Venues
Earth, 2009 (video still)

Earth, 2009 (video still)

The Cloud of Unknowing, 2011 (video still)

The Cloud of Unknowing, 2011 (video still)

born 1976 Singapore.
Lives and works in Singapore.

 

Ho Tzu Nyen is a multidisciplinary artist interested in the construction of history and the relationships between still, moving and painted images. Immersive and dreamlike, his films incorporate elements of painting and performance as he extends the boundaries of traditional filmmaking. Ho’s work is characterised by richly detailed and dramatic scenes in which he draws on cultural references from Eastern and Western historic and contemporary sources.

Ho has stated, ‘I wanted to make a film that’s packed dense with so many references that everyone can draw their own visions and hallucinations out of the same source.’ In the recent works including Earth and The Cloud of Unknowing Ho mixes elements from contemporary life with references from traditional Chinese landscape and classical Western painting.

Selected exhibitions (solo):

MAM Project 016: Ho Tzu Nyen, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2011; Earth, Artspace, Sydney, 2011. Selected exhibitions and screenings (group): No Country, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2013; 54th Venice Biennale, 2011; 6th Asia-Pacific Triennial, 2009; 2009 Cannes International Film Festival; 66th Venice International Film Festival, 2009;1st Singapore Biennale, 2006; 2006 Hong Kong International Film Festival; 3rd Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale, 2005; 26th São Paulo Biennial, 2004; 2004 Bangkok International Film Festival.

‘Ho’s work extends the composition and space of painting to heightened audio-visual-spatial environments ... The experience can be uneasy and agitating.’

Charlotte Huddleston, Director, St Paul St Gallery, AUT University, Auckland

The Cloud of Unknowing

2013
ST Paul St

installation with single channel HD video projection, 13-channel sound, smoke machines, floodlights, show control system
28:00min
courtesy of the artist


Venue
Kauri-oake, 2013

Kauri-oake, 2013

Kauri-oake, 2013

Kauri-oake, 2013

Kauri-oake, 2013

Kauri-oake, 2013

(formed 2007) Live and work in Sydney, Australia
Tessa Zettel Born 1980, Sydney, Australia
Karl Khoe Born 1980, Sydney, Australia

Artists and co-directors of Makeshift, Tessa Zettel and Karl Khoe collaborate on interdisciplinary projects that encompass live art, sculpture and installation, drawing, printmaking, writing, curating and design. As redirective practitioners, their work imagines or enacts other ways of living that are generative of sustainment, dialogue and new economies. Site-responsive and participatory, these works are shaped by provisional communities and appear as durational interventions. Such projects involve opening up spaces of dialogue or exchange (often facilitated by the presence of food), marking time to slow down and be attentive, and a revaluing of obscured cultural knowledge, stories and practices.

http://www.makeshift.com.au/

http://kaurioke.com/

Selected exhibitions (solo):

Making Time, Performance Space, Sydney, 2013; A Leaf from the Book of Cities, National Institute for Experimental Arts/City of Sydney, 2012; Make-do Garden City, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney, 2010; Colony Collapse, Firstdraft, Sydney, 2010. Selected exhibitions (group): IASKA Spaced: Art Out of Place, Fremantle Arts Centre, 2012; Primavera 2011, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2011; Sister Cities Biennial: Urbanition, San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery/Carriageworks, San Francisco/Sydney, 2011; In the Balance: Art for a Changing World, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2010.

‘... prefaces pleasure and community spirit over economic benefit.’

David Cross, Associate Professor in Fine Art, Massey University, Wellington

Kauri-oke!

2013
Fresh Gallery Otara

New Zealand kauri, karaoke machine and mixed media, folk songs
dimensions variable
courtesy of the artists


Venue
Tropical Thunder,2013

Tropical Thunder,2013

Tropical Thunder,2013

Tropical Thunder,2013

Tropical Thunder,2013

Tropical Thunder,2013

Born 1978, Perth, Australia Lives and works Sydney, Australia

Keg de Souza is an inter-disciplinary artist who works across mediums including video, artist’s books, printmaking, inflatable architecture, installation and drawing. The investigation of spatial politics is central to de Souza’s work, as she focuses not only on the built environment but also social space. De Souza is involved in collaborative artistic projects and groups, such as the SquatSpace artist collective, the collaborative duo You Are Here, the Network of Un-Collectable Artists and the Rizzeria printmaking collective. Under the name All Thumbs Press she publishes hand-bound books and zines featuring her illustrations and writing.

http://www.allthumbspress.net/

Selected exhibitions (solo):

Gonflables et amuse-bouches, Darling Foundry, Montréal, 2012 Living Under the Stars, Urban Art Projects, Brisbane, 2012; Rosen-tales; Women’s Studio Workshop, New York, 2012; Ramble Through The Rocks, Offsite: MCA, Sydney, 2011; Whatever Floats Your Boat, Cockatoo Island Studios to Balmain, Sydney, 2010. Selected exhibitions (group): Social Networking, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2012; Primavera 2011: Young Australian Artists, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2011; Trama, Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Porto, 2011; Designated Drivers, The Block Museum of Contemporary Art, Evanston, Illinois, 2011; The Right to The City (SquatSpace), Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney, 2011.

