Simon Ingram’s National Radio interview [mp3]

Geoffrey Batchen and Christina Barton in discussion with Veronica Meduna [mp3]

You can purchase a copy of the Dark Sky catalogue here

Thomas Ruff, STE 1.19 (02h 48m / -35º), 1992, chromogenic colour photograph in wooden frame 2600 x 1800 mm. Courtesy of the artist and Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland.

An exhibition to coincide with the 2012 Transit of Venus
curated by Geoffrey Batchen with Christina Barton

1 May – 8 July 2012

DARK SKY, the Adam Art Gallery’s latest exhibition opening on 1 May, explores how photography has been deployed to capture the skies. Delving into the intersections between science, art and commerce, the exhibition brings together a range of images and artworks from 1874 to the present. These range from pocket-sized Real-Photo Postcards, to digital prints sent from space, to large-scale contemporary images and multipart installations, made by artists, astronomers, professional photographers, and unmanned spacecraft. Timed to coincide with the second and last Transit of Venus that will take place this century (on 6 June 2012), the exhibition provides an occasion to think through our fascination for the celestial realm and examine its technological and visual consequences.

DARK SKY is conceived by Geoffrey Batchen, leading photographic historian and theorist and Professor of Art History, and curated with Christina Barton, contemporary art historian and Director of the Adam Art Gallery, Victoria University of Wellington. Pooling their skills and knowledge they have produced a striking line-up of historical and contemporary items, ranging from photographs by Hermann Krone—a professional photographer on the German expedition to the Auckland Islands, who documented the Transit of Venus in 1874—to contemporary German artist, Wolfgang Tillmans, who presents a body of work based, in part, on his life-long passion for astronomy and which includes a series of photographs he took of the Transit in 2004.

The exhibition also includes substantial groupings of images by David Stephenson (Australia), Trevor Paglen (USA) and Eric Lee-Johnson (New Zealand) and single works by Colin McCahon (NZ), Ann Shelton (NZ) and Thomas Ruff (Germany). Two New Zealand artists have been commissioned to create new works for the exhibition. Stella Brennan is using research she has undertaken into the Soviet Union’s Venera space programme of the 1980s to develop a sound installation and Simon Ingram has built an inflatable antenna that will translate electromagnetic waves into instructions that will drive a machine to produce a new ‘radio painting’.

DARK SKY is complemented by a fully illustrated catalogue with an essay by Geoffrey Batchen and a public programme that will bring scientists, artists, historians and writers together to respond to the occasion. A highlight will be a panel discussion with German and New Zealand poets who have been invited to observe and respond to the Transit of Venus by the International Institute of Modern Letters and Goethe-Institut. See here

DARK SKY has received major support from the Australian High Commission; Goethe-Institut; IFA (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen); the MacDiarmid Institute and the Art History Research Cluster at Victoria University of Wellington. The Adam Art Gallery also acknowledges the support of the Faculty of Science, Victoria University of Wellington; the National Institute of Creative Arts and Industry at University of Auckland, and the Royal Society of New Zealand.

Dugal McKinnon is a composer of electronic, instrumental and multimedia work, a sound artist, and a writer on contemporary music. He teaches sonic art and composition at the New Zealand School of Music, Wellington. 

MaxMSP programming by Jason Post. Metronome loaned by Douglas Mews. 

2011 

Jason Wright
Jukebox 2011
Jukebox drew attention to the loudspeaker as an entity as important to music reception as any other technology that has informed the creation of music. The music that was played through the installation was an assemblage of material collated from participants at an opening night event. Through the collated variation of sounds filtered through the wall of Wright’s loudspeakers, the installation served to highlight the speaker as an instrument integral to how we perceive sound and music. 

Jason Wright is a sound artist and musician living in Wellington. Currently undertaking a Masters of Music Arts at the New Zealand School of Music, his current research sees him looking at tactile applications for the loudspeaker and the psychoacoustic effects of the object, using it not only to re-produce, but also to generate new sounds and music. 

