New Artist Show 2009

Clara Chon
Patrick Lundberg
Sarah Rose
Sonya Lacey
Liz Allan
Joshua Petherick
Layla Rudneva-Mackay
Janet Lilo
Ema Tavola
Louise Menzies

In collaboration with,
Newcall
Fresh Gallery Otara
None

ARTSPACE’s annual new artist show is a highlight of the Auckland exhibition calendar. The new artist show acts as a showcase, and barometer, of emerging national talent. This 2009 version sees ARTSPACE evolving the selection process by actively working with three very different artist-led initiatives.

ARTSPACE had invited Newcall, a central Auckland based gallery and studio program run by a collective of recent Elam graduates, Fresh Gallery Otara, a Manukau City Council initiative for contemporary Pacific art, and Dunedin’s long-running but difficult to define performance space, None.

Working with these organisations brought to the fore existing structures established to support emerging practices. In bringing together such a diffuse range of collaborators, ARTSPACE hoped to disrupt the curatorial auteurship of previous years and render more visible the grass-roots organisations that build the contemporary art communities of tomorrow.

Given such benevolent tones it’s no surprise that all three collectives approached the invitation with more than a little insouciance. For instance, None is taking the opportunity to rejuvenate their own basement, off-loading their accumulated debris as a burden ARTSPACE itself must bear, whilst Fresh offers a deceptively benign take on hair straightening that reveals larger cultural forces at play. Meanwhile, Newcall's repositioning of the new artist paradigm to include artists who have participated in previous years as well as international participants, makes plain the expanded platform this year’s exhibition operated within.

Fresh Gallery Otara
None
Newcall
Matters 3

Matters 3 is produced as the third instalment in a diverse and diversifying publication project run by Newcall. It is first and foremost a repository of information. There has been an emphasis placed on commissioning and sourcing essays that deal with creativity and interaction in the structures and creation of value. Issues specifically targeted were democracy, citizenry and political engagement, methodologies of meaningful interaction, different practices within art, gallerists, project coordination, teaching, collecting.

Matters 3 has been conceived and created to provide a number of examples of interesting people doing interesting things, as a testament to the projects that are underway, but also as a charge that there is far more to be done. The intention is that the material can be dipped into as a pool of knowledge, read and reapplied as new and necessary tools in the hands of practitioners and audiences to forge new avenues for experimentation and advocacy. Matters 3 is edited by John Ward Knox.