The 5th Auckland Triennial

Emory Douglas created the visual identity for the Black Panther Party and his iconic images came to symbolise the struggles of the movement. As Minister of Culture for the "Black Panther Party" from 1967 until the 1980s, Douglas’ work, described as ‘Militant Chic’, featured in most issues of the newspaper The Black Panther. His work is characterised by strong graphic images of young African American men, women and children. He used the newspaper’s popularity to spur people to action, portraying the poor with empathy and as being unapologetic and ready for a fight.

http://www.emorydouglasart.com/

Do-Ho Suh’s sculptures and installations explore spatial dynamics and issues of cultural difference. His site-specific installations act like microcosms of the postmodern, globalised world, questioning the boundaries of identity in relation to public and private space. Suh’s work, which draws from his Korean background and life in the West, addresses the place of individual and collective identities in a global society. Through the use of architectural elements and references to the body, Suh evokes a trans-cultural life where the dynamics of space, culture and connection create unanticipated form.

Atelier Bow Wow’s practice is based on a thorough study of existing cultural, economic, and environmental conditions and they are most well known for small-scale and idiosyncratic buildings squeezed into tiny sites around Tokyo. Known as ‘pet architecture’, these charming yet highly functional and considered residences reflect a deep understanding of local needs and cultural practices.

Atelier Bow-Wow has also acquired a following through its Micro Public Space projects and the innovative projects at exhibitions such as the 2011 Venice Biennale (as an official representative of Japan) and at the Hayward Gallery in London.

Ryoji Ikeda is one of Japan’s leading electronic composers and visual artists who successfully works across both visual and sonic media. His work involves elaborate orchestrations of sound, visuals and mathematical notions which explore the characteristics of sound and result in immersive live performances and installations.

http://www.ryojiikeda.com/

Alongside his musical pieces, Ikeda continues to work on long-term projects including test pattern, 2008–ongoing in which he developed a system that converts any type of data – text, sounds, photographs and movies – into barcode patterns and binary notation consisting of 0s and 1s.

Claire Fontaine is a Paris-based collective, founded in 2004. After lifting her name from a popular brand of school notebooks, Claire Fontaine declared herself a ‘readymade artist’ and began to elaborate a version of neo-conceptual art that often looks like other people’s work. Working in neon, video, sculpture, painting and text, her practice can be described as an ongoing interrogation of the political impotence and the crisis of singularity which seem to define contemporary society today.

http://www.clairefontaine.ws/

Angelica Mesiti creates performance-based videos that analyse culture in a state of transformation due to social or economic shifts. Past projects have focused on traditional music, movement languages, and storytelling. At the core of her work is an ongoing interest in the potential of performed cultural practices as expressions of the particularities and history of a given place and community.

http://www.angelicamesiti.com/

Listen to Angelica Mesiti talking at Artspace as part of the 5th Auckland Triennial.

Working across film, photography, sound and video, Amie Siegel’s work uses the cinematic image to investigate social issues. Making use of stylistic devices drawn from film genres such as action, science fiction and the western, Siegel’s installations and single-screen moving image works address critical theory and popular culture.

http://amiesiegel.net/

Interested in the history and act of filmmaking, fakes and the tradition of the remake, much of Siegel’s work is based on critiquing existing films. In Berlin Remake, she re-created shots from East German films to investigate differences and how these fictional films ‘become documents of a city’. In the recent work Black Moon, Siegel reworked a film of the same name by French director Louis Malle, setting it in abandoned suburban homes in areas of the US which have the highest mortgage foreclosure rates.