Jason Post
Sirens   2011
The primary concern of this sound based work was the interstitial space it inhabits. The space between the sliding doors of the Adam Art Gallery usually goes unnoticed. Its qualities as a threshold are masked by its functionality as an entrance way. This work aimed to draw visitors in and to entice them to take notice of their immediate surroundings, however momentary and seemingly incidental. As one walked through the speaker array, human voices replaced the soft sine tones, and  followed them as they pass through. The space became a siren-like trap as the beauty of the harmony motivated  the listener to stay. This also made for a potentially uncomfortable experience. 

Jason Post is a Wellington-based composer and a recent graduate of the sonic arts program at the New Zealand School of Music. He is currently undertaking an honours degree in this same field. This work is the third in a series of four sound installations he has produced that attempt to engage with space as the primary compositional material. 

2009

Johannes Contag and Michael Hobbs
Notions of Passage 2009
This sound installation was based on field recordings collected while artists were working on the walls of the gallery in preparation for the Wall Works exhibition in 2009. Notions of Passage explored the concept of transition using the doorway to the gallery as an in-between site, and treating the visitor as the agent who activates the work. It invited one to stay and listen to the sounds that gave form to the changing space within the gallery.

Fiona Amundsen The First City in History
John Lake The Campus
Simon Starling Autoxylopyrocycloboros
Kohei Yoshiyuki The Park

For the 2012 festival season the Adam Art Gallery at Victoria University of Wellington presented a suite of four solo exhibitions that offered different takes on photography. Recording people and places, these artists’ projects modeled strikingly different documentary approaches, offering viewers a provocative opportunity to ask what it means when a camera is used to capture a subject, both in the moment and for posterity.
New Zealand International Arts Festival 2012

Artist talks and mid point party: Saturday 17 March 2012, 6pm.
For more details on the Camera Work public programme including a series of documentary film screenings at the New Zealand Film Archive please review our calendar

The Park was a joint project with the Centre of Contemporary Photography, Melbourne and IMA, Brisbane. Fiona Amundsen’s The First City in History was supported by Asia New Zealand Foundation, New Zealand Japan Exchange Programme and Auckland University of Technology. John Lake’s project was commissioned for the Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection in 2011. Simon Starling’s work was staged in partnership with The Physics Room, Christchurch.

MAY-JULY 2012

TALKS
Speculations
Scientists and cultural commentators use specific art works in the Dark Sky exhibition as a launch pad for informed discussions based on their working practices and research expertise. Convened by Christina Barton (Director of the Adam Art Gallery and co-curator of the Dark Sky exhibition)

Wednesday lunchtimes at the Adam Art Gallery
12 noon-1pm
Free entry

2 May: Bad science
Artist Simon Ingram and Melanie Johnston-Hollitt (physicist and Senior Lecturer, School of Chemical and Physical Sciences) discuss Ingram’s radio astronomy and the challenge of bridging the art/science divide.

16 May: Heaven is a place on earth
Chris Marshall (theologian and Associate Professor, School of Art History, Classics and Religious Studies) and Michael Hannah (scientist and Associate Professor, School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences) depart from Colin McCahon’s Venus and Re-entry: The Bleeding Heart of Jesus is Seen above Ahipara to discuss why we consider heaven to be above us.

30 May: Off the grid
Terry Galuszka and Jennie McCormick talk about the contribution amateur astronomy has made to scientific advances, in relation to the work of contemporary German artist Wolfgang Tillmans.

6 June: Day in a lifetime
Geoffrey Batchen (co-curator of Dark Sky, photo-historian and Professor of Art History) and astrophysicist William Tobin consider the differences between viewing the Transit of Venus in 1874 and 2012, followed by a special viewing (weather permitting) of the Transit with assistance from the Carter Observatory. Equipment provided.

27 June: Matariki dawns
Pauline Harris (Post Doctoral Fellow, School of Chemical and Physical Sciences and Chair of the Society for Māori Astronomy, Research and Traditions) and Takirirangi Smith (Researcher in indigenous knowledge, School of Māori Studies Te Kawa a Māui) will share understandings of Māori cosmology and the revitalisation of Māori star lore in response to a photograph by Wellington photographic artist Ann Shelton.

4 July: Star time
Luke Smythe (art writer) and Denis Sullivan (Professor, Physics, School of Chemical and Physical Sciences) look into German artist Thomas Ruff’s work to consider what we can learn from the transmission of star light.

