Cinemas

http://www.aucklandtriennial.com

exhibition + films + symposium + catalogue + performances + events

We live in turbulent times…

The 3rd Auckland Triennial addresses the condition of turbulence – the complex and unpredictable cultural and political environment in which we live. Curated by Victoria Lynn, an independent curator based in Melbourne, Australia, the exhibition includes works that respond to the ambient hopes and fears in our midst. The artists in turbulence create aesthetic interventions – active, vital and alternative ways of looking at the world around us.

They present their real and imagined expressions of sustenance and exile, ancestry and colonisation, trade and co-existence. Some artists are motivated by a sense of protest, some forge an aesthetics of survival, while others try to out-manoeuvre turbulence by representing alternative routes and pathways.

The exhibition includes the work of over 35 artists from more than 20 countries.

Lida Abdul (Afghanistan); Chantal Akerman (Belgium); Vyacheslav Akhunov (Uzbekistan) with Sergey Tichina (Uzbekistan); Eve Armstrong (New Zealand); The Atlas Group / Walid Raad (Lebanon / United States of America); Carlos Capelán (Uruguay/Sweden); Kah Bee Chow (Malaysia / New Zealand); Phil Collins (United Kingdom); Donna Conlon (United States of America / Panama); Shane Cotton (Nga Puhi / New Zealand); Christina Dimitriadis (Greece / Germany); Willie Doherty (Northern Ireland); Regina José Galindo (Guatemala); Carlos Garaicoa (Cuba); Alexandros Georgiou (Greece) Mónica Giron (Argentina); George Gittoes (Australia); Fiona Hall (Australia) Mona Hatoum (Palestine / United Kingdom); Julian Hooper (New Zealand); Alfredo Jaar (Chile / United States of America); Isaac Julien (United Kingdom); Long March Project (People’s Republic of China); Lucía Madriz (Costa Rica); Daniel Malone (New Zealand); Oscar Muñoz (Colombia); John Pule (Niue / New Zealan
d); r e a (Gamilaraay / Wailwan people of NSW, Australia); Michal Rovner (Israel / United States of America); Julie Rrap (Australia); Lázaro A. Saavedra González (Cuba); Sriwhana Spong (New Zealand); Yuk King Tan (New Zealand / Hong Kong); Laura Waddington (United Kingdom); Lynette Wallworth (Australia); Areta Wilkinson (Kai Tahu / New Zealand).

The Auckland Triennial is New Zealand’s premier international contemporary art exhibition providing a window onto the world of contemporary art while creating a dialogue between local artists and their global counterparts.

turbulence is accompanied by a substantial catalogue, including essays by Victoria Lynn, Cuban curator and writer Gerardo Mosquera and New Zealand sociologist David Craig. Illustrated throughout, with an elegant and contemporary design, it also includes texts on each of the artists by leading international curators and writers.

The 3rd Auckland Triennial supporters:
AUT University / Simpson Grierson / Sue Fisher Art Trust / Chartwell Trust / Creative New Zealand / Auckland Festival AK07 / Patrons of the Triennial / British Council / Australia Council for the Arts / Asia New Zealand Foundation / Trethewey Stone (ck) Stone / British Airways / CityLife Auckland / Aalto Colour / Elam Residency Project, University of Auckland

For more information go to: http://www.aucklandtriennial.com

Stedelijk Museum CS

Mapping the City
16 February – 20 May 2007

Stedelijk Museum CS
Post CS Building, 2nd floor
Oosterdokskade 5
1011 AD Amsterdam, NL
Tel. +31 (0)20 5732.911
Fax. +31 (0)20 6752.716
http://www.stedelijk.nl

‘Mapping the City’ focuses on the relationship between artists and the city from around 1960 to the present day. The group show revolves around the way in which artists perceive urban space. The emphasis is on the city as social community, on behaviour, poses, and urban rituals.

Participating artists
Doug Aitken, Francis Alÿs, Stanley Brouwn, Matthew Buckingham, Philip Lorca diCorcia, Guy Debord/Asger Jorn, Ed van der Elsken, Valie Export, Lee Friedlander, Dan Graham, Frank Hesse, Douglas Huebler, William Klein, Saul Leiter, Sol LeWitt, Sarah Morris, Bill Owens, Martha Rosler, Ed Ruscha, Willem de Ridder en Wim T. Schippers, Beat Streuli, Jeff Wall

Two ideas are at the heart of the exhibition: the flâneur, a type first described by Charles Baudelaire around 1850, and the activity of dérive, a practice coined by Situationist Guy Debord. The exhibition begins in the late nineteen-fifties when Debord published his Theorie de la dérive (1958). Another jumping-off point is Stanley Brouwn’s famous series This way Brouwn. Starting in 1962, Brouwn started asking random passers-by for directions in getting from point A to point B. He gave each route that people drew for him the title This way Brouwn.