'Tropical Thunder ... investigates the commercialisation of traditional practices...’

Anna Davis, Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney

Tropical Thunder

2013
Fresh Gallery Otara

plastic tablecloths, fans, bottled soft drink, risograph printed maps
dimensions variable
courtesy of the artist


Venue
The Forgotten Space 2010 (still)

The Forgotten Space 2010 (still)

Born 1951, Erie, United States of America
Died 10 August 2013, Los Angeles, United States of America

Allan Sekula (1951–2013) was a photographer, filmmaker and writer engaged with issues of social reality and globalisation. The Forgotten Space, 2010 is a filmic sequel to his book Fish Story, 1995 which explores the historic use and representation of the maritime space and the radical modern-day shifts and transformations. In recent work Sekula explored the uneasy relationship in maritime space between anti-authoritarianism or imaginative freedom and instruments of economic, military and political power. As an intellectual and practitioner, he was mainly engaged with socio-political critique of what he described as ‘the imaginary and material geographies of the advanced capitalist world’.

http://www.theforgottenspace.net/

Selected exhibitions:

Polonia and Other Fables, Ludwig Museum, Budapest, 2010; Polonia and Other Fables, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 2009; dOCUMENTA (12), Kassel, 2007; Shipwreck and Workers, STUK Kunstcentrum, Leuven, 2005; Titanic’s Wake, Harn Museum of Art, Florida, 2004; Prayer for the Americans, Galerie Michel Rein, Paris, 2004; Sekula, Performance under Working Conditions, Generali Foundation, Vienna, 2003; dOCUMENTA (11), Kassel, 2002.

‘Sekula and Burch’s film asks us to consider those critical spaces between the local and the global...’

Alex Davidson, Curatorial Assistant, Artspace, Auckland

The Forgotten Space

2010
The Film Archive

The Film Archive
Screening times for The Forgotten Space at The Film Archive:

Weekdays - 11am, 1pm and 3pm

Saturday - 11am, 1pm

film essay / feature documentary, English subtitles
110:00min
producers: Frank van Reemst, Joost Verheij
co-producers: Vincent Lucassen, Ebba Sinzinger
courtesy of DOC.EYE Film


Venues
Winter, 2013 (video still)

Winter, 2013 (video still)

Winter, 2013 (video still)

Winter, 2013 (video still)

Born 1974, Chicago, United States of America
Lives and works in New York and Cambridge, MA, United States of America

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.

Selected exhibitions and screenings (solo):

Black Moon, Arthouse – Austin Museum of Art, 2012; American Originals Now: Amie Siegel, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, 2012; Amie Siegel, Part 1: Black Moon, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, 2011; Modern Mondays, MoMA, New York, 2010. Selected exhibitions and screenings (group): 2011 Cannes International Film Festival; The Talent Show, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2010; Auto-Kino!, Temporaäre Kunsthalle, Berlin, 2010; The Russian Linesman, Hayward Gallery, London, 2009; 2008 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Forum Expanded, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, 2006.

‘Siegel eschews ‘documentary’ as either an aesthetic language or a pretence to truth...’

Elizabeth Thomas, curator and writer, Los Angeles

Black Moon

2010
Auckland Art Gallery

super 16mm film transferred to HD video, colour, sound
20:00min
 courtesy of the artist

Winter

2013
Auckland War Memorial Museum

super 16mm transferred to HD video, colour, sound, performance
The Auckland Triennial Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, purchased 2013


Venue
Autoconstrucción, 2009 (still)

Autoconstrucción, 2009 (still)

Autoconstrucción, 2009 (still)

Autoconstrucción, 2009 (still)

Born 1968, Mexico City, Mexico
Lives and works in Mexico City, Mexico

Abraham Cruzvillegas’ practice is informed by growing up in Ajusco, a district of Mexico City. Cruzvillegas transforms everyday objects including pieces of scrap metal, plastic rubbish, and animal waste into art. Stark and somewhat precarious in construction, these dynamic assemblage sculptures retain a deep mystical quality. His recent work addresses solidarity, collaboration and optimism, and his construction of art using readily available materials operates as a metaphor for the articulation of individual identity and place.