POETRY
Passages: Reading around the Transit
Adam Art Gallery 


Wednesday 13 June 2012
6pm
Free entry

A panel discussion with readings. German and New Zealand poets respond to the Transit of Venus 2012 celebrations at Tolaga Bay, exploring the process of writing about this extraordinary astronomical phenomenon. Co-organised by the Goethe Institut, New Zealand, with funding from the German Federal Foreign Office.

The poets are Hinemoana Baker, Glenn Colquhoun, Chris Price, Uwe Kolbe, Brigitte Oleschinski, and Ulrike Almut Sandig. Chair Bill Manhire.

For the second part of this reciprocal exchange, the German and New Zealand poets will meet again in October in Frankfurt am Main and Berlin, working together in a translation workshop organised by Literaturwerkstatt, and presenting the results at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2012.

FILM SCREENING
Nostalgia for the Light
Carter Observatory
40 Salamanca Road, Kelburn, Wellington

Wednesday 23 May 2012
5pm
Cost includes entry to Carter Observatory exhibitions:
Adult $18.50 / concessions $13.50 / child (4-16 yrs) $8.00 /Free to star pass members

Special screening of Patricio Guzmán’s Nostalgia for the Light (90mins), a politically charged and cinematic documentary relating astronomy to the consequences of human behaviour in the Atacama Desert, Chile. One night only at the Carter Observatory, Botanic Gardens, Wellington.

SOUND CHECK
Space Weather
Marco Fusinato (AUS) and Bruce Russell (NZ)
Adam Art Gallery

Thursday 5 July 2012
7-9pm
$5 entry

In the last week of Dark Sky, the Adam Art Gallery presents the sonic ‘dark matter’ of Marco Fusinato’s guitar manipulations and Bruce Russell’s free ‘noise’ improvisation as responses to the Dark Sky exhibition. The performances are bound to add another dimension to the experience of viewing the exhibition.

For all Dark Sky public programme enquiries contact

Therese Lloyd
email: therese.lloyd@vuw.ac.nz
ph: +64 4 463 5229

Public Programme May-July 2012

(A Film Called) Ellipsis, Anna Sanderson in residence 2011

4 June–10 July 2011 
g. bridle
The Inimical: A Selection from the Retreat
g.bridle collects objects and images and then brings them together in new configurations using the gallery as a ‘sanctuary’ where different connections can be made. By such means the artist proposes a model of practice whereby the lines between making, collecting and arranging are blurred and questions are raised about how things acquire or are imbued with aura and thus granted meaning. 

16 July - 21 August
Richard Frater, Chris Prosser, Anna Sanderson
(A Film Called) Ellipsis
In Continuous Project Altered Daily (October Books, 1993) American artist Robert Morris proposes how sculpture can accommodate time and the environment. Inspired by this collection of writing, three different practitioners took up residence in the gallery to produce an accumulative environment—akin to a film in the making—to reflect on the act of collecting as a process in time. Musician and composer Chris Prosser sampled material from his personal archive of musical scores; artist Richard Frater presented a compilation of New Zealand moving image on the natural environment; and writer Anna Sanderson responded to the ceramic collections held at Victoria University of Wellington.
Curated by Laura Preston. 

27 August - 2 October
Leonid Tishkov and Boris Bendikov
Private Moon
Utilising humour, satire and poetic tenderness, Moscow-based artists Leonid Tishkov and Boris Bendikov provide poignant insights into the human condition, particularly the relationship between personal will and state control as experienced in Soviet Russia. This exhibition presented their most recent series of large-scale colour photographs. Each depicts an intimate and evolving relationship between a man and his Private Moon.
Exhibition organised by Marcus Williams, Unitec, Auckland. 

8 October - 13 November
The Victorian Album, the Feminine and the Personal
During the Victorian era, photography became remarkably popular and accessible, stimulated in part by the technological innovation of the carte-devisite process. This exhibition examined the way in which New Zealand women utilised this new medium, presenting work that has rarely—and in many cases never—been displayed or reproduced, to provide a fascinating window into Pakeha and Maori women’s experience of modernity and the complex cultural interweavings of late colonial society.
Curated by Dr Sandy Callister, Resident Scholar, Stout Research Centre, Victoria University of Wellington. 

