Venue
Bishan Commune,2013

Bishan Commune,2013

Outdoor film screening, Bishan Harvestival, 2011

Outdoor film screening, Bishan Harvestival, 2011

Ou Ning: Bishan Commune: How to Start Your Own Utopia

Ou Ning: Bishan Commune: How to Start Your Own Utopia

Born 1969, Zhangjian, Guangdong, China
Lives and works in Beijing, China

Ou Ning is a graphic designer, editor, curator, filmmaker, writer and lecturer and founder of U-thèque, an independent film and video organisation. He is the founder of the Bishan Commune which brings together artists and intellectuals to get involved in the rural reconstruction movement in China. In 2011 the Commune held its first Harvest Festival in the rural settlement of Bishan. This incorporates music, dance, a small documentary festival and academic panels on rural reconstruction with local and international intellectual speakers.

http://www.alternativearchive.com/ouning/

Selected exhibitions and events:

Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo, 2011; Videotage, Hong Kong, 2011; Tirana Biennial, 2009; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, 2008; Smithsonian Institution, Washington, 2008; Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 2008; Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, 2007; Yokohama International Media Art Festival, 2009; 22nd Milan, Asian, African and Latin American Film Festival, 2012.

‘... Ou Ning and his ‘communards’ are looking to create an alternative social entity...’

Hou Hanru, Curator, 5th Auckland Triennial

Bishan Project

2013
Auckland Art Gallery

sketchbooks, drawings, magazines, archival material, photographs, video, mixed media objects
dimensions variable
courtesy of the artist


Venues
Foreigners Everywhere (Chinese and French), 2013

Foreigners Everywhere (Chinese and French), 2013

Foreigners Everywhere (Chinese), 2008

Foreigners Everywhere (Chinese), 2008

Foreigners Everywhere (Tibetan), 2010

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.

‘Not only are there foreigners everywhere, but we are foreigners everywhere.’

Linda Tyler, Director, Gus Fisher Gallery

Foreigners Everywhere (Chinese)

2008
Auckland Art Gallery

neon, framework, transformer, cables
215 x 1300 x 50 mm

Foreigners Everywhere (French)

2011
Auckland Art Gallery

neon, framework, transformer, cables
110 x 1720 x 50 mm

Foreigners Everywhere (Korean)

2013
Auckland Art Gallery

neon, framework, transformer, cables
148 x 1535 x 50 mm

Foreigners Everywhere (Hindi)

2013
Auckland Art Gallery

neon, framework, transformer, cables
185 x 2120 x 50 mm

Foreigners Everywhere (Samoan)

2013
Auckland Art Gallery

neon, framework, transformer, cables
110 x 1240 x 50 mm

Foreigners Everywhere (Māori)

2013
Auckland Art Gallery

neon, framework, transformer, cables
130 x 2292 x 50 mm
courtesy of the artist

Foreigners Everywhere (Māori)

2013
Gus Fisher Gallery

neon, framework, transformer, cables
130 x 2292 x 50 mm
courtesy of the artist


Venue
Paranoid Structures, 2013 (still)

Paranoid Structures, 2013 (still)

Paranoid Structures, 2013 (still)

Paranoid Structures, 2013 (still)

Born 1972, Auckland, New Zealand
Lives and works in Auckland, New Zealand

Auckland-based artist Tahi Moore works across a range of media including video, sculpture, painting and performance. Moore’s installations typically unfold and collapse around a central text offered to the viewer through subtitles in his video works. Moore’s narratives combine elements from a range of curiously linked sources (with myriad references from philosophy, literature, film, and popular culture more generally) in quietly absurd sequences. These stories typically evince the artist's long-standing fascination with narrative structure, in particular stories of failure, fakes, and moments where meaning is misunderstood, misconstrued or mistranslated.

Selected exhibitions (solo):

Abstract sequels, returns, Hopkinson Cundy, Auckland, 2012; Nonsuch Park, Hopkinson Cundy, Auckland, 2011; Failed Purchases, High Street Project, Christchurch, 2010; War against the self, Gambia Castle, Auckland, 2009; Various Failures, Gambia Castle, Auckland, 2008; German Sands, Our Faces, Gambia Castle, Auckland, 2007; Selected exhibitions (group): Metaphoria, St Paul St Gallery, Auckland 2012; Caraway Downs, Artspace, Auckland, 2011; No Soul For Sale: A Festival of Independents, Tate Modern, London, 2010; Pickups, Magic Mountain, Home, Okay, A pretty intense long drawn out game (with Fiona Connor), Y3K Gallery, Melbourne, 2009.

’... Moore... provides viewers with a selection of visual and sonic clues to decipher the turn of events.’

Caterina Riva

various, astral travels, politics, human, unavoidability of becoming someone else, progress

2013
Gus Fisher Gallery

various dimensions and materials

Conny Plank, Studios, Personal

2013
Gus Fisher Gallery

HD Video, colour, non-concurrent

Sound

6:00min

The only true problem is that nothing needs to be done, Dior runway shows

2013
Gus Fisher Gallery

HD video, colour

5:00min


Venue
Parallax, 2013 (detail)

Parallax, 2013 (detail)

Parallax, 2013 (still)

Parallax, 2013 (still)

Born 1969, Lahore, Pakistan
Lives and works in New York City, United States of America

Pakistani-born American artist, Shahzia Sikander is best known for her experimentation with the formal constructs of Indo-Persian miniature painting in a variety of formats and mediums, including video, animation, mural and collaboration with other artists. Over the years, she has pioneered an interpretive and critically charged approach to the genre of miniature painting. Sikander’s interest in paradox, societies in flux, and formal and visual disruption as a means to cultivate new associations also underpins her work.

