Peter Robinson The 5th Auckland Triennial

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

Watch video

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

Ou Ning

Venue

Bishan Commune,2013

Outdoor film screening, Bishan Harvestival, 2011

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

Watch video

Bishan Project

2013

Auckland Art Gallery

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

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.

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 Auckland

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

Bruno Serralongue

Venue

Barricade # 2 (Mitroviça dans la partie serbe de la ville), Kosovo, 7 avril 2012

Au nord de Mitroviça sur la route menant à la Serbie, Kosovo, 8 avril 2012

Born 1968, Châtellerault, France
Lives and works in Paris, France

Bruno Serralongue’s images show the lesser events on the margins of major events and provide alternatives to the linear narrative of news reports of photo essays. Employing a photojournalistic technique Bruno Serralongue has captured important long-lasting geo-political conflicts in countries including Kosova, Sudan and Tibet as well as concerts, summits, forums, and demonstrations. His recent bodies of work reveal the effects of globalisation on those in developing countries.

http://www.brunoserralongue.com/

Selected exhibitions (solo):

South Sudan Series, Francesca Pia gallery, Zurich, 2013; Histoire des avant-dernières luttes, Air de Paris Gallery, Paris, 2012; Feu de camp, Jeu de Paume, Paris, 2010, Bruno Serralongue, Wiels, Brussels, 2009; Backdraft, Centre of Photography, Geneva, 2007. Selected exhibitions (group): Newtopia, The State of Human Right, Mechelen, Belgium, 2012; Oceans and Campﬁres: Allan Sekula and Bruno Serralongue, San Francisco Art Institute, 2011; Project Europa – Imagining the (Im)possible, Harn Museum of Art, Florida, 2010; Uneven Geographies, Nottingham Contemporary, 2010; Street & Studio: An Urban History of Photographic Portraiture, Tate Modern, London, 2008; 6th Gwangju Biennale, 2006.

’[Serralongue] affirms that the only objectivity we have today is an artistic objectivity.’

Pascal Beausse

Born 1974, Belo Horizonte, Brazil
Lives and works in Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Cinthia Marcelle’s video and photography deals with interventions in urban spaces or landscapes and frequently incorporates carefully choreographed, repetitive actions and elements of chaos. These works contain a sense of irony, where the absurd is presented with the appearance of certainty. Paradox is one of the concepts most linked to the performance method used by the artist, along with photography and video.

Marcelle’s videos are often shot from one camera angle and depict actions that appear to be happenstances but which become aesthetic occurrences. Her actions create situations that challenge our notions of conventional behaviour by introducing humorous coincidences and connections.

Selected exhibitions (solo):

Zona Temporária, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, 2013; See for been seen, Pinchuk Art Center, Kiev, 2011; This Same World Over, Foyer Gallery, Camberwell College of Arts, London, 2009; Bolsa Pampulha: Cinthia Marcelle, Museu de Arte da Pampulha, Belo Horizonte, 2004. Selected exhibitions (group): Sharjah Biennial 11, Arabic Emirates, 2013; 2nd New Museum Triennial, New York, 2012; Tate Level 2 Gallery, London, 2012; Dundee Contemporary Art, 2012; 29th São Paulo Biennial, 2010; 9th Lyon Biennale, 2007; 9th Havana Biennial, 2006.

‘Marcelle seems to be making a call to a different kind of mobility... that not only looks forward, but also sideways and back.’

Luisa Duarte, writer and curator, Belo Horizonte

Automóvel (Automobile)

2012

Artspace

video projection
7:16min
courtesy of the artist, Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo and Sprovieri Gallery, London

Angelica Mesiti

Venues

Citizens Band, 2012 (still)

Prepared Piano for Movers (Haussmann), 2012 (still)

Born 1976, Sydney, Australia
Lives and works Sydney, Australia and Paris, France

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.

Selected exhibitions (solo):

The Line of Lode & Death of Charlie Day, 24HR Art, Centre for Contemporary Art, Darwin, 2012; Rapture (silent anthem), Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2012; The Begin-Again, C3West Project, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and Hurstville Council, 2011; Rapture (silent anthem), CCP, Melbourne, 2010. Selected exhibitions (group): Sharjah Biennial 11, United Arab Emirates, 2013; NEW12, ACCA, Melbourne, 2012; Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kerala, 2012; Rencontres Internationales, Pompidou Centre, Paris, 2010; No Soul For Sale, Tate Modern, London, 2010; Les Rencontres International, Paris, Ecole Des Beaux Arts, Paris, 2008.