19 November - 18 December
Shadowgraphs: Photographic Portraits by Len Lye
Drawn primarily from the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery collection, this exhibition presented almost all the photogram portraits made by Len Lye in 1947, a body of work that until recently was neither well known nor fully understood. Here Lye’s works will be contextualised in relation to the tradition of the silhouette portrait and the camera-less photograph. This is the Adam Art Gallery’s biennial student-led project which enables students to research, write about and present an exhibition on a unique body of work.
Curated by Professor Geoffrey Batchen and his Art History Honours students.

14 July: Public/Private
Art writer, critic and collector Sue Gardiner discussed how the public display of private art collections questions our preconceptions of what is private and what can be made public in the production of cultural knowledge. Anthropologist Brigitte Bonisch-Brednich’s research informed the conversation.

8 September: Market Forces
Economic theorist Morris Altman and art auctioneer Ben Plumbly reviewed the factors that have informed the secondary art market recently, debating whether its exponential growth can escape the inevitable boom and bust of the economic cycle.

13 October: Telling Arrangements
Spatial design theorist Margaret Petty and journalist, writer and collector Rosemary McLeod’s conversation considered the politics at play in the presentation of art and other objects at home. Chaired by Roger Blackley, Senior Lecturer in Art History.

Tuesday 13 December: The Production of Identity
Cultural psychologist Ronald Fisher and art dealer Robert Heald teased out the notions of cultural value and social taste that underpin the cultivation of the collector. Chaired by David Maskill, Programme Director, Art History.

DOCUMENTARY FILM SCREENINGS
TUESDAY LUNCHTIMES, 12NOON
Kirk Gallery
12 July: Herb and Dorothy, dir. Megumi Sasaki, 2008. 87 mins.
23 August: Ydessa, Les Ours et etc, dir. Agnes Varda, 2000. 44 mins.
4 October: For Love or Money, dir. Shirley Horrocks, 1996. 46 mins.
15 November: Cinemania, dirs. Stephen Kijak and Angela Christlieb, 2002. 80 mins.

NIGHT TALKS
FRIDAY NIGHTS, 6-7PM
Kirk Gallery
3 June: Artist’s talk
With an investigative eye artist Marcus Moore elucidated on the recent iteration of the Retreat; an installation of art works from the collection of g. bridle.

12 August: Curator’s talk
Curator Laura Preston offered insights into the conceptual framework for the project (A Film Called) Ellipsis, which presented collecting as a process of sorting and assembling in time.

26 August: Critic’s talk
Sharing her knowledge of contemporary art in Moscow, art writer and curator Claudia Arozqueta placed the photographic work of Leonid Tishkov and Boris Bendikov in context by presenting a screening of recent video art from Russia.

7 October: Researcher’s talk
Visiting Scholar at the Stout Research Centre, Sandy Callister gave insight into her research on Victorian women’s creative deployment of the carte-de-visite photographic process.

18 November: Students’ talk
Students in the Art History programme shared their knowledge of the histories that have informed their presentation of the ‘almost exhaustive’ archive of Len Lye’s photograms. The Chartwell Student Art Writing Prize was also announced.

DISCUSSION SERIES
Adam in the City Art Forum Series 2011
A new series of discussions designed to engage key topics that are galvanising thinkers and practitioners.

3. Rehearsal
Wednesday 17 August 2011, 5.30-7.30pm with a drink to follow
Adam Auditorium, City Gallery Wellington

Why are so many contemporary artists treating acts of rehearsal as the basis of their practice? Why has there been a re-examination of performance art histories recently? What is the relationship between the repeated act and an ultimate act? Could the interest in rehearsal be a reflection of online modes of communication, where the self is continually performed and identity perpetually edited?

Speakers included: Artist Alex Monteith, theatre theorist David O’Donnell (Victoria University of Wellington), curator Helena Reckitt (Goldsmiths, University of London). Chair artist David Cross (Massey University Wellington).