Selected exhibitions (solo):

Authority as Approximation,Para/Site, Hong Kong, 2009; Shahzia Sikander Selects, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York, 2009; Intimate Ambivalence, IKON Gallery,Birmingham, 2008; Shahzia Sikander, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2007; Shahzia Sikander, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 2007.

‘Sikander’s work brings together the elegant sensibility and attitude of the miniature tradition with contemporary materials and scale...’

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

Parallax

2013
ST Paul St

three-channel HD video animation, surround sound
music by Du Yun
15:30min
courtesy of the artist and Pilar Corrias Gallery


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


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
Just in time for too late, (2013)

Just in time for too late, (2013)

Just in time for too late, (2013)

Just in time for too late, (2013)

Born 1966, Madeira, Portugal
Lives and works in San Francisco, United States of America

Rigo 23 is an artist interested in the different forms of community-based practice. In the 1990s he painted a number of large-scale Pop Art-inspired murals which highlight world politics and the plight of political prisoners including the "Black Panther Party" and the "Angola Three". Some of Rigo 23’s most memorable murals appear on the sides of buildings, including the large black and white mural One Tree, 1995. In this mural Rigo 23 painted the words ‘one tree’ in a giant traffic arrow which points to a lone tree in a crowded industrial setting – a reminder to the people who pass it of what is lost in urbanisation.

http://www.artistsrespond.org/artists/rigo23/

Selected exhibitions (solo):

Autonomous InterGalactic Space Program, REDCAT Gallery, Los Angeles, 2012; Tate Wikikuwa Museum: North America 2024, Warehouse Gallery, Syracuse University, 2010; The Deeper They Bury Me, the Louder My Voice Becomes, New Museum, New York City, 2009; Cracks in the Highway, MAC – Museu de Arte Conemporânea, Niterói, 2007. Selected exhibitions (group): Autonomous Regions, Times Museum, Guangzhou, 2013; Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kerala, 2012; Fifty Years of Bay Area Art – the SECA Awards, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2011; The Jerusalem Show IV, East Jerusalem/Ramallah, Palestine, 2010; 10th Lyon Biennale, 2009.

‘A social activist and commentator in his own right, Rigo 23 has an aesthetic that is unpretentious and direct.’

Nigel Borell, Kaiwhakahaere, Toi o Manukau, Auckland Council

Untitled

2013
Fresh Gallery Otara

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


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


Venues
test pattern [live set], 2008, photograph by Liz Hingley

test pattern [live set], 2008, photograph by Liz Hingley

A [for 6 silos]

A [for 6 silos]

Born 1966, Gifu, Japan
Lives and works in Paris, France

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.

Selected exhibitions:

Beam In Thine Own Eye, Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, 2013, test pattern [no5], Carriageworks, Sydney, 2013; test pattern [ 100m version],Ruhr Trienniale, Duisburg, 2013; Ryoji Ikeda, DHC-ART, Montréal, 2012; The Transfinite, Park Avenue Armory, New York, 2011; datamatics, Museo de Arte, Bogota, Colombia. His performances datamatics [v.2], test pattern [live set] and superposition have been presented all over the world including Pompidou Centre, Paris, Tate Modern, London and Palazzo Grassi, Venice.

‘[Ikeda’s] projects ... are sensational, beautiful and challenging.’

Hou Hanru, Curator, 5th Auckland Triennial

A [for 6 silos]

2013
SIlo 6

site-specific six-channel sound installation
continuous loop
courtesy of the artist

test pattern [live set]

2013
Galatos

audiovisual concert
concept, composition: Ryoji Ikeda
computer graphics, programming: Tomonaga Tokuyama


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


Studio Mumbai (Bijoy Jain)

Copper House II, Chondi, Maharashtra, India, 2010

Copper House II, Chondi, Maharashtra, India, 2010

Palmyra House, Nangaon, Maharashtra, India, 2007

Palmyra House, Nangaon, Maharashtra, India, 2007

Palmyra House, Nangaon, Maharashtra, India, 2007

Palmyra House, Nangaon, Maharashtra, India, 2007

Born 1965, Mumbai, India
Lives and works in Mumbai, India

 

Bijoy Jain is an architect and founder of Studio Mumbai, a contemporary and award-winning architectural practice drawing on the traditional skills and expertise of India’s craftspeople. Creating a studio where skilled stonemasons, wood workers and other traditional trades do not simply execute his projects but are regarded as advisors and collaborators, Jain has enabled a rediscovery of traditional knowledge and the sustainable use of local resources.

Drawing upon the Indian landscape and regarding it as a resource, Studio Mumbai have created buildings as diverse as private residences, public spaces, research centres and rural retreats formed by local climatic conditions, materials and technologies.

‘An architectural practice almost unique in the world, Studio Mumbai redefines the construction process...’

Andrew Barrie