Public Programme: The Specious Present

Click here for the print friendly version

David Claerbout, The Quiet Shore, 2011, single channel video projection, black & white, silent, 36 min 32 sec, courtesy the artist and galleries Micheline Szwajcer, Brussels; Sean Kelly, New York; Untilthen, Paris

Friday 10 July, 6pm The Specious Present opening event!
Join us at the Adam Art Gallery for the opening of The Specious Present: Andrew Beck, David Claerbout, Colin McCahon, Keith Tyson

Sunday 12 July, 2pm, Andrew Beck artists talk
Auckland-based artist Andrew Beck discusses his new body of photographic works produced especially for The Specious Present. The exhibition represents Beck’s largest body of work mounted in a public gallery to date.

Saturday 8 August, 2pm, join Emeritus Professor John Davidson as he discusses the profound influence of James K. Baxter on a generation of artists, including Colin McCahon. McCahon’s major painting Walk (Series C) which features in The Specious Present was made in the year of Baxter’s passing.

Saturday 29 August, 2pm, Christina Barton, Director of the Adam Art Gallery and curator of The Specious Present, presents an extensive tour of the exhibition and discusses the unique ways each artist on show addresses their own distinct conception of the present.

Saturday 19 September, 2pm, Dr Justin Sytsma, philosophy lecturer at Victoria University, discusses American philosopher William James’ notion of ‘the specious present.’

Art History in Practice
Seminar Series 1, 2015

5.15pm Thursdays, July – November at the Adam Art Gallery
A new regular series of seminars showcasing the ‘work’ of art history in which established and emerging art historians working inside and outside the academy present on their current and recent research.

Thursday, 16 July
Geoffrey Batchen, Professor of Art History, will present his paper, ‘In Absentia: The Politics of Cameraless Photography’ in which he argues a case for cameraless photography as a means to redefine the nature of photography’s realism and its potential as a political agent. It is the product of a larger research project, one outcome of which will be a major exhibition of cameraless photography at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in 2016.

30 July
Stephen Cleland, Curator at the Adam Art Gallery, will discuss his current research into Canada-based New Zealander Bruce Barber’s post-object works from the 1970s. Cleland argues that Barber’s drawings produced in this period can be read as open-ended scores which sit between fluxus and conceptualist models of art making.

20 August
Raymond Spiteri, Lecturer in Art History, will deliver a paper he gave at the 2014 Art Association of Australia and Aotearoa NZ annual conference titled ‘Len Lye and Surrealism’, part of a larger research project on the theme of surrealism and Oceania.

10 September
Peter Brunt, Senior Lecturer in Art History, will discuss an aspect of his research work on art in Oceania.

24 September
Sarah Farrar, Senior Curator Art, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and PhD Candidate at Monash University will discuss an aspect of her dissertation research, closely analysing a room within the Reina Sofía Museum’s current collection display, Revolution to Decolonisation.