4. Re-Locate
Tuesday 29 November 2011, 5.30-7.30pm with a drink to follow
Adam Auditorium, City Gallery Wellington

As the final forum in the series, this discussion brought the conversation closer to home. Reviewing the fervent interest in community driven endeavours and creative pursuits, this discussion questioned if ‘the local’ did indeed ever leave us. What are current understandings of the local, and how does the re-instatement of this term respond to the politics of globalisation? Is the return to the local an opportunity for post-colonial theories to be re-called? What are the economic drivers and environmental factors that are influencing this ethos?

Speakers included: Law theorist Tai Ahu (Victoria University of Wellington), art historian Peter Brunt (Victoria University of Wellington), artist Fiona Jack and art writer Damian Skinner. Chair curator Robert Leonard.

For further information and readings related to the Art Forum Series 2011 review here

The Art Forum 2011 series is a collaboration between the Adam Art Gallery and the City Gallery Wellington.

SOUNDCHECK

iiii Festival !!!! presents
WELLINGTON INTERNATIONAL MOST FAMOUS ORCHESTRA OF MIRACULOUS DELIGHTS and The NOT QUITE QUIET CHOIRAdam Art Gallery
Tuesday 8 November 2011
7pm

Graphic scores, alternative notation and conductions for large ensembles; this event explored music making through a wide variety of composition and notation methods. The orchestra interpreted found systems of code as scores such as lotto cards, cookbooks, and advertising leaflets to create unheard of music in the acoustically luminous environment of the Adam Art Gallery.

Featured: Amos Mann, Claire O’Neil, Nell Thomas, Chris Prosser, Erika Grant, Bek Coogan, Sascha Perfect, Chris Wratt, Bridget Kelly, Kate Telford, Zazie Rae Taylor, Daniel Beban, Gerard Crewdson, Phill Dryson, John Bell,  Josh Rutter,  Reuben Derrick, Cor Fuhler, Rod Cooper, Richard Nunns, Hermione Johnson, Simon Cummins, Simon O’Rorke, Reece McNaughten, Noel Meek, Alex Bartley Nees, Jeff Henderson and more.

Also featured:
MING
Campbell Kneale and Ellen Rodda play amplified cymbals

Campbell Kneale has operated for the better part of a decade under the moniker Birchville Cat Motel, and under this name has toured throughout Japan, America, Europe and Australia. His music has become synonymous with ear-shattering volume and over the last 15 years he has cultivated an extensive international following for his particular methods of systematically reassembling the hearing range of audiences.
http://www.iiiimusic.blogspot.com/

Jason Wright
JUKEBOX
Adam Art Gallery
Opening Tuesday 15 November, 5-7pm
16 November – 18 December 2011

JUKEBOX draws attention to the loudspeaker as an entity as important to music reception as any other technology that has informed its construction. The music played through the installation will be an assemblage of material collated from participants at the opening night event. The JUKEBOX installation will serve to highlight the loudspeaker as an instrument that plays an integral role in how we perceive sound and music. Presented between the sliding doors of the Adam Art Gallery until the end of the year.

Jason Wright is a sound artist and musician currently undertaking the Masters of Music Arts at the New Zealand School of Music. His current research sees him looking at tactile applications for the loudspeaker and the psychoacoustic effects of the object, using it not only to re-produce, but also to generate new sounds and music.
http://jwcomposer.bandcamp.com/

Jason Post
SIRENS
30 August – 13 November 2011

The primary concern of this sound based work was the space it inhabited. The space between the sliding doors of the Adam Art Gallery usually goes unnoticed. Its qualities as a threshold are masked by its functionality as an entrance way. This work aimed to draw visitors in and to entice them to take notice of their immediate surroundings, however momentary and seemingly incidental. As one walks through the speaker array, human voices replace the soft sine tones, and may follow them as they pass through. The space becomes a siren-like trap as the beauty of the harmony motivates the listener to stay. This may also make for a potentially uncomfortable experience.

Jason Post is a Wellington-based composer and a recent graduate of the sonic arts programme at the New Zealand School of Music. He is currently undertaking an honours degree in this same field. This work is the third in a series of four sound installations he has produced that attempt to engage with space as the primary compositional material.