Selected exhibitions (solo):

Abraham Cruzvillegas: The Autoconstrucción Suites, Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis, 2013; Abraham Cruzvillegas, Kurimanzutto, Mexico City, 2012; Abraham Cruzvillegas: Autoconstrucción: The Optimistic Failure of a Simultaneous Promise, Modern Art Oxford, 2011; The Magnificent Seven: Abraham Cruzvillegas Capp Street Project, CCA Wattis Institute Event, San Francisco, 2009; Autoconstrucción: The Soundtrack, The Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, 2008. Selected exhibitions (group): Garden of Reason, Ham House, London, 2012; 30th São Paulo Biennial, 2012; dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, 2012; 12th Istanbul Biennial, 2011; Unmonumental, New Museum, New York, USA, 2007; 50th Venice Biennale, 2003.

Autoconstrucción

2009
Auckland Art Gallery

HD video, single-channel, colour, sound
63:00min
courtesy of the artist and kurimanzutto, Mexico City


Venue
Nanshi Tou (South Stone), 2011

Nanshi Tou (South Stone), 2011

Nanshi Tou (South Stone), 2011

Nanshi Tou (South Stone), 2011

Born 1976, Changsha, China
Lives and works in Guangzhou, China

Zhou Tao’s work reflects on the activities and elements of everyday life. His subtle and humorous videos record interactions between people, things, and situations – touching on questions about the multiple trajectories of reality. In the performance piece Time, 2010 in New York Zhou attached a ball of string to his body as means of recording his movements throughout the day. For Zhou, the decision to use video was not a deliberate choice of artistic language or medium; instead, the operation of the camera is a way of being that blends itself with everyday life.

http://listart.mit.edu/node/509

Selected exhibitions (solo):

Zhou Tao: The Training, Kadist Art Foundation, Paris, 2013; Open Studio: Seek for Geothermal Heat, Times Museum, Guangzhou, 2012; The Man Who Plants Scenarios, Queens Nails Projects, San Francisco, 2011; Zhou Tao, Location One, New York, 2010; 1234–, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA, 2009. Selected exhibitions and screenings (group): 6th Curitiba Biennial, 2011; Non-Aligned, Marina Abramovic Institute West, San Francisco, 2010; 7th Shanghai Biennale, 2008; China Power Station Part II, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, 2007; Accumulation-Canton Express Next Stop, Tang

‘... Zhou Tao’s practice alchemises ordinary surroundings into a theatre...’

Xiaoyu Weng, curator and writer, San Francisco

Nanshi Tou (South Stone)

2011
Auckland Art Gallery

single-channel HD video, 36 inkjet prints
25:22min, 279.4 mm x 215.9 mm (each)
courtesy of artist and Kadist Art Foundation


Venue
A Perfect Home: The Bridge Project, 2010 (video still)

A Perfect Home: The Bridge Project, 2010 (video still)

A Perfect Home: The Bridge Project, 2010 (video still)

A Perfect Home: The Bridge Project, 2010 (video still)

(born 1962) Seoul, South Korea
Lives and works in New York, London and Seoul.

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.

Selected exhibitions (solo):

Hiroshima MOCA, Hiroshima, Japan, 2012; Leeum Samsung Museum, Seoul, South Korea, 2012; Tate Modern, London, UK, 2011; Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York, USA, 2010; 2001 Venice Biennale, Italy. Selected exhibitions (group):Luminous: The Art of Asia, Seattle Art Museum, 2011; 2010 Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool, UK; 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale, Italy; Your Bright Future: 12 Contemporary Artists from Korea, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, USA, 2009; Psycho Buildings, Hayward Gallery London, UK, 2008.

‘... there is no freedom in architecture. In fact freedom is a ruse Suh points to...’

Yasmeen M Siddiqui, curator and essayist, Louisville, Kentucky.

A Perfect Home: The Bridge Project

2010
Auckland Art Gallery

synchronised four-monitor animated digital slide presentation, two single-channel videos, sound
11:00min
© Do Ho Suh
courtesy of the artist


Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro

Venue
dwell,2013

dwell,2013

dwell,2013

dwell,2013

Sean Cordeiro
Born 1974, Sydney, Australia
Claire Healy
Born 1971, Melbourne, Australia

 

Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro met at the New South Wales College of Fine Arts in the 1990s. Avid travellers, their peripatetic lives inform much of their practice as they explore ideas of home and transience, and engage with issues such as real estate, permutations of space and modes of living. They are best known for transforming everyday objects into large-scale and provocative sculptures and installations. Through the presentation of the deconstructed and the reassembled Healy and Cordeiro literally unpack notions of domicide, and make us question our own materialistic tendencies and the impermanence of occupation.

http://www.claireandsean.com/

Selected exhibitions (solo):

Claire Healy & Sean Cordeiro, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, 2012; Are We There Yet? Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC, 2011; Par Avion, Frey Norris Contemporary & Modern, San Francisco, 2011; Future Furnishings, Nature Morte Gallery, Berlin, 2012; The Ultimate Field Trip, Akiyoshidai International Artist Village, Yamaguchi, 2010; Prems, La BF15, Lyon, 2009. Selected exhibitions (group): Setouchi Art Festival, Setouchi, 2010; 53rd Venice Biennale, 2009; Optimism, Gallery of Modern Art | Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 2008.

