Artipedia - Arts News

SCAPE Christchurch Biennial

SCAPE Christchurch Biennial prepares to launch 5th biennial
of art in public space:

‘WANDERING LINES: Towards a New Culture of Space’

Opens 19 September 2008

http://www.scapebiennial.org.nz

Co-curated by Turkey’s internationally renowned Fulya Erdemci and New Zealand’s Danae Mossman, SCAPE 2008 will open with a distinctive list of artists showcasing new work in public space. Sited city-wide outdoors and at the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu, SCAPE 2008 runs for 6 weeks from 19 Sep – 2 Nov*.

A city is a dynamic system constantly in flux, that reflects the shifting values of society, where social and political representations, cultural production and consumption, tourism and leisure play out. Globalisation has led to greater mobility and increasing migration, transforming cities at an increasingly rapid pace. Culturally, this shift has seen shopping malls become surrogate social spaces, and urban centres designed to capture the tourist dollar over the need for public space that appeals to local inhabitants.

Driven by a desire to explore the potential for a new culture of space, Wandering Lines: Towards a New Culture of Space presents works by 25 artists across Christchurch city who reflect the conditions and conflicts of Christchurch’s public spaces. The title Wandering Lines (de Certeau: 1998) is drawn from the notion that ‘indirect or errant trajectories obeying their own logic’ can provide new understandings of space (ibid).

Making seemingly invisible contingencies visible, artistic interventions can propose a different experience of locale and situation, or suggest opportunties for more relevant public space, to counter the effects of privatisation and neo-liberal economic policies on social space.

SCAPE 2008 is firmly positioned within the dynamic systems of the city and will develop relationships between artworks and an infinite number of spatial, urban, social, psychological, individual or communal, political and historical conditions that exist in the city. In this sense, interweaving art within the social and urban context is vital in activating a critical dialogue towards a new culture of space.

In line with Vito Acconci’s definition of the function of art in public space, SCAPE 2008 projects are considered in accordance with their ability to de-design the spatial politics and established ‘ways of operating’ to reveal conflicts and contingencies in the urban realm.

Structured around three intersecting layers, SCAPE 2008 is interested in researching drivers behind global conditions of change in cities, mapping the complex textures and terrains that are specific to Christchurch city and creating a spatial dialogue that brings forward aspects of the city that resonate with global issues.

The SCAPE Christchurch Biennial is New Zealand’s only international biennial dedicated to the exhibition of contemporary art in public space. It plays a unique and important role as it focuses on commissioning new works of art. This year approximately 90 per cent of the artworks shown in the Biennial will premiere in Christchurch..

Artists: AVL - Atelier van Lieshout (The Netherlands), Billy Apple (New Zealand/United States); Hannah & Aaron Beehre (New Zealand), Erick Beltrán (Mexico), Guillaume Bijl (Belgium), Elmgreen & Dragset (Norway/Denmark), Ayşe Erkmen (Germany/Turkey), Pat Foster & Jen Berean (Australia), Carmela Gross (Brazil), Lonnie Hutchison (New Zealand), Ann Veronica Janssens (Belgium), Paul Johns (New Zealand), Maider López (Spain), Tea Mäkipää (Finland), Callum Morton (Australia), Tatzu Oozu (Germany/Japan), James Oram (New Zealand), Murat & Fuat Şahinler (Turkey), Karin Sander (Germany), Marnie Slater (NZ), Ron Terada (Canada), ZUS - Zones Urbaines Sensibles (The Netherlands), Felice Varini (France/Switzerland)

SCAPE previews 19 September, following the 2nd Singapore Biennale (9, 10 Sep) and the 6th Taipei Biennial (11, 12 Sep). Direct flights are available from Singapore to Christchurch and from Taipei (via Singapore or Sydney) to Christchurch.

Focusing on creative strategies and possible futures for art in public space the SCAPE 2008 Public Programme is concentrated over the opening weekend 20-21 September.

*at Christchurch Art Gallery until 30 Nov

info@scapebiennial.org.nz | http://www.scapebiennial.org.nz
http://www.christchurchartgallery.org.nz

References
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, University of California Press, Los Angeles: 1998
İbid.