Altmusic presented a performance by Hildur Guðnadóttir
with Seth Frightening

Saturday 20 August 2011, 8pm
Adam Art Gallery

Hildur Ingveldardóttir Guðnadóttir (b. 1982) is a cellist and composer based in Iceland. Best known for her collaborations with múm and guest appearances with Pan Sonic, she has a rich catalogue of collaborations and varied projects behind her, the most recent being the critically acclaimed album Mount A (Touch 2010).

“Her themes and melodies are simple, rarely more than a few bars, but the way she overlaps and combines them or pits them against long held tones, gives her music a tension between restless activity and quiet stasis, as well as an intuitive, almost improvised feel” – Dusted magazine.

Guðnadóttir explores the nature and movement of sound, and often turns her experiments into sound and visual installations. She recently co-composed a live soundtrack to Derek Jarman’s 1980 film In The Shadow of The Sun with legends, Throbbing Gristle in Austria and London. Guðnadóttir is also a member of Storsveit Nix Noltes (The Nix Noltes Big Band); a rotating cast of Icelanders playing traditional Bulgarian and Greek dance music. The group has toured the United States twice supporting Animal Collective. As a composer she has written music for plays, dance performances and films, pieces for chamber orchestras, various instruments, voices and electronics.

Altmusic is a programme administered by the Audio Foundation.

Dane Mitchell, Untitled (Flag) from The Barricades 2007 and Daniel du Bern, Protection: Pure (2/5) 2005-6

From June to December 2011 the Adam Art Gallery presented, Behind Closed Doors: New Zealand Art from Private Collections in Wellington, a major exhibition that set out to canvass selective ‘moments’ in a history of New Zealand art from 1946 to the present, drawn exclusively from private collections in Wellington. 

This revealing exhibition provided a rare opportunity to see works that complement and extend the holdings of New Zealand’s public and corporate collections. The paintings, sculptures, and works on paper are simultaneously significant works by major figures and tributes to the often close relationships that accrue between artists and their patrons. 

Many of the selected works are physically and psychologically ambitious, supporting the claim that it is possible to stage a ‘museum-quality’ show drawn exclusively from private sources. There are also works that are modest and delicate, testament to the intimate and personal relationships developed by living with art. 

The exhibition includes paintings by renowned artists Toss Woollaston and Colin McCahon, seldom-seen works by Michael Smither and Rita Angus, along with provocative multimedia art works by Peter Robinson and Ronnie van Hout. 

Behind Closed Doors also became a portrait of Wellington city. Working like a sleuth, curator of the exhibition and Gallery Director, Christina Barton uncovered a surprising number of committed art lovers in the city, whose collecting endeavours discreetly nourish Wellington’s cultural life. 

The exhibition is complemented by a book documenting a selection of the works as they appear at home, with photographs by leading New Zealand photographer Neil Pardington and texts by writer Lara Strongman. This is designed to offer an intimate alternative to the ‘institutional’ framing of works at the Adam Art Gallery.

A public programme of floor talks, panel discussions and film screenings provided a platform for critical discussion on the issues raised by the exhibition. For more details please check here 

Behind Closed Doors: New Zealand Art from Private Collections in Wellington is supported by Creative New Zealand.

Jim Allen Space Plane, Environment No. 1, 1969 (2010 reconstruction)

The exhibition Points of Contact: Jim Allen, Len Lye, Hélio Oiticica traced the historical and conceptual connections between New Zealand artist Jim Allen (b.1922), a significant figure in the development of post-object art in New Zealand, and two of his key contemporaries: expatriate experimental filmmaker and kinetic sculptor Len Lye (1901-1980) and Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica (1937–1980).

Points of Contact drew together bodies of work which share certain material and conceptual qualities, most especially their engagement with light, movement, colour, and the body.

Central to the exhibition was the reconstruction of Allen’s pivotal 1969 Small Worlds exhibition at Barry Lett Galleries in Auckland, one of the earliest instances of environmental sculpture to be presented in New Zealand.

These installations were joined by other works by all three artists that are variously originals, reconstructions and photographic documentation. The re-staging enabled viewers to dwell on the challenges and possibilities posed by the re-presentation of ephemeral or conceptual works of art, and therefore to explore the complex legacy of the ‘post-object’.

This exhibition presented Hélio Oiticica’s work for the first time in New Zealand.

