Sci-fi Artistic Wonder
To be released in November, art book White Cloud Worlds showcases a never-before seen collection of science fiction and fantasy artwork from New Zealand, “home to Weta Workshop, and a fantasy/scifi concept art powerhouse,”…
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
Bindi on at Pataka
Porirua’s Pataka Museum of Arts & Culture is currently holding “Bindi — The Indian Dot” exhibition, which will continue through November 14. Applauding Pataka for holding an art exhibition related to Hindu cultural…
In pencil at Rare Device
Wellington-based artist Sarah McNeil is presenting new work at San Francisco’s design store and gallery Rare Device in an exhibition entitled, ‘Eighteen Twenty Three’, from November 5 through November 29. According to a press…
Art Attack in Basel
Influential art journal Art Forum notes a first time edge presence at the Liste 01 Young Art Fair in Basel. Wellington’s Hamish Mckay Gallery showcased artists including Ricky Swallow, Michael Harrison, Ronnie van Hout and…
“Freewheeling, irrepressibility & incoherence.”
Pioneer of postmodernist NZ art, Richard Killeen, featured in Art Asia Pacific. Killeen’s recent works revisit the “cut-out” form with which made his name in the late 70’s. Deceptively simple in appearance, the works…
4WD Bellissima!
Contemporary artist Michael Stevenson is representing NZ at the 50th Venice Biennale 2003 – the oldest and most prestigious art event in the world. Described by the NZ Selection Committee as “a passionate archivist of our culture,”…
Modernism revisited
NZ born Northern Territories (Australia) based artist Peter Adsett recently exhibited at the Grant Pirrie gallery in Redfern, Sydney. Adsett describes his More Rot series as a purely abstract visual representation of cross cultural debate: “In this…
Barr & Barr
Wellington curators and strategists Jim Barr and Mary Barr head the survey by London art magazine Contemporary of 21 international collectors. An essay by William McAloon features work by Ronnie Van Hout, et al, Michael Parekowhai, Michael…
Readymade mule at Basel
Et al.’s exhibition ‘altruistic studies’ – a “non-peopled, computer-generated performance” – installed at the Basel art fair in early June, their fourth at the international show, has once again sparked curiosity about the group’s identity. Et. al…
Gift giving with film
Auckland-born artist Sriwhana Spong, 29, celebrates her Balinese heritage in “distinctively grainy ‘amateur'” Super 8 films like 2005’s Muttnik and its sequel Nightfall, works which have been exhibited throughout the world. Interviewed in Art World Spong explains…
Illuminating the Canal
Artists Francis Upritchard and Judy Millar’s installation spaces at this year’s La Biennale di Venezia “reflect Birnbaum’s theme of Making Worlds with intense microcosms, one in an intimate former residence, the other in a place of worship,”…
Millar in colour
Painter Judy Millar explains her international reputation over her local to Art World: “I’m in the curious position that no one really gets what I’m doing, and they never did.” In the early 2000s, Millar’s relentlessly colourful…
“Crazy guy” gets his dues
Kinetic artist and New Zealander Len Lye, who “waltzed through several art movements, genres and countries” and who is becoming widely recognised as a major contributor to the story of 20th Century art, is bio-ed by…
Yuk Yum
NZ artist Denise Kum to take up residency at Adelaide’s Experimental Art Foundation, bringing in her plastic shopping carry-bags her unique brand of toxic materialism, mixed media and cultures – popping a pin in the speech…
Shopping with Billy Apple
Ground-breaking NZ artist Billy Apple featured in The Tate Liverpool’s Shopping exhibition. Apple’s work appeared alongside Roy Lichtenstein, Man Ray and Andy Warhol in a retrospective of “a century of art and consumer culture.” Apple’s 1964…
When, Will I, Will I be Famous
SMH art critic Peter Hill muses on art, fame and celebrity, praising the playful personas of NZ artist Patrick Pound. He compares Pound to English YBA chief Damien Hirst: “For a decade he has been working…
Taranaki to Toronto
Gregory Burke has been appointed to the position of Director, The Power Plant Art Gallery at Harbourfront Centre Toronto commencing September 2005. A native New Zealander, Gregory Burke is currently Director of the Govett-Brewster…
Top Shots