Screening —-Wednesday, June 16, 2008 at 10:00pm

Time and Place Date: Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Time: 10:00pm - 11:45pm
Location: Vidiots in Santa Monica
Street: 302 Pico Blvd.
City/Town: Santa Monica, CA

www.therisingtidefilm.com

Although artists in rapidly developing China enjoy more freedom than they ever have before, they also face problems they never anticipated. In Robert Adanto’s documentary The Rising Tide, performance and video artist Chen Quilin, anime-inspired video artist Cao Fei, conceptual photographer Wang Qingsong, and a wide array of other Chinese artists speak of the spiritual and intellectual dilemmas they face in a society where almost everything is in constant flux. Adanto’s surprisingly grim film highlights both the vitality and urgency of China’s burgeoning new culture while allowing its subjects to speak of the darker and more painful aspects of change.

– Gerry Mak in Flavorpill

Seating is Limited-Please RSVP
Contact (310) 663-1330
Email: kauaikind@gmail.

Ludwig Museum

1:1 scale model of the 5th Floor of 9 Via Giulia di Barolo,
Turin (La Fetta di Polenta) built at Uferstrasse 8, Berlin 2007
mixed media, 2,5 x 3,7 x 10,4 m
Copyright: Courtesy the artist and
Galleria Franco Noero, Turin

Simon Starling: Three Birds,
Seven Stories, Interpolations
and Bifurcations
13 June - 3 August 2008

Ludwig Museum – Museum
of Contemporary Art
PALACE OF ARTS
H-1095 Budapest, Komor Marcell u. 1.
Phone (36 1) 555 3444
Fax: (36 1) 555 3458
info@lumu.hu
http://www.lumu.hu

Simon Starling: Three Birds, Seven Stories, Interpolations and Bifurcations

The Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest presents a solo exhibition by the British artist Simon Starling. The project Three Birds, Seven Stories, Interpolations and Bifurcations draws on a number of different, both real and fictitious, versions of the same story – the story of a European architect being employed by a Maharajah to realise an ambitious building project in India.

Simon Starling is best known on the international art scene for his site-specific projects and interventions that address the reinterpretation of existing objects, and the circumstances of their creation and usage. Starling’s work is always based on his own interdisciplinary research. The exhibited installations appear as complex, sculptural objects in which he creates a narrative through a wide range of cultural and historical references, comprising seemingly disparate elements.

The project on exhibit in Budapest brings together the manifold ramifications of a story that spread geographically from continent to continent over a period of a few decades in the middle of the 20th century. In 1929, the young European-educated Maharajah of Indore, Yeswant Rao Holkar (1908-1961) commissioned the German architect Eckart Muthesius (1904-1989) to design and build him a palace; this ultimately turned out to represent the best of European modernist design and technology, including many works of the best practitioners of contemporary design (Le Corbusier, Eileen Grey, Marcel Breuer, Lilly Reich, and Constantin Brancusi) most of which were produced in Berlin. The palace also sported the first domestic air conditioning system in India, built and installed by Heinz Riefenstahl, the Berlin-based plumber and brother of filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl.

The installation Starling presents stresses the interplay between factual information and fictitious elements, underlying the ways in which the construction of a narrative is the result of subjective, culturally determined but very often unconscious motives. In this endeavour, he relies on a range of cultural products that have a large variety of origins and subsequent histories of their own. One interesting and telling example is the way Muthesius himself ‘fictionalised’ his own involvement in the design of the Maharajah’s palace. When he presented the project to a European public, the images of the building were retouched, hiding the unfashionable sloping roof. When, in 1959, Fritz Lang eventually realized his version of a script he had co-written in 1921 with the title The India Tomb, Muthesius was brought in as a consultant for the film.

Starling’s work allows the viewers to construct their own stories based on the rich array of fragments he puts on display. The artist does not privilege any one reading over other possible readings; indeed he even implicitly encourages the viewer’s construction of his or her story beyond the constraints of the exhibition space.

The exhibition in Budapest is, in a certain sense, the ‘unpacked’ version of the project as it was realised in Turin earlier this year in the unique location of the “La Fetta di Polenta” (The Slice of Polenta) – an extraordinary house with seven floors built on a tiny slither of land in the city centre. In the Ludwig Museum a one to one walk in reconstruction of the fifth floor of this building is shown along with original drawings of Brancusi (from the collection of the MNAM – Centre Georges Pompidou) for an unrealised temple commissioned by the Maharaja of Indore, photographs of the Manik Bagh Palace by Emil Leitner and Eckart Muthesius (from the Galerie Doria, Paris), and projections of the films The India Tomb and The Tiger of Eschnapur by Joe May (1921), Richard Eichberg (1938) and Fritz Lang (1959)

Simon Starling lives and works in Copenhagen and Berlin, and has been widely exhibited internationally, most recently at the Sydney Biennale (2008), the Power Plant, Toronto (2008), The Modern Institute, Glasgow (2008), and the Museum Folkwang, Essen (2007). In 2005, Starling was the recipient of the prestigious Turner Prize.

