Sculpture

Writing

The Mind’s Eye

By Susanne Prinz

11.05.2022

On the occasion of Gill Gatfield’s first solo exhibition in Berlin, Susanne Prinz, Director of Kunstverein am Rosa-Luxembourg-Platz in Berlin, Germany, reflects on the practice of the Aotearoa artist—from her use of ancient, salvaged materials to her work creating an audience-activated virtual reality experience, and the complex resonances of memory, reality and consciousness in her work. 

Writing

Betty Collings and 'To Begin, Again: A Prehistory of the Wex, 1968–89'

By Dan Munn

07.04.2022

Aotearoa artist and curator Betty Collings acted as Director of the Ohio State University’s Gallery of Fine Art from 1974 to 1980, amassing during that time a significant collection of then-contemporary artworks. With many of these works showcased at the recent exhibition To Begin, Again: A Prehistory of the Wex, 1968-89, Dan Munn looks back to Collings’ influence as a Director and her own, long-running artistic career. 

Writing

“Don’t Learn Anything More!”

By Connie Brown

26.10.2021

Writer Connie Brown pays a visit to Virginia Leonard’s studio, encountering the artist’s “fugly” ceramics and talking with her about recent and upcoming international exhibitions, her process into ceramic-making and the resistance her work offers to traditional notions of wellness, pain and the body. 

Writing

Some Kind of Travelogue

By Esther Lu

18.06.2021

Aotearoa-based artist Sorawit Songsataya’s practice explores the many tangents that connect and redefine our understandings of subjectivity and ecology. Songsataya was invited to participate in the group show, The Turn of the Fifth Age, at Selasar Sunaryo Art Space in Bandung, Indonesia, earlier this year, where they exhibited their work Jupiter. Here, co-curator Esther Lu responds to that work.

Writing

Ann Shelton’s Strange Flowers Set the Stage

By Katie White

14.04.2021

Inspired by ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement, Ann Shelton's photographs subtly recall both ancient and contemporary female archetypes and the subversive histories of natural medicine - a sharp reminder of our forgotten affinities with nature in the current moment of climate crisis and the ongoing politicisation of female bodies.

Writing

Stirring Motion

By Stefanie Bräuer

20.02.2020

Art Historian Stefanie Bräuer takes us through Museum Tinguely’s recent comprehensive exhibition of New Zealand artist Len Lye, exploring Lye’s international life, his move from film to kinetic sculptures and the relationship between the museum's namesake, fellow kinetic sculptor Jean Tinguely.

Writing

Always in Transit

By Aaron Lister

18.09.2019

A conversation with Yona Lee about her new site-specific installation, In Transit (Highway) (2019), presented at the 15th Lyon Biennale, her training as a cellist, and the development of this ongoing project. With an introduction from Daria de Beauvais, Senior Curator at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and Co-Curator of this year's Biennale.

Writing

An interview with Dane Mitchell

By Contemporary HUM

24.06.2019

HUM's editorial team sat down with artist Dane Mitchell to discuss his work for the New Zealand Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale, Post hoc. The work, both ambitious in scale and subject, has sparked discussions on global climate change and meditations on what has truly disappeared from the world. 

Writing

“Nothing consoles you like despair”

By Boaz Levin

22.03.2019

The work of Berlin-based artist Richard Frater addresses the devastating impact of climate change on our environment, and the despair and human complicity felt in this global phenomenon. In this essay, artist, writer, and curator Boaz Levin unpacks Frater's recent exhibitions in Germany and New Zealand.

Writing

Push and Pull

By Jessica Douglas

25.10.2018

In the wake of recent discussions of London-based Francis Upritchard's work, Jessica Douglas views the exhibition Wetwang Slack, on now at the Barbican Centre in London, through the aesthetic quality and craftsmanship of Upritchard's work, alongside the wider consequences of her practice.

Calendar

Francis Upritchard and Ronnie van Hout, The Sculptural Body

31 July —
21 August 2021

Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, Australia

Calendar

Yuki Kihara, John Pule and Ngahina Hohaia at PAN: The Pan-Austro-Nesian Arts Festival

17 July —
31 October 2021

Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan

Calendar

Anna Korver at the Tuwaiq International Sculpture Symposium

10 November —
02 December 2021

Riyadh Art, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Calendar

Virginia Leonard, Odd & Even

05 September —
28 November 2021

Maison Louis Carré, Bazoches-sur-Guyonne, France

Calendar

Fiona Connor at Henry Art Gallery

23 November 2019 —
26 April 2020

Henry Art Gallery, Washington, U.S.A.

Calendar

Simon Denny: Security Through Obscurity

14 January —
22 February 2020

Altman Siegel Gallery, San Francisco, U.S.A.