Points of Contact joins a number of recent surveys that challenge the European and North American art historical paradigm, proposing and examining instead parallel and specific art historical trajectories outside these centres, in both their local and global dimensions.

News article on Jim Allen’s Contact at ARTSPACE, Auckland March 2011

Organised and toured by the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery with assistance from Creative New Zealand and Michael Lett and curated by Tyler Cann and Mercedes Vicente. Thanks to the New Zealand Film Archive and the Len Lye Foundation.

1. Re-Modernism
Adam Auditorium, City Gallery Wellington
Wednesday 23 February 2011

What promise does the modern hold for artists, architects, designers, social and cultural thinkers? Or is our contemporary fascination with modernism merely nostalgic—a doomed attempt to reconstitute something that has passed? What does modernism mean for the present? How can we even critically reflect upon such questions if we are still living within modernity? These and other questions were debated by a panel of speakers in the first of a new series of discussions designed to engage key topics galvanising thinkers and practitioners.

Speakers included: Artist Lisa Crowley, film theorist Minette Hillyer (Victoria University of Wellington), art historian Ann Stephen (University of Sydney), design historian Christopher Thompson. Chair artist Gavin Hipkins.

Related Readings
Raymond Williams: When was Modernism? [PDF]
Okwui Enwezor: Modernity and Postcolonial Ambivalence [PDF]
Mark Lewis: Is Modernity our Antiquity? [PDF]
Boris Groys: Comrades of Time [PDF]

2.  Re-Construction
Adam Auditorium, City Gallery Wellington
Wednesday 18 May 2011, 5.30-7.30pm

What status does the reconstruction of an original art work have? If it is not an authentic artefact, then can it have value? Is it indeed an artwork? Why is there a need or desire to reconstruct, and what kind of relationship to the past does it enable? How does our contemporary impulse to make things over tally with a new need for resourcefulness in addressing questions of sustainability? These and other questions will be debated by a panel of speakers in the second of a new series of discussions designed to engage key topics that are galvanising thinkers and practitioners.

Related Readings
Walter Benjamin: Theses on the Philosophy of History [PDF]
Dieter Roelstraete: After the Historigraphic Turn: Current Findings [PDF]
Sven Lütticken: (Stop) Making Sense [PDF]
Lyle Rexer: A Fire Destroyed the Archive [PDF]

3. Rehearsal
Adam Auditorium, City Gallery Wellington
Wednesday 17 August 2011, 5.30-7.30pm

Why are so many contemporary artists treating acts of rehearsal as the basis of their practice? Why has there been a re-examination of performance art histories recently? What is the relationship between the repeated act and an ultimate act? Could the interest in rehearsal be a reflection of online modes of communication, where the self is continually performed and identity perpetually edited?

Speakers include: Artist Alex Monteith, theatre theorist David O’Donnell (Victoria University of Wellington), curator Helena Reckitt (Goldsmiths, University of London). Chair artist David Cross (Massey University Wellington).

Related Readings
Steve Rushton: Tweedledum and Tweedeledee resolved to have a battle [PDF]
Philip J. C. Dark: Of old models and new in Pacific Art: Real or spurious? [PDF]
Judith Butler: Performative acts and gender constitution [PDF]
Francis Alys: Politics of Rehearsal

4. Re-Locate
Adam Auditorium, City Gallery Wellington
Tuesday 29 November 2011, 5.30-7.30pm

As the final forum in the series, this discussion brings the conversation closer to home. Reviewing the fervent interest in community driven endeavours and creative pursuits, this discussion will question if ‘the local’ did indeed ever leave us. What are current understandings of the local, and how does the re-instatement of this term respond to the politics of globalisation? Is the return to the local an opportunity for post-colonial theories to be re-called? What are the economic drivers and environmental factors that are influencing this ethos?

Related Readings
Naomi Klein: Reclaiming The Commons [PDF]
Amanda Yates: Micro-urbanism–Regenerative buildings and the architectural landscape of the pa [PDF]
Lucy Lippard: The Lure of the Local–All over the place [PDF]

The Art Forum 2011 series is a collaboration between the Adam Art Gallery and the City Gallery Wellington.