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

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


Venue
Just in time for too late, (2013)

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


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


Venue
Tlatelolco Clash, 2011 (still)

Tlatelolco Clash, 2011 (still)

(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


Venue
The Most Difficult Problem, 2013 (still)

The Most Difficult Problem, 2013 (still)

Text from J Bronte Gatenby, 'The New Zealand Glow-Worm' (Tuatara, vol 8, no. 2, 1960)

Text from J Bronte Gatenby, 'The New Zealand Glow-Worm' (Tuatara, vol 8, no. 2, 1960)

Born 1970, Auckland, New Zealand
Lives and works in Wellington, New Zealand

Maddie Leach’s practice is project-based, conceptually driven and frequently involves research into the specifics of the site in which she is working. With her interest in the development of new thinking in relation to social, place-based and process-driven artwork,Leach’s early work held a central position in New Zealand’s relational aesthetics practice. While no longer overtly participatory, her work continues to explore ideas of spectatorship, expectation and strategies of cooperation in the production of art works. Leach’s recent projects often operate beyond the walls of the gallery and focus on constructing complex arrangements between space, time, place and audience.

Campaign to re-open tunnels under Auckland's Albert Park - 3 News

Selected exhibitions (group):

Between Memory and Trace, Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts, Auckland, 2012; Peripheral Relations: Marcel Duchamp and New Zealand Art, Adam Art Gallery, Wellington, 2012; The Obstinate Object, City Gallery Wellington, 2012; Iteration: Again, CAST, Tasmania, 2011; Collecting Contemporary, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, 2011; Reason and Rhyme, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, 2011; Close Encounters, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, 2010; One Day Sculpture, Wellington, 2008; Trans Versa, The South Project, Santiago, 200

Leach’s practice weaves narrative threads to connect propositions, actions, and materials. Her sculptural diffusions of matter and imagination challenge the idea of the ‘sculptural object’.

Jem Noble, artist, Bristol and Vancouver

The Most Difficult Problem

2013
Auckland Art Gallery

single-channel colour HD video projection, sound, text on newsprint
piano: Paul Lincke’s Glüwürmchenidyll performed and uploaded to YouTube by Markus Andreas Mayer
print design by Warren Olds
courtesy of artist


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 1943, Grand Rapids, United States of America
Lives and works in San Francisco, United States of America

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/

Selected exhibitions (solo):

Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas, Urbis, Manchester, 2008–9; Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas, MOCA Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles, 2007–8. Selected exhibitions (group): 16th Biennale of Sydney, 2008; The Black Panther Rank and File, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, 2006.

‘The values of equality, racial economic justice and fairness are just as relevant today as they ever were.’

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