News of New Zealanders via Global Media

Indigenous Art in the Spotlight

Indigenous Art in the Spotlight

The Musée du Quai Branly, French President Jacques Chirac’s long-awaited €235.2 million shrine to indigenous art, was officially inaugurated on June 21 in Paris. The Quai Branly boasts a collection of 300,000 works from Africa, Asia, Oceania…

On show in Soho

On show in Soho

Out From Down Under and Beyond: an Exhibition of Fine Art from Australia and New Zealand is currently showing at the Agora Gallery in Soho, New York. Helga Windle (pictured) from Buller, West…

Exhibiting art with Edge

Exhibiting art with Edge

Always at the cutting edge, Wellington’s City Gallery is using an interactive website and podcast in its current exhibition, Patricia Piccinini: In Another Life. An Australian artist, Piccanini is renowned for her sometimes creepy studies of…

A life in pictures

A life in pictures

NZ born artist Derek Ward was the subject of a retrospective exhibition recently staged in Norwich, England. Ward was born in Richmond, NZ, in 1922 and relocated to England with his family aged 7….

Three more for the C.V

Three more for the C.V

Edge artist Julian Dashper continues to make inroads in the US, after his 2001 Fulbright residency at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. His first solo show in New York (at the Esso…

Expat angst

Expat angst

Hamilton artist John Hurrell writes about NZ artists living internationally in the February issue of Art Monthly Australia. He discusses last year’s exhibition ‘The expatriates: Frances Hodgkins and Barrie Bates’ in the context…

Nature’s best

Nature’s best

New Zealand enjoyed success at the 2006 Black & White Spider photography awards, with Jason Boa winning third place in the Nature category for “Field Waimate” and Jocelyn Carlin gaining an honourable mention in the same…

WoWing the Crowds

WoWing the Crowds

The 2005 World of Wearable Art (WoW) show – the first to be held in Wellington rather than Nelson – was a huge success, with a record-breaking 30,000 tickets purchased for the event. The show is widely…

Army Colonel Turned Art Critic

Army Colonel Turned Art Critic

Prince Andrew made a fleeting visit to NZ this month, chiefly to spend time with the army’s Logistic Regiment, which he has headed since 1996. The Prince made international headlines with his humorous interpretation…

Practice makes perfection

Practice makes perfection

Painter Max Gimblett is the subject of a lengthy article in premiere US art magazine, Art in America. Gimblett’s latest works were recently shown at the Haines Gallery in San Francisco. Critic…

Art in New Zealand

Art in New Zealand

October’s Art in America features a “Report from New Zealand” by Richard Kalina, examining New Zealand artists and their work as well as the art history and institutions of the…

Capital meditation

Capital meditation

Wallpaper magazine takes a look at the city-scapes of Wellington through the lens of legendary American photographer Stephen Shore – who had three pictures acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, New York…

Message in a vessel

Message in a vessel

NZ sculptor Roger Thompson is one of 400 artists from 65 different countries exhibiting at the second annual Beijing International Art Biennale. His Cultural Vessels/Amphoric Triptych is a collection of three containers representing…

Coming to America

Coming to America

The largest exhibition of Maori art ever to show in the US opened at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Centre for the Arts on August 4. Entitled Toi Maori Art from the Maori…

Midwestern Dashper

Midwestern Dashper

The Sioux City Art Center is to show Midwestern Unlike You and Me: New Zealand’s Julian Dashper. This is the first ever travelling retrospective of a New Zealand-based artist to be organized by an…

Biennale buzz

Biennale buzz

Art collective et al is New Zealand’s representative at the Venice Biennale with its installation The Fundamental Practice. Central to et al.’s work is an exploration of the human tendency to establish truths and…

Dinosaurs in the Domain

Dinosaurs in the Domain

An Aucklander story featured on international Alt News website, Rense. ‘Mystery creature roams Auckland park,’ turned out to be a tongue-in-cheek promotion of the Auckland Museum’s new dinosaur models in the surrounding Domain.

Archiball

Archiball

Artist Martin Ball was the first New Zealand resident artist to be a finalist in Australia’s premier portraiture award, the Archibald Prize, with his painting of artist John Pule. The prize was won by…

Headlining Act

Headlining Act

Neil Dawson’s Fanfare sculpture provided the focal point for Sydney’s famous New Year celebrations. The 20m steel sphere, studded with more than 300 light reflective pinwheels, was suspended from the Harbour Bridge in the…

National Ikon

National Ikon

An Independent obituary for Pat Hanly calls him “the jester of modern NZ art … His images – exuberant, colourful, feisty and humorous – reflected the personality of their maker.” The subjects of Hanly’s…

Winner by invitation

Winner by invitation

Peter Boggs won Australia’s most esteemed drawing prize, the Kedumba Drawing Award, in late October. He was selected from a field of 24 contemporary artists to win the invitation-only award, which is now in…

Brothers in arts

Brothers in arts

Cheyene Emery, Lisa Bartlett, and Marie Panapa of Te Wananga o Aotearoa (University of NZ) travelled to Sante Fe to take part in an international arts exchange with the Institute of American Indian Arts….