The photographer who captured Sir Edmund Hillary’s ascent of Mt Everest hosts a retrospective at Lab X in Melbourne. Alfred Gregory documented Hillary and Tenzing’s feat in a series of images that became recognised…
Exploration of light
NZ art luminary Bill Culbert staged his second solo exhibition “Black and Light” at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in Soundan Lane, Sydney. “In this exhibition, Culbert uses the three-dimensional form of fluorescent lights and flat, matt-black lines…
Readymade mule at Basel
Et al.’s exhibition ‘altruistic studies’ – a “non-peopled, computer-generated performance” – installed at the Basel art fair in early June, their fourth at the international show, has once again sparked curiosity about the group’s identity. Et. al…
Ideas of transformation
Upper Hutt-born painter Shane Cotton recently held a three-month residence at Sydney’s Artspace where he prepared works for upcoming 2008/09 shows at Gow Langsford Gallery in Auckland and Kaliman Gallery in Sydney. Art World’s Laura Murray talked…
Censored views
The work of New Zealand photographer and artist Bruce Connew features on the cover of the latest issue of UK literary magazine Granta (#105, Lost and Found, Spring 2009). Censored 2008 is a photographic artwork that…
Up-and-coming Upritchard
Artist to watch Francis Upritchard features in the 48th issue of Object magazine. “An exciting talent … Upritchard’s art locates value in the personal and the imperfect … finds a way of accommodating beauty, rendering…
Mad for glamour geeks
Auckland artist Peter Stichbury’s acrylic portraits of stereotyped “yearbook” characters feature in the latest Art World magazine, with his 2000 work ‘Juvenile’ taking the cover. “Stichbury is highly regarded for creating stylish, satirical portraits of his own…
Gimblett at the Guggenheim
New York/Auckland artist Max Gimblett features in the latest issue of Art World, in an article by collaborator John Yau about the influence of Asia on the artist’s work. Gimblett, who has long had a…
Possibilities in names
Porirua-born artist Michael Parekowhai’s latest sculpture will soon be unveiled at Sydney’s Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Art World eports. “The sculpture is a groups of ten boys dressed up as American Indians, each of whom contemplate the viewer with…
Digging a little deeper
The work of Auckland-based digital and multimedia artist Lisa Reihana is deconstructed in the winter 2009 issue of Art & Australia by feature writer Jon Bywater. Titled ‘Mana and Glamour’, the article looks beyond well-catalogued ideas that…
All Things Wild and Innocent
One of our most internationally prominent artists, NYNZer Max Gimblett exhibited at San Francisco’s Haines Gallery in April. The 30 year New York resident’s refined and harmonious canvases are created utilizing a process akin to alchemy….
Obama in multigrain
Paeroa-born artist Maurice Bennett, famous throughout New Zealand for portraits made from toast, has recently unveiled his latest piece. Bennett’s Barack Obama portrait required over 12 pieces of toast, including white, whole wheat, and…
Visual Poetics
In the Fall 21 issue of the Kehrer catalogue, New Zealander Harvey Benge is featured for his recent work in All the Places I’ve Ever Known. Kehrer, based in Heidelberg and Berlin, specialises in…
Te Kano released
On New Zealand’s National Pavilion Day at the World Expo 21 in Shanghai a 1-meter long, three-meter wide canoe made of 35-year-old kauri was gifted to China. At the ceremony, a spiritual leader from…
Gritty becomes hip
Sleepy port suburb Ahuriri features in a New York Times slideshow, with six images of its wharf, the organic grocer Picada, beachfront restaurant Milk & Honey, the classic Ahuriri Café, and a hair salon…
New curatorial role
New Zealand-born Helen Klisser During (right) is the new director of visual arts at Westport Arts Center in Connecticut. Weston-based Klisser During, who moved to the United States in 1985, grew up working in…
Whales in Boston
New Zealand’s “Whales Tohora” exhibition continues its North American tour showing at the Museum of Science in Boston through September 14. The Cape Cod Times’ Molly Driscoll explains: “The exhibit focuses on whale behavior…
Kong is Back
The King Kong attraction at Hollywood park, the first theme park attraction that Peter Jackson’s New Zealand-based f/x shop Weta Digital has created, reopens on July 1 after a devastating fire two years ago….