‘Enigmatic clues hint at a narrative – somewhat playful, somewhat uncomfortable...’

Beatrice Gralton, Curator Visual Arts, Carriageworks, Sydney

dwell

2013
Auckland Art Gallery

mixed media installation
dimensions variable
courtesy of the artists, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney and Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco.

 

 


Venue
Architectural plans with notes for the removal and acquisition of garage doors from Mahia Road, Manurewa

Architectural plans with notes for the removal and acquisition of garage doors from Mahia Road, Manurewa

Born 1988, Auckland
Lives and works in Auckland, New Zealand

Luke Willis Thompson’s art deals with sites and objects that embody a sense of historical, political or social trauma. In recent work the artist has used ready-made objects – such as a local funeral home’s art collection and a house in the Auckland suburb of Epsom – to trace the faultlines of race and class in his chosen context. Thompson sets up estranging encounters where the viewer is confronted with an object both ontologically and in the space of narrative and mythology.

Selected exhibitions (solo):

inthisholeonthisislandwhereiam, Hopkinson Cundy, Auckland, 2012; Yaw, RM, Auckland, 2011. Selected exhibitions (group): Between memory and trace, Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts, Pakuranga, 2012; In Spite of Ourselves: Approaching Documentary, St Paul St Gallery, Auckland and The Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt, 2012; Make\Shift: Tautai’s Third Tertiary Show, St Paul St Gallery, Auckland, 2010.

‘... objects that shatter any achievable fantasy of community...’

Danny Butt, writer and artist, Melbourne

Untitled

2012
Auckland Art Gallery

three garage doors, security lights
dimensions variable
courtesy of the artist and Hopkinson Cundy, Auckland

 


Venue
Architecture Now! Etat des Lieux #2, 2010 (still)

Architecture Now! Etat des Lieux #2, 2010 (still)

Architecture Now! Etat des Lieux #2, 2010 (still)

Architecture Now! Etat des Lieux #2, 2010 (still)

Born 1970,Tangier, Morocco
Lives and works between Tangier, Morocco and Paris, France

 

mounir fatmi makes art which directly addresses global current events by looking at the origins and symptoms of global issues, as well as speaking to those whose lives are affected by specific events. In his recent work, fatmi has criticised the formation of supranational political and economic structures in the late 1990s and offered an Arab perspective on megalopolises and urban architecture. fatmi defines a megalopolis as architectural development in cities that is carried out at speed and without taking time to consider or reflect upon the wellbeing of the people who live there.

http://www.mounirfatmi.com/

Selected exhibitions (solo):

Oriental Accident, Lombard Freid Projects, New York, 2012; The Angel’s Black Leg, Galerie Conrads, Düsseldorf, 2011; Seeing is Believing, Galerie Hussenot, Paris, France, 2010; minimalism is capitalist, Galerie Conrads, Düsseldorf, 2009; Obstacle Next Flag, Migros Museum, Zürich, 2003. Selected exhibitions (group): Ici, Ailleurs, Tour Panorama, Marseille, 2013; 6th Québec Biennale, 2012; 54th Venice Biennale, 2011; 12th Cairo Biennale, 2010; 10th Lyon Biennale, 2009; 10th Brussels Biennale, 2008.

‘... [mounir] looks at a world dominated by new technologies, from the vantage point of the Arab world, with an ironic gaze.’

Ali Akay, Professor of Sociology, University of Fine Arts Mimar Sinan; curator, Istanbul

Architecture Now! Etat des lieux #1

2010
Fresh Gallery Otara

colour HD video, with stereo sound
11:33min

Architecture Now! Etat des lieux #3, I lived on the 3rd Floor in Tower no. 2

2010
Fresh Gallery Otara

colour HD video, stereo sound
10:12min

Architecture Now! Etat des lieux #4, City of urgency

2010
Fresh Gallery Otara

colour HD video, stereo sound
9:13min

The VF Project

2010
Fresh Gallery Otara

colour HD video projection, stereo sound
28:00min
courtesy of the artist and Analix Forever, Geneva, Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, Cape Town