Textile success

Textile success

Promenade by Clare Plug won the Marianne Kor Award for Distinguished International Entry at the 2004 Fibreart International exhibition in Pittsburgh. Two of Plug’s pieces were selected out of 1,600 US and…

Rick Rudd, noteworthy ceramicist

Rick Rudd, noteworthy ceramicist

Taipei Times praises NZ potter Rick Rudd’s “heavenly wares” in a review of his exhibition at Page One’s Taipei 101 store. “Rudd does not label his wares, preferring instead for the viewer to provide…

Edge dimension

Edge dimension

Textile artist Clare Plug contributed two works to the Fiberart International 2004 biennial, which recently moved to New York’s Museum of Arts & Design from the Pittsburgh Centre of the Arts. A review in…

Sterling edge

Sterling edge

Leading contemporary jewellers from both sides of the Tasman took part in a Melbourne exhibition entitled Cross Pollination. Curated by Vicki Mason (NZ) and Anna Davern (AUS), the brief was to design a modern…

Garland Coma

Garland Coma

New Zealand-born political cartoonist for the Daily Telegraph since 1966, Nicholas Garland has provided 40 woodcut illustrations for the new Novela by son Alex “The Beach” Garland. The book describes the dream-like interior life…

Edge to the curve

Edge to the curve

NZ artists Claire Hammon and Nadia Hunt took part in the inaugural Curvy Exhibition, organised by Australia’s Yen magazine and M-One-11 clothing. Curvy was set up to promote the best of female design…

Edge Adventurer

Edge Adventurer

BBC notes the NZ connection in Shackleton’s legendary voyage, prior to the opening of Te Papa’s Antarctic Heroes – The Race to the South Pole exhibition. Kiwi Frank Worsley successfully navigated Shackleton’s boat -…

Tales from the city’s edge

Tales from the city’s edge

Canterbury School of Fine Arts graduates Kent Bell, Sara Givins, Damon MacLeod, Rachel Brown, and Reece Sanders have mounted a joint exhibition at Melbourne’s Conical Gallery, running April 23 – May 8. Entitled City…

Brothers in arts

Brothers in arts

An opinion piece in the Age asks: “Why don’t Australian and New Zealand arts sectors cooperate more?” The lengthy article examines the difference between the two nations in regards to arts funding, profiles the…

History Goes Digital

History Goes Digital

4 March 2004 – New York Times reviews ‘Paradise Now,’ a diverse exhibition of contemporary NZ and Pacific art currently on show at the Asia Pacific Society Museum on Park Avenue. Lisa Reihana’s multiple-screen…

Now Wear This

Now Wear This

Boston Globe profiles Nelson’s World of Wearable Art (WOW), which has grown “from a soggy one-night affair in a tent 16 years ago to become one of New Zealand’s iconic arts events,…

McCahon’s Edgy New-world Modernism

McCahon’s Edgy New-world Modernism

Peter Hill’s review of the Stedilijk Museum’s Colin McCahon exhibition – now showing in Sydney – perfectly encapsulates the New Zealand Edge. “Enough time has passed for a shift between the centre and the…

Noiseworks

Noiseworks

Houston Press reviews an exhibition by edge conceptual artist Julian Dashper at the Texas Gallery. ‘Unique Records’ is a collection of art-shrine sound-bites amassed during Dashper’s travels and presented on transparent vinyl discs. On…

Finely sculpted prose

Finely sculpted prose

Michael Dunn’s New Zealand Sculpture: A History praised as “a fine production … readable and informative” in Art Monthly Australia‘s book review issue. Dunn’s comprehensive historical overview is the first of its kind published…

Glass master #2

Glass master #2

NZ glass artist, Luke Jacomb, is turning heads in Seattle with his pioneering use of photosensitive glass. While the product itself was invented during WW2, Jacomb is believed to be the first artist to…

You Make Me Feel I’m [Not] Really There

You Make Me Feel I’m [Not] Really There

NZ’s Jacqueline Fraser has made the shortlist for the inaugural Artes Mundi (the Wales International Visual Art Prize), which at £40,000, is the largest award made to an individual artist in the…

