Category: FYI Archives

APS Editions – formerly, ‘Auckland Print Studio’ – released a new portfolio of large-scale lithographs by Susan Te Kahurangi King.

In this new series of hand-coloured lithographs, Susan King creates emergent, cell-like geometries that teem with possibility, a Cambrian explosion of kaleidoscopic, interlocking colour. King’s lyrical abstractions are networks or lattices for the mind to traverse, meditative spaces that enable dream, reflection and thought to flourish.

Susan Te Kahurangi King (b. 1951) is a self-taught artist whose interest in drawing began during her childhood in the 1950s, and over the subsequent decades has developed into a visually rich, idiosyncratic and evocative practice. Te Kahurangi King is non-verbal. The artist stopped speaking around the age of four – and from then on, her artwork has been her primary form of communication.

During her early years, much of King’s work included a strong focus on the deconstruction, recontextualisation and interpretation of pop culture iconography, ranging from Disney and Warner Bros. cartoon and comic strip characters to motifs drawn from advertising signage and illustrations. Amongst other sources, the fluid, energetic linework and rounded volumes of imported American comics provided King a wealth of motifs; Donald Duck’s blue sailor suit and hat feature in an extended series of 1960s and ‘70s works, while the sleek contours of various Disney characters’ hands, beaks and limbs gradually fold and coalesce into a novel, biomorphic visual discourse that is both culturally resonant and intensely personal.

APS Editions presented at the Aotearoa Art Fair 2022. 

Image: Susan Te Kahurangi King print. Courtesy of the artist and APS Editions. Photography by Sam Hartnett.

Jan Albers (b. 1971, Wuppertal, Germany) will present at the 2022 Aotearoa Art Fair in November with Fox Jensen & Fox Jensen McCrory. Jan Albers was born into a missionary family, grew up in Namibia and studied at the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf, home of luminaries such as Joseph Beuys, Imi Knoebel, Gerhard Richter, and Blinky Palermo. His unique pieces range from the faceted elegance of bronze wall reliefs to the nigh-on chromatic virulence of his painted wedge or chainsaw pieces in acrylic vitrines.

“Bold contrasts permeate Jan Albers’ works. Their specific dialectic of transitions and transformations finds expression in a vibrantly energetic immediateness. They are simultaneously pictures and objects, pictorial sculptures and sculptural painting, exuberant and self-contained, attractive and subversive, light and heavy, disquieting and buoyant.”

– ‘hEavydutybEauty’ by Belinda Grace Gardner.

 

Images:
Jan Albers, grEEdygrEEn, 2021.
Jan Albers in his studio. Photo by Robin Hartschen.

Jan Albers trained as a painter at the Dusseldorf Kunstakademie though from the earliest moment he realised that he was not going to be a painter in the orthodox sense. There would be no fine cedar stretchers nor carefully folded linen corners. Rather than offering pictorial space Albers objects sit out from the wall coming out to meet us. Their faceted forms caught happily between Judd and Picasso. Having dislocated the figure down into flat planes, Albers takes the Cubist paradigm and reverses it. Like metallic origami, these figures are folded crisply, visually expanding and so becoming much more than their material.

As much as Albers wished as a student to eschew convention his work touches lightly on various 20th century moments. One feels echoes of Judd and Chamberlain in their robust materiality and determined “object” status, the visceral impact of Fontana’s puncturing of the picture plane in his “chain-saw” lacerations. But there are also reverberations in form and composition that recall his namesake Anni Albers’ refined geometries or Frank Stella’s shaped canvases. Critically though Jan’s work has an extraordinary sense of contemporaneity. As cognizant as he clearly is of history, he feels determined to extend his own artistic vocabulary so that it embraces a range of connections both to architecture, even the environment complete with its blend of allure and toxicity.

Watch the video below, made as a contribution to Kunstmuseum Bonn’s ongoing series “Behind the Scenes” in 2020.

Introducing mothermother – a collaborative project space where each exhibition is made by two women artists, who then select two more women artists to make the next exhibition.

Founder, organiser and artist, Natalie Tozer describes mothermother as “…a project space for both emerging artists and established artists who may (or may not) be represented by our good friends – the dealer galleries! The aim of the project is to offer space and opportunity to artists to collaborate or initiate work within the mothermother network. The inception of this project was two-pronged. At the time I was doing my MFA where 75% of my fellow students were women. I came to read Fiona Jack’s counterfutures article on the on-going issues of representation in the market and collections, to find the stats revealed 75% male representation. 

The other reason I started this project was based on my research around collective modes of knowledge sharing and unearthing. Usually my unearthing is geologically based,  but I also wanted to start a more conceptual and didactic journey about the ground. I started looking at grass-roots organisations with flat, non-hierarchial, anti-capitalist formations and I wondered what an anarchist syndicalist network would look like in the art world! It was then I decided the space I had the privilege to share should be for woman artists. I’m definitely a fan of exploring the murky grey space of complex issues but in this case the simplicity of 100% representation seemed like the right thing to do.

My role is to organise the projects curatorial function where exhibiting artists pass the baton by inviting the next artist into the collective. It’s an ever-expanding circle of caretakers that ensure space is available for future generations of the project. We’ve been going since mid 2019 and I cant wait to share the upcoming work!”

mothermother presented the work of all 18 “mothermother” artists in their 18 sq metre booth in He Iti – the section of the 2022 Art Fair for new galleries and artist-run spaces, on the mezzanine of The Cloud.