The exhibition is curated by Katalin Timar.

The exhibition was realised in cooperation with the Museum Folkwang, Essen and the Galerie Doria, Paris. The exhibition has been made possible with the generous support of ELMŰ and ÉMÁSZ.

New Zealand Pavilion

New Zealand Pavilion Venice Biennale 2009
http://www.nzatvenice.com

Two artists will represent New Zealand at the 53rd Venice Biennale of International art; Judy Millar’s installation, The Collision, curated by Leonhard Emmerling and Francis Upritchard’s installation, Save Yourself curated by Heather Galbraith and London-based Francesco Manacorda.

Artist Judy Millar is considered one of New Zealand’s foremost painters. Central themes in the artist’s large scale paintings include the relationships between canvas and paint, static and movement and the place of painting in art history.

Judy Millar studied at the University of Auckland, Elam School of Fine Arts, graduating with a BFA in 1980 and an MFA in 1983, returning in 1989 to the University of Auckland to study the writings of Italian feminist authors. She gained an Italian Government Scholarship in 1990 and spent a year in Turin researching the work of Italian artists from the 1960s and 1970s. While there she became increasingly convinced that painting could still be a vital part of the contemporary artistic landscape.

Curator Leonhard Emmerling has an international reputation as a curator, art theorist /historian. He has lectured in art history and authored several books including Jean-Michel Basquiat, 2003 and Jackson Pollock, 2003, both published by Taschen. Born in Wertheim, Germany in 1961, Emmerling immigrated to New Zealand to take up his current position of director at St Paul ST Gallery in 2006. Previous to this he was Director of the Kunstverein Ludwigsburg in Ludwigsburg, Germany.

Created for the 53rd Venice Biennale, The Collision will be an installation of large scale painted canvases that will poke through floors and ceilings, reach out into the space beyond the proper confinements of the building, fold in and out and deliberately discard conventional modes of display and exhibition design. It will challenge the traditional relationship between the object of art and the exhibition space.

Francis Upritchard is a New Zealand born artist living in London. She has exhibited extensively in Aotearoa New Zealand, Europe and America since graduating from Canterbury University’s Ilam School of Fine Arts in 1997. In 2006 Francis Uprichard was the winner of the Walters Prize, often referred to as the New Zealand equivalent of the Tate Prize, Tate Britain.

In 2007-08 Francis Upritchard took up a three month residency at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery resulting in the exhibition rainwob I before participating in a residency at Artspace Sydney where she presented rainwob II. These exhibitions continue to explore Upritchard’s fascination with the dislocated; a mix of history retrieved, reworked and reinvested with new meaning.

Heather Galbraith is Senior Curator/Manager Curatorial Programmes at City Gallery, Wellington, NZ.

She studied at Elam School of Fine Arts before moving to London where she completing a MA in Curating at Goldmiths College. She worked as Exhibitions Organiser at Camden Arts Centre for seven years, delivering exhibitions, off-site projects and publications. In 2004 Galbraith returned to New Zealand as Director of St. Paul ST Gallery, Auckland before taking up her current position at City Gallery, Wellington in 2005.

Francesco Manacorda, Curator at the Barbican Art Gallery since 2007, has realised the large-scale Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art (with co-curator Lydia Yee) and Hans Schabus: Next time I’m Here, I’ll Be There, and is working on a large exhibition on Robert Smithson and his legacy to be realised in 2009. In 2007 he curated Venetian, Atmospheric: Tobias Putrih - the Slovenian Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale.

Francis Upritchard’s Save Yourself for Venice Biennale 2009 will be an imaginary landscape that exists in an indeterminate historical period. The figures populating this imaginary landscape are detailed with a psychedelic surface and handmade quality. The landscape combines the antique and futuristic, making the scene both familiar and unsettling. The work explores ideas about time, hope and evolutionary change.

Both projects are being developed in association with New Zealand Commissioner Jenny Harper and are initiatives of Creative New Zealand the Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa.

To find out more please contact Hannah Evans: hannah.evans@creativenz.govt.nz