Michael Lin

Keg de Souza

Venue

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

Wayne Youle

Venue

Just in time for too late, (2013)

Born 1974, Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Whakaeke, Pākehā
Lives and works in North Canterbury, New Zealand

Wayne Youle’s playful and subversive art practice ranges from painting and sculpture to photography, ceramics and bronze casting. Informed by his heritage, Youle makes work which addresses Māori/Pākehā relations and bicultural concepts as well as broader social issues. One of his most recent projects was a large-scale mural painted on a concrete wall in Sydenham, Christchurch. I seem to have temporarily misplaced my sense of humour, 2012 was a giant painting of a shadow board with tools that represented what had gone from people’s everyday lives and all those who lent their equipment and hands to help clean up Christchurch following the earthquake in February 2011.

Selected exhibitions (solo):

So they say...,Tauranga Art Gallery, 2013; Fingers Crossed, City Gallery Wellington, 2012; 10 Down, Pataka Museum of Arts & Cultures, Porirua, 2010; The Icon 500, The Physics Room, Christchurch, 2005. Selected exhibitions (group): Close Encounters, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, 2009; Plastic Maori, The Dowse, Lower Hutt, 2009; Winners are Grinners, PICA, Perth, 2007; Pasifika Styles, University of Cambridge, 2006; Hei Tiki, Auckland Art Gallery, 2005; Manawa Taki, City Gallery Wellington, 2005.

‘... the play of words and symbols which are often utilised to intersect national bicultural debates in provocative ways.’

Nigel Borell, Kaiwhakahaere, Toi o Manukau, Auckland Council

Just in time for too late

2013

Fresh Gallery Otara

Emory Douglas, Rigo 23, Wayne Youle
painted mural
2940 x 11300
Courtesy of the artists

Peter Robinson

Venue

If You Were To Work Here: the Mood in the Museum, 2013

Born 1966, Ashburton
Lives and works in Auckland, New Zealand

Peter Robinson’s recent work investigates both the materiality and metaphoric potential of his chosen medium. Whether it is the massive weightless volume of polystyrene forms or the densely contracted materiality of felt, Robinson’s sculptural propositions play out various oppositions such as density and lightness, and dispersion and compression. His felt sticks reference the formalist legacies of minimalist, post-minimalist and conceptual art, conflating these iconic art-historical conventions with both traditional Māori abstraction and taonga (treasure) forms, and genetic or binary codes, to activate a contemporary recoding and recontextualisation.

Selected exhibitions (solo): Defunct Mnemonics, Peter McLeavey Gallery Wellington, 2012; Structure and Subjectivity, Sue Crockford Gallery, Auckland, 2012; Essential Security, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne 2011; Modern Standards, Sue Crockford Gallery, Auckland, 2010, Wellington, 2010; The Influence of Anxiety, The Centre for Drawing Project Space, London, 2010; Polymer Monoliths, Artspace, Sydney and Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2009; Snow Ball Blind Time, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, 2008; Soft Rock Baroque, Peter McLeavey Gallery, Wellington2008; Concatenation and Dispersion, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2007; ACK!, Artspace, Auckland, NZ, 2006;The Humours, Dunedin Public Art Gallery,2005

Selected exhibitions (group): All our relations, 18th Biennale of Sydney, 2012; De-Building, Christchurch Art Gallery, 2011; The Walters Prize, Auckland Art Gallery, 2008; Three Colours: Gordon Bennett and Peter Robinson, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2004; Centre of Attraction, 8th Baltic Triennale of International Art, Vilnius 2002; bi-polar, 49th Venice Biennale, 2001.

‘Peter Robinson, at Auckland Museum, reminds us that Conceptual art can jolt viewers into revisiting the perceived and the accepted.’

Marcus Boroughs, Head of Public Programmes, Auckland War Memorial Museum Tamaki Paenga Hira

If You Were To Work Here: the Mood in the Museum

2013

Auckland War Memorial Museum

240 felt-covered aluminium rods
2500 x 32 mm (each), overall dimensions variable
courtesy of the artist and Hopkinson Cundy, Auckland

Yto Barrada

Venue

Libellule bleue (Blue Dragonfly), 2009/2011

Le salon (The Living Room), 2008/2011

Born 1971, Paris, France
Lives and works in Tangier, Morocco

Yto Barrada’s art reflects her experiences of living in Tangier, and the realities and struggles of life in a city undergoing rapid development and modernisation. Her photography captures the quiet dramas that play out when the diversity of local people and wildlife give way to the mono-cultural visions of planners and developers. Barrada’s work reveals a ramshackle kind of modernity and the existential issues of a society dominated by a desire to leave.

http://www.ytobarrada.com/

Selected exhibitions (solo):

Riffs, Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, 2012; The Strait Project, Witte de With, Rotterdam, 2004; Selected exhibitions (group): I Decided Not to Save the World, Tate Modern, London, 2012; Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2012; 54th Venice Biennale, 2011; Hand Me Downs, film screening at MoMA, San Francisco, New York, 2011.