From the late nineteen-sixties and early nineteen-seventies onwards, many artists adopted the city as their workspace. Similar to Brouwn, themes such as walking through the city, chance, and grappling with our everyday environment are also integral to the work of Douglas Huebler. Others, like Martha Rosler, subject the metropolis to critical scrutiny. In her piece The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems Rosler employs photography and text to analyze the underbelly of New York society. For Austrian artist VALIE EXPORT, the city was ‘still a male space’. With her Tapp- and Touch Cinema (1968), she invited the viewer to a ‘tactile experience that is the reverse of inauthentic voyeurism’.

Another theme in the exhibition is ‘street photography’. From the nineteen-fifties onwards, photographers like Ed van der Elsken, William Klein and Saul Leiter, injected post-war photography with a freshness and immediacy. For instance, Klein’s unpolished, experimental style caused quite a furore and inspired a generation of young photographers. His photo diary of New York figured people, children, parades, litter and an aggressive, alien, lonely urban landscape cluttered with raucous billboards.

Contemporary art
The core of Francis Alÿs’ activities revolves around the many walks he has taken through the centre of Mexico City since the early nineteen-nineties. Alÿs’ Collection of Ephemera includes numerous drawings, photos, notes, maps and objects that relate to his walks in the ten-block radius around his studio in the historic centre of Mexico City.

The Heads of Philip Lorca diCorcia and the street scenes by Beat Streuli can be seen as contemporary variants of classic street photography. Their photographs capture the manifestly vacant expressions on the faces of anonymous passers-by.

A biography of Florida’s sun-drenched capital, Sarah Morris’ video work Miami presents the city’s various facets as the hub of the tourist industry, drug and illegal immigrant trafficking on a more or less equal footing. The film installation A Man of the Crowd by Matthew Buckingham is based on the similarly-titled short story by Edgar Allan Poe. The result is a tense mini-thriller set in the streets of Vienna. The video piece by Doug Aitken, Electric Earth, is pervaded by a powerful sense of estrangement. This overwhelming video installation projected onto eight huge screens confronts us with the modern city as though it were the remains of an alien civilization.

Press contact: Arjan Reinders, tel. +31 (0)20 5732.662 / pressof<fice@stedelijk.nl
General press info and (high res.) images: http://www.stedelijk.nl/press

Stedelijk Museum CS
Post CS Building, 2nd floor
Oosterdokskade 5
1011 AD Amsterdam, NL
Tel. +31 (0)20 5732.911
Fax. +31 (0)20 6752.716
Open: daily from 10.00 -18.00.
Info & directions: http://www.stedelijk.nl

For more information go to: http://www.stedelijk.nl

CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY ARTS, ESTONIA

52. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte - La Biennale di Venezia
52nd International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia

Marko Mäetamm’s project
LOSER’S PARADISE

Exhibition:
June 10th – November 21st, 2007
Vernissage:
June 8 th, 2007

Palazzo Malipiero
San Marco 3079
Venezia

The Estonian artist Marko Mäetamm presents a solo exhibition called LOSER’S PARADISE, which will represent Estonia at the 52nd International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, in 2007. The exhibition at the Estonian Pavilion is curated by Mika Hannula and commissioned by Center of Contemporary Arts, Estonia.

For the current exhibition, Mäetamm has created a conceptual framework that holds together all the new works done especially for this event; works that range from video installation via sculpture to paintings. A framework that guides the visitor through a setting that delivers what it promises: an all-encompassing view on the private sphere of a truly confused individual. What we see and hear is the litany of the ways how a specific person, this time highly personally the artist himself, fails to cope with contemporary pressure of success and competition. And yes, what we also see is how his fears and agonies have turned into violence and murder – descriptively speaking.

However, as the saying goes, if everything is wrong, then what is possibly right? Thus, what we feel and relate to is much more than meets the eye. Marko Mäetamm’s story in itself is so exaggerated, so over-whelming at its whining tone that as a viewer you can’t escape the feeling that something strange is going on. Isn’t his confession a bit too real? Can this actually be an autobiographical narrative? How much of his personal pain is manufactured and constructed?

All assumptions and assertions come together in the interactive play between experience and expectation, between real and fake, between soft and hard, sugar and spice, love and hate. We have no way of knowing. All we can do is to go with the flow at the site of the Estonian Pavilion and enjoy this weirdly enjoyable visual narrative with physical dimensions. Here, we confront a complex conceptual work in which Marko Mäetamm presents himself as a master of manipulation, an artist who certainly knows how to twist and turn the tales within the exhibition format. A story as in a proper gesamtkunstwerk that leaves you “violently happy”.

Curator
Mika Hannula

Commissioner
Johannes Saar
head of the Center of Contemporary Arts, Estonia

Deputy Commissioner
Elin Kard
project manager of the Center of Contemporary Arts, Estonia

Deputy Commissioner
Andris Brinkmanis

Website
http://www.cca.ee
http://www.maetamm.net

For further information please contact:
Elin Kard

elin@cca.ee
gsm +372 52 85 324
ph. +372 631 40 50
CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY ARTS, ESTONIA
Vabaduse väljak 6
10146 Tallinn
ESTONIA
http://www.cca.ee

For more information go to: http://www.cca.ee