Zhou Tao

Venue

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

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.

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

Linda Tyler, Director, Gus Fisher Gallery

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

Shahzia Sikander

Venue

Parallax, 2013 (detail)

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

Michael Lin

Venue

Model Home,2013

Born 1964, Tokyo, Japan  Lives and works in Shanghai, China and Brussels, Belgium and Taipei, Taiwan.

Michael Lin is best known for his large-scale colourful floral paintings which cover the facades of building, interiors, windows and furniture. Using patterns from traditional Taiwanese textiles and decorative arts Lin’s work blurs the lines between art and craft, and raises issues around the continuity of traditional and domestic art forms. These playful insertions question the role of art in public space as Lin transgresses the line between the undervalued domestic realm and the dominant public one. Lin has collaborated with architects and local trades people to create environments and structures which encourage new ways of encountering art.

Selected exhibitions (solo):

Model Home, Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, 2012; Michael Lin, Free Port No. 005, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, 2012; Hotel MARCO, Museum of Contemporary Art, Vigo, 2011; A Modest Veil, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2010; Michael Lin, OK Offenes Kulturhaus, Linz, 2007; Michael Lin, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, 2005. Selected exhibitions (group): 3rd SingaporeBiennale, 2011; Memories of the Future, Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, 2010; 4th Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale, 2009; Space For Your Future, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, 2007; Notre Histoire, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2006; 2nd Guangzhou Triennial, 2005.

‘... Lin goes out looking for ... anonymous patterns loaded with collective memories.’

Yuko Hasegawa, Chief Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo

Model Home

2013

Auckland Art Gallery

For the 5th Auckland Triennial Michael Lin and Atelier Bow Wow collaborated with Professor Andrew Barrie from the University of Auckland to create a life-size paper document of worker housing element of the Model Home project, the sound and video artists were Nanli Lou and Ren Cheng. Andrew Barrie is a specialist in the Japanese technique of paper model building known as okoshi-ezu (folding drawing), and has adapted aspects of this technique for Model Home 2013.

Andrew Barrie

Venue

Model Home,2013

Andrew Barrie, Okoshi-ezu (Yatsushiro Monument KILALI, Kumiko Inui), 2008. Photo: Patrick Loo

Born in Levin, New Zealand in 1968, Dr Andrew Barrie, is an Auckland-based designer and Professor at the School of Architecture and Planning, The University of Auckland. After completing doctoral studies at Tokyo University, he spent several years as a project architect at Toyo Ito & Associates in Tokyo, before returning to Auckland to work at Cheshire Architects. His design work has won numerous awards in New Zealand and Japan. He is the author of several books on Japanese architecture, and is a regular contributor to architecture and design journals.

Barrie's academic research and exhibition practice includes okoshi-ezu, an ancient Japanese architectural drawing technique often associated with teahouse design, which takes the form of annotated folding paper models. He has been adapting this method for use in modeling contemporary buildings, and in Model Home 2013 extends it further to create a one-to-one paper model of Atelier Bow-Wow's workers' house.

Selected exhibitions (solo): Densities, New Work Studio, Wellington, 1996; Code, Artspace, Auckland, 1999; Unfolding the New Japanese Architecture, State Library of Queensland, Brisbane & Objectspace, Auckland, 2010. Selected exhibitions (group): Architecture to a Fault, 5th International Architecture Exhibition, Venice Biennale, 1991; New Zealand Installation, Milan Triennial, 1996; SD Review, Tokyo & Osaka, 1999; Minna no ie, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, 2012; Familial Clouds, 13th International Architecture Exhibition, Venice Biennale, 2012; Kiwi Prefab: Cottage to Cutting Edge, Puke Ariki, New Plymouth, 2012.

Model Home

2013

Auckland Art Gallery

For the 5th Auckland Triennial Michael Lin and Atelier Bow Wow collaborated with Professor Andrew Barrie from the University of Auckland to create a life-size paper document of worker housing element of the Model Home project, the sound and video artists were Nanli Lou and Ren Cheng. Andrew Barrie is a specialist in the Japanese technique of paper model building known as okoshi-ezu (folding drawing), and has adapted aspects of this technique for Model Home 2013.

Emory Douglas

Venue

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

Tahi Moore

Venue

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

The Most Difficult Problem, 2013 (still)

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

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

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