‘Barrada likens her multifaceted practice to a stack of Russian dolls, where one piece fits into another and another still.’

Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, independent writer and critic, Beirut.

Casa Barata

2001

Artspace

Artspace
c-type print
1000 x 1000 mm

Rue de la Liberté, Tanger

2000

Artspace

c-type print 1250 x 1250 mm

Tunnel – Ancien chantier d'étude de la liaison fixe Maroc-Espagne

2013

Artspace

(Tunnel – Disused Survey Site for a Morocco-Spain Tunnel), Tanger 2002
c-type print
800 x 800 mm

Briques (Bricks)

2003

Artspace

c-type print
1500 × 1500 mm

Le salon

2008

Artspace

(The Living Room)
c-type print
1500 x 1500 mm

Nuancier de roses

2008

Artspace

(Pink Color Chart)
c-type print
1250 x 1250 mm

Libellule bleue

2009

Artspace

(Blue Dragonfly)
c-type print
1250 x 1250 mm

Sidi Hssein, Beni Said, Rif

2009

Artspace

c-type print
1500 × 1500 mm

Restaurant, Villa Harris, fig. 2

2010

Artspace

c-type print
1250 x 1250 mm
courtesy of the artist and Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Hamburg

Makeshift

Venue

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

Anri Sala

Venue

Tlatelolco Clash, 2011 (still)

3-2-1, 2011

(born 1974) Albania.
Lives and works in Berlin.

Working primarily in film and video, Anri Sala creates works that bring together documentary, history, language and cultural memory. Early films referenced his personal experience and reflected on Albania’s social and political changes, while recent works have explored the tension between repetition and improvisation, often involving or offering the possibility of live performance.

http://www.mariangoodman.com/artists/anri-sala/

Sala’s films and installations disrupt and reconfigure the viewer’s relationship to the image and the space, echoing his approach to making work, which the artist describes as being ‘shaped, inspired and constrained by rupture, and transitory or intermediate stations’.

Selected exhibitions (solo):

Museum De Pont, Tilburg, The Netherlands, 2013; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France, 2012; Serpentine Gallery, London, UK, 2011; About Change Studio, Berlin, Germany, 2010; CAC Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati OH, 2009; Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, USA, 2008; Extra City, Antwerp, Belgium, 2007. Selected exhibitions (group): 2012 Documenta, Kassel, Germany; 9th Gwangju Biennale, China, 2012; Architektonika, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany, 2012; Tribute to Anri Sala, Locarno Film Festival, Italy, 2011; 29th São Paolo Biennale, Brazil, 2010; Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2010; Gender Check, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna, Austria, 2009; The Implications of Image, Museo Universitario de Ciencias y Arte, Mexico City, Mexico, 2008; Moskau Biennale, Moscow, Russia, 2007.

‘Music, emotive and often abstract, is a powerful form of non-verbal communication, and even a catalyst for change.’

Andrew Clifford, Curator, Centre for Art Research, The University of Auckland

Long Sorrow

2005

Gus Fisher Gallery

HD video transferred from super 16mm film, stereo sound
12:57min
courtesy of Johnen Galerie Berlin; Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle, Munich; Marian Goodman Gallery, New York; Hauser & Wirth, Zurich / London; Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris

Tlatelolco Clash

2011

Gus Fisher Gallery

HD video projection, five-channel surround sound
11:49min
courtesy of kurimanzutto, Mexico City; Marian Goodman Gallery, New York; Hauser & Wirth, Zurich / London; Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris

3-2-1

2011

Gus Fisher Gallery

live performance featuring artist André Vida responding to the film Long Sorrow
courtesy of the artist

Claire Fontaine

Venues

Foreigners Everywhere (Chinese and French), 2013

Foreigners Everywhere (Chinese), 2008

Foreigners Everywhere (Tibetan), 2010

(formed 2004)
Lives and works in Paris, France

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/

Selected exhibitions (solo):

1493, Espace 1414, San Juan, 2013; Redemptions, CCA Wattis, San Fransisco, 2013; Carelessness causes fire, Audian Gallery, Vancouver, 2012; Breakfast starts at midnight, Index, The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm, 2012; M-A-C-C-H-I-N-A-Z-I-O-N-I, Museion, Bolzano, 2012; P.IG.S., MUSAC, León, 2011; Economies, Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, 2010; After Marx April, After Mao June, Aspen Art Museum, 2009. Selected exhibitions (group): When Attitudes Became Form Become Attitudes, CCA Wattis, San Fransisco, 2013; The Deep of the Modern, Manifesta 9, Genk, Limburg 2012 Unrest: Revolt Against Reason, apexart, New York, 2012; 9th Shanghai Biennale, 2012; Re-writing Worlds (Art and Agency), 4th Moscow Biennale, 2011; 12th Istanbul Biennial, 2011.