‘Few contemporary works evoke such beauty ...’

Jacqueline Millner, Associate Dean, Learning and Teaching, Sydney College of the Arts

Citizens Band

2012

Artspace

four-channel colour HD video installation, surround sound 21:25min, courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery

Prepared Piano for Movers (Haussmann)

2012

Auckland Art Gallery

single-channel colour HD video, stereo sound 6:00min, courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery

mounir fatmi

Venue

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

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

Janet Lilo

Venue

Right of Way, 2013 (still)

Born 1982, Ngāpuhi, Samoan, Niuean
Lives and works in Auckland, New Zealand

Janet Lilo is an interdisciplinary artist interested in the politics of space and the exploration of popular culture within a localised framework. Her work includes appropriated amateur photography and video from online platforms, music videos, vlogs (video logs) and experimental documentary. With a keen eye for online trends Lilo has recorded people’s behaviours and interactions and displayed them on monitors and objects in gallery spaces, the sides of buildings, in museums, the internet, bus stops and billboards. Recently she created internet art projects specifically for YouTube, establishing a bridge between global online communities and the local communities of Auckland.

Listen to Janet Lilo in conversation with Nina Tonga at Artspace as part of the 5th Auckland Triennial.

Selected exhibitions (solo):

Identi-tee video, Auckland War Memorial Museum, 2012; Top16, Beachcomber Contemporary Art Gallery, Rarotonga, 2010; Man in the mirror, ICC building, Higashi Sapporo, 2009; MYFACE, Fresh Gallery Otara, 2009; Top16 x 2, Fresh Gallery Otara, 2008; Selected exhibitions (group): Contact, Frankfurter Kunstverein, 2012; Home AKL, Auckland Art Gallery, 2012; Rituels, Tjibaou Cultural Center, Noumea, 2011; Niu Pasifik: Urban Art from the Pacific Rim, CN Gorman Museum, University of California, 2010; Nonsense, CAI02 Gallery, Sapporo, 2009.

‘...Lilo captures real moments of local life: street scenes, candid performances, community dialogue and urban landscapes.’

Nina Tonga, art historian and Professional Teaching Fellow, Centre for Pacific Studies, The Universi

Watch video

Right of Way

2013

Artspace

installation with photos, park benches, HD video, sound
courtesy of the artist

Allora & Calzadilla

Venue

Under Discussion, 2005 (video still)

Returning a Sound, 2004 (video still)

(formed 1995) Live and work Puerto Rico

Jennifer Allora
Born 1974, Philadelphia, United States of America
James Calzadilla
Born 1971, Havana, Cuba

Collaborating since 1995, Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla have produced an experimental and interdisciplinary body of work, combining performance, sculpture, video and sound. Their Land Mark, 2001–ongoing, project focuses on what the artists describe as the ‘transitional geography’ of Vieques, an inhabited island municipality of Puerto Rico used by the U.S Navy as a weapons-testing range from 1941 to 2003.

http://www.lissongallery.com/#/artists/allora-and-calzadilla/

Interested in questions of social justice the artists set into motion a series of structural couples – inscription and erasure, presence and absence, appearance and disappearance – which link processes of mark-making with counter-memorial claims for rights and justice vis-à-vis specific sites.

Selected exhibitions (solo):

Stop, Repair, Prepare, MoMA, New York, 2010, and Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2008; Allora & Calzadilla, National Museum of Art, Oslo, 2009; Compass & How to Appear Invisible, Temporare Kunsthalle, Berlin, 2009; Never Mind That Noise you Heard, Stedekijk Museum, Amsterdam; Allora & Calzadilla, Kunsthalle Zürich, 2007; Clamor, Serpentine Gallery, London, 2007; Wake Up, The Renaissance Society, Chicago, 2007. Selected exhibition (group): 54th Venice Biennale, 2011.

Returning a Sound

2004

Auckland Art Gallery

single-channel video projection, sound
5:42min

Under Discussion

2005

Auckland Art Gallery

single-channel video projection, sound
6:14min

Half Mast\Full Mast

2010

Auckland Art Gallery

dual-channel HD colour video projection
21:11min
courtesy of the artists and Lisson Gallery