STUDIOS AVAILABLE TO RECENT GRADUATES

At Corban Estate, Henderson

Corban Estate Arts Centre has created a cluster of studios suitable for recent art school graduates. 

Warehouse environment, concrete floor, some skylights for natural light
Approximately 12 sq. metres per studio
Only $25 per week (incl. GST), including services (electricity, access to kitchen, phone etc.)
Ample parking

AVAILABLE NOW

For further information email:  info@ceac.org.nz or phone (09)838 4455.
Find out about Corban Estate Arts Centre:  www.ceac.org.nz

Torika’s new exhibition SPIRIT OF ENTERPRISE opens at Bus Projects,  6:00pm Tuesday 1st September 2009.

Remittances from Fijian workers overseas are the nation’s largest income – exceeding that of tourism and sugar. Fijian bodies have become a valuable export commodity in the increasingly privatised economy of war. Torika’s new photographic and installation work asks where black and white bodies fit within this new economy of war…who is visible and who is invisible? Whose bodies are commodities and who embodies the spirit of enterprise?

Bus Projects
1 September – 18 September
Wednesday to Saturday 12pm – 6pm
117 Lt Lonsdale St
Melbourne

More information: http://busprojects.com.au/2009/08/28/the-dawn-of-r_a_m-sacred-predictions-spirit-of-enterprise/#more-349

A group exhibition about cultural struggle, power and pride
Featuring: Bobby Macdonald, Samiu Napa’a, Dean Purcell, Sean Purcell and Siliga David Setoga

Vivid Hikoi (2009) by Bobby Macdonald   OPENING: 6-8pm, Thursday 3 September
EXHIBITION DATES: 4 -26 September
Fresh Gallery Otara was invited to participate in the annual ‘New Artists Show’ at Auckland’s Artspace alongside two other galleries that promote new art and artists. The opportunity prompted a simultaneously running exhibition at Fresh Gallery Otara that explores ideas surrounding the transplanting of new art being made in south Auckland into a central Auckland gallery environment. The resulting exhibition brings together five practitioners with a connection to south Auckland; their works range from documentation of protest and cultural interface to tributes of political change-makers, cultural spaces and symbolism.   The Artspace project entitled small axe⁰⁹ is a video work that combines submissions and participation of a collective of artists from the Fresh Gallery Otara community exploring the theme of hair straightening as an enquiry into cultural transformation.                    

NEW ARTISTS SHOW
small axe⁰⁹ video project featuring Tanu Gago, Leilani Kake, Visesio Siasau + Serene Tay and Angela Tiatia. Produced by Janet Lilo. 
Self portrait (2009) by Ema Tavola

ARTSPACE, Level 1, 300 Karangahape Road, Auckland
OPENING: 5 – 7pm, Friday 4 September
EXHIBITION DATES: 5 September  – 10 October

Images care of Linda T. Tanoa’i

Wild Creations is the Department of Conservation’s Artists in Residence Programme, run in partnership with Creative New Zealand.

Click here for more details

Call for applications to Creative New Zealand Visual Arts Residency, New York.

The closing date for applications is Friday 4 September 2009. Applications must be received in the Wellington Office, in hard copy, by 5:00pm to be eligible.

Click here for more details

FRONTIA

FRONTIA is an exhibition of new work by Lily Aitui Laita and Faith McManus. The title of the exhibition makes reference to ‘frontier culture’ in the artist’s respective practices.

For Laita, an art teacher at Western Springs College, the exhibition is the chance to show new paintings that build on territory explored over a long career.

… “The paintings are a continuation of the Nafanua (the revered Samoan warrior goddess) theme, though much more assertive in these works…

the Lupe (pigeons), now holds guns”…

For McManus, a lecturer at Northland Polytechnic, it was the myth of a cowboy movie being filmed in the Far North around 1926 that proved the inspiration for her new body of prints. The ‘Riders of the Red Manuka’, family stories of the cowboys and the artist’s own research underpin this new suite of works.

Faith supported by the Northtec Research Fund

The play on language, slippage, abstraction and expressionism is significant for both these artists.

 “The Tia in the title is a reference to both our backgrounds”, says Laita. The Tia references the raised platforms used in pigeon snaring in Samoa and elsewhere in the Pacific. Tia in Maori, is to drive a stake in the land. Claiming a lawless space. It is in working in the va i ta, in the space between, of the known and unknown – the frontier land of creativity, that borders are crossed, and compelling magic and new visual storytelling emerge.

Giles Peterson, Curator / Lecturer New Zealand and Pacific Art. In conversation with the artists, August 2009.

Solo exhibition at McCarthy Gallery, Parnell, Auckland

Opening Function: Saturday 15th August, 5 -7pm
For more info, contact 09 379 4448 / info@mccarthygallery.co.nz

“Ideas for an Ideal City”

Solicitation for Container Art Work Proposals
Application Deadline: 16.09.2009

The theme of the 2009 Container Arts Festival is “Ideas for an Ideal City.” Together with external surface finishes or internal interactive installations, containers can allow outstanding domestic and foreign contemporary artists to exercise their artistic talents, and give visitors an imaginable blueprint of the ideal city through the internal or external design of a container. The artists can paint their containers or install devices in order to create micro innovative architectural spaces or entertainment or living models.
 
Because containers are both mysterious and open, it is expected that this exhibition will enable visitors to appreciate the artists’ subtlety, humor, and deeply meaningful ideas, and help them overcome their impressions of the containers’ coldness and threatening bulk, giving them more room in which to exercise their imaginations. We also hope that the container arts festival will reveal the boundless maritime charm of Kaohsiung this great port city of the island nation of Taiwan.

For details please check the web-site at http://www.kmfa.gov.tw 
Application through email is NOT acceptable. For inquiries about the application details, please email to nita@kmfa.gov.tw or nitalo@ms27.hinet.net.  
 
Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts

Kouma, meaning breastplate in Maori, is a powerful contemporary reworking by the New Zealand artist Chris Charteris of a traditional form.  Trained as a carver, Charteris sculpts and makes jewellery, producing this particular work for the exhibition Pasifika Styles, held recently at the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.  The exhibition sought to showcase contemporary New Zealand art with connections to Polynesia.  Chateris’s own cultural heritage lies in Fiji and Kiribati, north of New Zealand, where breastplates of a circular form with serrated edge were produced into the 19th century.  Here they were an important symbol of chiefly status, their generous proportions deriving from their earlier use as a chest armour.  Charteris further enhances the prestige of this form by rendering it  in pounamu (nephrite), a material still highly prized by the Maori of Aotearoa-New Zealand for personal ornaments, but not previously used as a material for breastplates.  Indeed, breastplates of this type have not been produced in Aotearoa New Zealand for hundreds of years, those survivng in the archaeological record bearing witness to the country’s ancient connections with the islands to the north and east.  Charteris highlights the contemporary relevance of these inter-island connections and the persistence of Pacific art traditions.  Acquired with funding from BMF, the piece will join the Museum’s small collection of 19th century breastplates.

Natasha McKinny, Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas

British Museum Magazine