Calendar

Simon Denny: Mine

05 September 2020 —
17 January 2021

K21, Dusseldorf, Germany

Calendar

Yona Lee at 15th Biennale de Lyon

18 September 2019 —
05 January 2020

Fagor Factory, Lyon, France

Writing

Treatise as Exhibition

By Amira Gad

10.08.2020

In Part Two of this two-part conversation, curator Amira Gad and artist Simon Denny discuss Mine, an exhibition at MONA in Australia for which Denny created a 3D model of a proposed worker’s cage for Amazon; Proof of Work, Denny's 2018 curatorial project at Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin; as well as his participation in Vaudeville, a theatrical journalism experience organised by the Financial Times.

Writing

Treatise as Exhibition

By Amira Gad

20.07.2020

In the first piece of this two-part conversation, Aotearoa artist Simon Denny speaks about his recent projects, including his 2020 solo show at Altman Siegel in San Francisco which included former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's scarves and 'Tech-Bro' Patagonia vests, and about corresponding with Peter Thiel after he came to see Denny's show at Michael Lett Gallery in Auckland in 2017.

Writing

Permanent Migration

By Signe Rose

06.02.2020

In a letter to her husband sculptor Martyn Reynolds, artist Signe Rose reflects on their life in Vienna as parents and artists, having moved to Austria from New Zealand in 2010. She also shares about feeling like a constant tourist, and about the ways in which her art is viewed by both European and New Zealand audiences. 

Writing

Moana, Unimagined

By Millie Riddell

08.01.2020

The 16th Istanbul Biennial, titled The Seventh Continent, had a thematic focus on the large garbage patch currently occupying 3.4 million square kilometres of ocean, near Hawaii and Japan. Despite focusing on this area, Pacific artists were not present at the Biennial. Writer Millie Riddell explores the omission of Pacific artists, and what it means to not address or include the people most affected by environmental pollution and climate change.

Writing

The Factory and its Memories

By Kari Schmidt

16.10.2019

A look at artist Matthew Galloway's residency at Cripta 747 in Turin, Italy, and the resulting exhibition The Factory and its Memories, which concentrates on the now defunct Nebiolo factory building, whose history is engrained in Italian graphic design and typography, reflecting Galloway’s own background as a graphic designer.

Writing

On Emptiness

By Rosa Gubay

02.10.2019

Oliver Perkins and Patrick Lundberg’s recent show On Emptiness at FOLD Gallery in London presented a conversation between the two artists' work, focusing on their object-centric painting practice. Writer Rosa Gubay analyses their use of negative space and the varying forms it can take.

Writing

Something Different

By Laura Preston

05.09.2019

A look at a series of exhibitions by women artists held at Secession in Vienna, including by New Zealand artist Fiona Connor, who has been based in Los Angeles since 2011. Connor's show, #8, Closed for Installation, Sequence of Events, presented cast bronze pieces alongside architectural interruptions, and was shown in conjunction with German artist Nora Schultz and Palestinian-English artist Rosalind Nashashibi. 

Writing

Sriwhana Spong’s Ida-Ida

By Leah Reynolds

09.08.2019

London-based artist Sriwhana Spong has been exhibiting widely throughout the UK in 2019. In this essay, writer Leah Reynolds reviews Spong’s recent exhibition Ida-Ida at Spike Island in Bristol, considering the key, interrelating ideas of her work, and Spong’s use of a variety of mediums.

Writing

Behind the scenes of Post hoc in Venice

By Amber Baldock, Chris Sharp, Hope Wilson, Jude Chambers, Zara Stanhope

22.07.2019

What does it take to represent New Zealand at the Venice Biennale? How are five-metre tall, 500kg sculptures installed and secured? How do you vie for an audience’s attention on an island full of exhibitions and artworks? HUM interviews the team behind Post hoc, at the New Zealand Pavilion for the 2019 Venice Biennale.

Writing

Design solves problems and art creates problems

By Eleanor Woodhouse

23.04.2019

A closer look at Biljana Popovic's 12-month Visual Arts Residency at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, and how her previous work as a commercial designer informs her current visual arts practice by integrating elements of interior design and architecture. 

Writing

Test Run

By Jennifer Thatcher

13.12.2018

We hear from three artists who, over the last three years, have completed, or are completing, a three-month residency at London art centre Gasworks. Sriwhana Spong in 2016, Katrina Beekhuis in 2017, and Hikalu Clarke, who is half-way through his, all share their experiences and thoughts on this important opportunity.

Writing

Dane Mitchell: An Aesthetic Contagion

By Marie de Brugerolle

06.09.2018

Dane Mitchell's exhibition OTIUM #3 at the Institut d'art contemporain - Villeurbanne in France, was an invitation to produce and exhibit works related to the dimensions of time and space, as part of an ongoing prospective series of exhibitions linked to 'métaphysiques cosmomorphes', a term taken from Pierre Montebello's philosophical research. French art historian and curator Marie de Brugerolle explores Mitchell's work within this context and his wider practice.