[Download] "Aotearoa (Report: Letter from New Zealand)" by Michael Wilson " Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Aotearoa (Report: Letter from New Zealand)
- Author : Michael Wilson
- Release Date : January 01, 2010
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 46 KB
Description
I was fortunate enough to visit New Zealand twice in 2009--once for the opening of the third biennial Auckland Art Fair in May, a compact but, in spite of its relative youth, well-staged event, and again during the much quieter Christmas-and-early-summer season (the holidays coincide down under). Considered together, the two trips offered an intriguing glimpse at a contemporary art scene that, while geographically remote from western capitals and characterised by a certain degree of self-deprecation--usually an endearing quality, occasionally a frustrating one--presents a disproportionately broad variety of experience. The fact that audiences in the UK and the US tend not to hear very much about it might be attributable not only to the considerable investment of time and money involved in getting to the country--and in exporting its art--but also to the local creative community's partial orientation towards a different set of international art world hubs. In a 2008 report from Auckland for Frieze magazine, Sydney-based critic Nicola Harvey cites a suggestion of curator Brian Butler that New Zealand might benefit from a deeper concentration on its developing position in a 'Trans-Pacific' scene rather than looking exclusively further afield or retreating into self-congratulatory introspection. A former director at Los Angeles gallery 1301PE, Butler was at the helm of Auckland's key publicly funded gallery, Artspace, from 2005 to 2008, and his perspective now seems increasingly commonplace. There is perhaps an artistic correspondence between Los Angeles and New Zealand that has yet to be thoroughly mapped; Giovanni Intra, an Auckland-born artist who died in 2002, was a co-founder not only of the influential artist-run space Teststrip in his home city but also of the much-admired China Art Objects Galleries in LA. The city's cannier artists and dealers now travel to art fairs, biennales and residencies in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Yokohama, for example, rather than reflexively springing for pricier flights to New York, London or Berlin (or, indeed, simply staying at home). Australian fixtures such as the Asia Pacific Triennial in Brisbane and the Melbourne Art Fair also continue to attract a Kiwi contingent.