Millar’s better life
New Zealand artist Judy Millar, 53, who lives in Auckland and Berlin, is exhibiting at the Hamish Morrison Galerie in the German capital, her first solo show — entitled ‘A Better Life’ — since…
NZ gothic on show
The Queensland Art Gallery’s Gallery of Modern Art is showcasing its substantial collection of contemporary New Zealand art — the largest outside of this country — with an exhibition called the
Walters finalists named
The finalists for this year’s $50,000 Walters Prize are: Dan Arps, Fiona Connor, Saskia Leek and Alex Monteith. Named in honour of the late New Zealand artist, Gordon Walters, the prize was established in…
Latvian leanings
Nelson-based landscape photographer Craig Potton is holding an exhibition of his works at the Foreign Art Museum in Riga Castle, Latvia. The Riga exhibition takes a journey through New Zealand, beginning on the windswept…
Organic as mechanic
Auckland artist Lisa Black mixes taxidermy with machinery some sites calling her method “steampunk” modifying a fawn, a turtle, a duckling and a baby crocodile, transforming the once dead into the “cyborg-seeming”. According to…
Cast for glass
“Internationally respected doyenne” of glass casting Aucklander Ann Robinson is profiled in the Spring 2010 issue of German/English magazine Neues Glas. With no one to consult and no recipes to follow, Robinson was as…
Solid selection
Porirua-born sculptor Michael Parekowhai has been selected to represent New Zealand at the 2011 Venice Biennale. Parekowhai, 42, received the Arts Foundation of New Zealand Laureate Award in 2001 and works as an associate…
House of Pallets
Auckland sculptor Aaron McConchie’s Chep pallet installation “c” is on display at Manukau City’s Highbrook Business Park through January 9. The exhibit consists of nine pyramid-like structures that resembles a house of cards. Each…
Win on the wind
Nelson-born sculptor Phil Price, 44, has won the Allens Arthur Robinson People’s Choice Prize of AU$5000 for his sculpture “Morpheus”, which was part of the 18-day exhibition “Sculpture by the Sea” in Bondi. Price…
Lunchbox Aesthetics
Christchurch art commentator Denis Dutton is invited by The New York Times to discuss beauty and the Japanese bento box. What does the care devoted to the visual details in a packed lunch suggest…
Conceptual Costs
Professor of philosophy at the University of Canterbury and author of The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure and Human Evolution Denis Dutton writes an opinion piece for The New York Times on the surprises conceptual…
Into the Void
Photographer Robert Pearson was the sole New Zealander, and one of 18,000 entries, to make the International Photography Awards (IPA) final selections winning second place in the Fine Art: Abstract Pro section for ‘Entrophy…
Squat sophisticates
Aucklander Dan Simon, 31, and his art collective ‘The Oubliette’ have been squatting in two 15 million pound mansions in the exclusive suburb of Mayfair, London, transforming the six-story buildings into a cultural centre…
At Home on the Edge
Artist Judy Millar, 52, explains to the Financial Times that she lives “at the end of a seven-mile dusty road on Auckland’s west coast and overlooks perhaps one of the most untouched beaches on…
New beginnings in Alaska
Former director of natural environment at Te Papa Carol Diebel will begin a new role overseeing the University of Alaska Museum of the North in October. In addition to her work leading Te Papa’s…
On show in Melbourne
New Zealand jeweller and artist Warwick Freeman is exhibiting his new work, ‘Spring Collection’, at Gallery Funaki in Melbourne until 1 August. Freeman has been making jewellery for over 25 years and is credited…
Taking over Rotterdam
Iconic Auckland pop artist, Billy Apple, has hijacked the Netherlands art scene by holding a major solo exhibition at the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam. Comprising two parts ‘A History…
On display in Venice
The work of New Zealand artists Judy Millar (above) and Francis Upritchard (below) at the 53rd International Venice Biennale is beautifully showcased in a photographic essay by Ronnie Peters on his blog RonnieWorld. “Artist…
Piecing life together
Mt Maunganui artist and jigsaw puzzle creator Royce McClure, 53, was in India this month assembling a 25,000 piece puzzle he designed for a Lipton Tea promotion. A veteran of over 180 puzzles and…
Abstract-minded
New Zealand-inspired prints by American artist and solarplate expert Dan Welden feature in an exhibition at Adelphi University, Garden City, with some of the paintings evoking those of Colin McCahon. Both artists use abstraction…
Art with Love
Auckland Art Gallery has been gifted 15 major works of art, including Picasso’s “Femme à la résille (Woman in a hairnet),” at a total of $115 million, the largest ever donation to an Australasian…
