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Bill Culbert and Ralph Hotere: P.R.O.P.
Starting Date: Thursday, 25 June 2009
Finishing Date: Sunday, 14 February 2010
This highly charged installation piece was originally made in response to changes made to the headland at Observation Point, and is an important reminder that artists throughout history have both galvanised socio-political issues and been agents for holding powerful organizations to account. P.R.O.P. is one of the first major collaborative works by Ralph Hotere and Bill Culbert, who share a profound and ongoing connection with the Port Chalmers community, and has been the catalyst for a number of other substantial projects.
Bill Culbert and Ralph Hotere
P.R.O.P. 1991 (detail)
corrugated iron and neon tube lights
Collection Dunedin Public Art Gallery
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Tom Kreisler
Starting Date: Saturday, 26 September 2009
Finishing Date: Sunday, 21 February 2010
Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina (1938-2002) Tom Kreisler spent the majority of his life in New Zealand where he became an influential painter, thinker, poet and teacher leaving an indelible presence within this country’s art community. Tom Kreisler showcases over sixty paintings in a range of media and includes a rich spectrum of drawings, altered ready-mades and personal writings, which span a thirty-year period. As a cultural outsider, Kreisler often produced work that disturbed or questioned notions around what might be considered the 'typical' and found the strange within seemingly mundane items: a tap, table or coat. He was also interested in blurring the relationship between image and word (often utilizing several languages) to create darkly humorous plays on cliché and the everyday.
Toured by the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery with the support of Creative New Zealand, Aalto Colour, umbrella design and Viewfinder.
Tom Kreisler
A Brush With Death 2001
acrylic on canvas
Courtesy Tom Kreisler Estate
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Cho Duck Hyun, Dark Water: the Antipodes Project
Starting Date: Saturday, 21 November 2009
Finishing Date: Sunday, 7 March 2010
Dark Water: the Antipodes Project is an installation that South Korean artist Cho Duck Hyun produced in Auckland earlier this year in response to the short-term art in public sculpture series Living Room 09: My heart is where my home is, curated by Pontus Kyander.
Dark Water is an ongoing project in which a container is fictitiously transported through the Earth and then excavated from the underground to reveal a series of photo-realist portraits by Professor Cho Duck Hyun. This work continues the artist’s long interest in revealing and discussing the way patterns of migration have impacted on and also been hidden in recent social and cultural history.
Cho Duck Hyun
The Antipodes Project 2009
Installation shot, courtesy Starkwhite Gallery and the artist.
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Beloved: Works from the Dunedin Public Art Gallery
Starting Date: Saturday, 12 December 2009
Finishing Date: Sunday, 30 October 2011
The Dunedin Public Art Gallery, established in 1884, was New Zealand’s first public art gallery.
To commemorate its 125th year, Beloved will showcase a selection of the historical and contemporary gems from the gallery's collection.
The exhibition and lavish accompanying publication celebrate the history of the collection, paying particular attention to some of the better known and favourite works.
Spanning a timeframe of more than 600 years, this rich body of work is both diverse in its content and in the range of media it brings together including painting, sculpture, photography, works on paper, installation and the decorative arts.
Solomon J. Solomon
Eros
Oil on canvas.
Collection Dunedin Public Art Gallery
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Taryn Simon: An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar
Starting Date: Saturday, 19 December 2009
Finishing Date: Sunday, 9 May 2010
Photographer Taryn Simon has, in this exhibition, created a collection of photographs that documents the inaccessible places that exist below the surface of American identity. It took her as long as a year to gain permission to photograph some of the high-security zones on view in this body of work, like government-regulated quarantine sites, nuclear waste storage facilities, prison death rows and C.I.A. offices.
Because her approach tends to be very direct and unsentimental, some images look like they could be museum displays, which only makes these mysterious spaces even more curious and seductive. Through her work, the strangeness of American culture shines.
Taryn Simon
Nuclear Waste Encapsulation and Storage Facility, Cherenkov Radiation, Hanford Site, U.S. Department of Energy, Southeastern Washington State.
Submerged in a pool of water at Hanford Site are 1,936 stainless-steel nuclear-waste capsules containing cesium and strontium. Combined, they contain over 120 million curies of radioactivity. It is estimated to be the most curies under one roof in the United States. The blue glow is created by the Cherenkov Effect which describes the electromagnetic radiation emitted when a charged particle, giving off energy, moves faster than light through a transparent medium. The temperatures of the capsules are as high as 330 degrees Fahrenheit. The pool of water serves as a shield against radiation; a human standing one foot from an unshielded capsule would receive a lethal dose of radiation in less than 10 seconds. Hanford is among the most contaminated sites in the United States.
© 2007 Taryn Simon / Courtesy Steidl / Gagosian.
Taryn Simon: An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar is an Institute of Modern Art exhibition.
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