He is: Looking Edge-ward for Inspiration

He is: Looking Edge-ward for Inspiration

This year’s recipient of Australia’s $20,000 Dobell Prize for drawing, Aida Tomescu cites a work by Colin McCahon as the inspiration behind her winning piece, Negru III and Negru IV. “It triggered a series…

Twisted sister

Twisted sister

NZ artist, Anne Shelton, featured in Vancouver’s annual gallery-crawl, Swarm  described as “for many … the only gallery-going to be accomplished all year.” Shelton’s eerie photographic diptychs portray the scenes of actual murders:…

Crimewatch goes global

Crimewatch goes global

NZ tourists Olive and Graeme Reed have provided Scottish police with crucial evidence in one of the world’s biggest ever art thefts. The couple used their digital camera to snap shots of the robbers…

Big McCahon: harbinger of art globalisation

Big McCahon: harbinger of art globalisation

In a substantial feature, ‘Spreading the word’, in international art world standard, ArtForum, Thomas Crow talks to Stedelijk Museum curator Marja Bloem about the growing international reputation of Colin McCahon. Crow urges globalisation in…

Art-attack

Art-attack

September’s Art Monthly Australia includes celebratory reviews of Michael Stevenson’s This is the Trekka exhibit at the Venice Biennale, and the Stedelijk Museum’s Colin McCahon retrospective, currently showing in Melbourne. Louise Tegart on Stevenson:…

Glass Master #1

Glass Master #1

Wanganui artist David Murray has won Australia’s prestigious Runamok Prize for Contemporary Glass Art for 2003 for his work entitled ‘Gatherer’.  

Kiwi Car Culture Laps Venice

Kiwi Car Culture Laps Venice

NZ’s representative at the Venice Biennale – Michael Stevenson – praised in Time Pacific for his “finely calibrated sense of irony.” Stevenson’s main installation – ‘This is the Trekka’ – places NZ’s Cold War…

Brake Continues to be Benchmark

Brake Continues to be Benchmark

Australian photojournalist Paul Blackmore is compared to late great NZ photographer, Brian Brake, in a review by the Herald. Blackmore’s Waters images are reminiscent of Brake’s Monsoon series – “one of the most successful…

The Name Game

The Name Game

NZ pop-art exponent, Billy Apple (nee Barry George Bates,) listed alongside Odd Nerdrum, Hercules Fisherman, and Seymour Likely as one of the “unbeatable names in the art world.” Buy Billy Apple in the…

East-side story

East-side story

Te Papa’s ‘Japonism’ exhibition reviewed in August’s Australian Vogue. A joint collaboration with the Kyoto Costume Institute, the show explores the influence of Japan on Western fashion from 1860 to the present. ‘Japonism’ -…

Kiwi snaps up award

Kiwi snaps up award

NZer Antony Rieck was named Photographer of the Year at the annual Florida Association of the American Institute of Architects design awards held on August 2. Rieck, who has a background in structural engineering…

Land of the long black shadow

Land of the long black shadow

The Stedelijk Museum curated Colin McCahon retrospective – ‘A Question of Faith’ – reviewed in the Weekend Australian, prior to its opening at the Ian Potter Centre in Melbourne’s Federation Square. Critic Susan McCulloch:…

The Poetry of Exile

The Poetry of Exile

Displaced artists and writers from around the world gathered at Auckland University in July for a 3-day conference examining the link between exile and creativity. Organised by Professor Mike Hanne and officially opened by…

Glamour Girls

Glamour Girls

A photographic exhibition by NZ artist Fiona Clark is creating a stir at Sydney’s Mori Gallery. Go Girl – a series of portraits of NZ’s transgender and transvestite community – is described in the…

Seriously comic

Seriously comic

The Weekend Australian profiles NZ-born and Ilam (University of Canterbury) trained graphic artist Colin Wilson. Virtually unknown in the antipodes Wilson has millions of avid overseas fans and after his acclaimed work on…

Serious as anything

Serious as anything

NZ-born Mambo creative and ex-Mental as Anything guitarist Reg Mombassa turns his satiric talents to serious effect for Isle of Refuge, a show of 13 high-profile Australian artists protesting the treatment of refugees. “I felt…

In love with Earth’s wild places

In love with Earth’s wild places

Celebrated NZ photographer, Wayne Papps remembered. Papps was best known for his striking images of Antarctica, which he produced as a member of the Australian Antarctic Division. Regarded as one of the world’s premiere…

A Man of Wealth and Taste: Harry M. Miller

A Man of Wealth and Taste: Harry M. Miller

“Should the job go to the vulgar New Zealander who had brought the Rolling Stones to Australia?” Sydney icon, edge arts patron and tour promoter, Harry M. Miller is celebrated in a profile that…