Natalie Tozer, Companion Pieces, 2021.
Caitlin Devoy, Power, 2021.
Sandra Bushby, Unknown Sea Lilly, 2021.

Lapping at Your Door is a sculptural commission by Emma Fitts, which was shown at Objectspace in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland.  Emma is represented in Aotearoa by Melanie Roger Gallery and presented new works with the gallery in a group presentation at the Aotearoa Art Fair.

Images:
Muse with Lace in the Laundry, 2018.
Composition in Green, 2019.
Jacket Cut Out 9, 2019.

In the outdoor installation, Lapping at Your Door, a series of dyed and layered canvas panels attached to a tubular steel structure form a new architecture for Objectspace’s courtyard plinth.

Emma’s soft architecture folds together various research threads: modernist design, the body in relation to built environments and the construction of clothing, and how queer physicality can be expressed through the collapsing of architectural space.

Between 1926 — 1929 Eileen Gray designed and constructed E-1027 on the coastline of the Côte d’Azur in the south of France. The front façade of this iconic piece of modernist architecture is spanned by a canvas canopy, its textile softness creating a porous threshold where delineation between spaces is softened.  Gray’s canopies serve as an example of the architectural and design developments made by women who both practiced within and subverted historical cannons. For Fitts’, these designs embody the desires of their creators and occupants. They are a backdrop for socialising and conversation in open space — often in radical ways, and in queer company.

Referencing these histories and the architecture of her own home, Fitts’ has constructed an outdoor installation for Objectspace, incorporating her signature fabric banners, imagining how bodies of space that resist clear demarcation provide alternative ways of seeing and making.

For more info on Emma Fitts practice, and contact details for Melanie Roger Gallery, click here.

Emma Fitts, Lapping at Your Door, installed at Objectspace. Image courtesy of the artist and Objectspace.

Introducing Atong Atem whose photographic works will be presented by Naarm/Melbourne based, MARS Gallery at the 2022 Aotearoa Art Fair in November.

Atong Atem is an Ethiopian-born, Naarm/Melbourne-based artist who works predominantly with photography, although Atem works also in video and is a writer and curator. The South Sudanese artist uses portraiture as a means of recounting indigenous stories that throughout history have been lost – or rather overwritten by colonial knowledge. Atem’s work reclaims this knowledge. She uses a vibrant colour palette coupled with a critical lens to create works which are eye catching yet also deeply political and sincere. In a recent article with The Guardian, Atong Atem commented on her work saying: “‘Yes, it’s political, gendered and racial,’ Atem says. ‘But what isn’t?’” ¹

Atong Atem’s photography was shown by MARS Gallery in a solo exhibition at photo basel – Switzerland’s first and only international art fair dedicated to photography based art.

Images:
Green Fields, 2022
I Have Two of Everything 1, 2022

¹ Keeping it real: the vivid photography of Atong Atem in pictures.

Earlier this year, Atong Atem was the first recipient of the La Prairie Art Award, an acquisitive award championing the work of Australian women artists presented by the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, and La Prairie.

The new partnership between the Art Gallery and Swiss luxury skincare house La Prairie, the prestigious award supports Australian women artists through the development or expansion of a new body of work. The La Prairie Art Award aims to support and nurture the recipient’s practice and increase their international profile. Each work will be acquired by the Art Gallery for its collection.

Atem was selected as the inaugural recipient of the award by the Art Gallery of NSW and La Prairie’s global board of directors. Atem was awarded for her originality and ambitiously crafted and vibrant photographic portraits that celebrate their subjects.

Atem has exhibited her work across Australia, including MUMA Monash, Gertrude Contemporary, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art and is represented in the collections of the National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of New South Wales and State Library Victoria. Atem was also the recipient of the inaugural National Gallery of Victoria and MECCA M-Power scholarship in 2018.

Gerold Miller (b. 1961 Germany, lives and works between Berlin, Germany and Pistoia, Italy). Miller’s debut exhibition at Starkwhite presents the largest display of his Monoform series to date. A group of artworks made of horizontally hung beams that talk directly to the galleries architecture, whilst exploring the concept of an open structure. Alongside these is a group of the artists “paintings” comprising his notorious Sets, Instant Vision and Total Object series. These works are made with aluminium or stainless steel substrates, coated in either matte or glossy lacquer to present finely shaded gradients and bold monochromatic tones.

Miller is known for both his “sculptural” works which discuss architectural and spacial properties and his aluminium and steel “paintings,” which explore the rudimentary basis of both painting and sculpture as practices.

This exhibition, sees him oscillate between image, relief, sculpture, and architecture, all radically (and precisely) reduced to a composition of colour, line, shape and form. Miller’s practice is one of space and time, stagnancy and movement, subject and object, where viewer and work merge into one unified artwork.

Gerold Miller’s work was included in STARKWHITE’s presentation at the 2022 Aotearoa Art Fair.

Image credits: (Top, left-right) Gerold Miller, set 507, 2018 Laquered stainless steel 60h x 48w x 3.50d cm. set 508, 2018. Laquered stainless steel 60h x 48w x 3.50d cm. set 510, 2018. Laquered stainless steel 60h x 48w x 3.50d cm. (Above, left-right) installation image featuring Gerold Miller at Starkwhite, Auckland. Gerold Miller, I love Kreuzberg1, 2006 Digital print, framed in black. Monoform 71, 2018. Six laquered aluminium angles 15h x 300w 15d cm. Images courtesy of the artist and Starkwhite.