TALKS PROGRAMME 2022
A series of three panel discussions, designed to stimulate public debate in the framework of the Art Fair. The Aotearoa Art Fair’s 2022 Talks Programme The Art Talks was curated by Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, and generously supported by the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery | Len Lye Centre and Creative New Zealand.
The Art Talks – The art world is an ecology of many layers, each with its distinct contexts, strategies, narratives and forms. As a contemporary art centre in this mix, the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery | Len Lye Centre aims to connect people, communities and cultures. At the Art Fair the Govett-Brewster invites you to join in daily conversations about how art and artists are navigating the current environment; three opportunities to listen to and converse with the people who make experiences of art possible.
The talks were recorded and are available to watch below.
CONTEMPORARY ART FOR OUR TIME: CREATING WORKS OF SIGNIFICANCE
Artworks of significance and scale take time and resource to create.
Join Govett-Brewster Art Gallery’s Assistant Curator Contemporary Māori Art, Taarati Taiaroa, (Te Āti Awa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Apa) with artist, Brett Graham (Ngāti Koroki Kahukura, Tainui) and curator, Megan Tamati-Quennell (Te Āti Awa, Ngāti Mūtunga, Ngāi Tahu and Kati Māmoe) to hear about the genesis and unseen process to realise several major works including the important role of benefactors and collectors can play along the way.
WORKING THE SYSTEM
Conversations around equity, sustainability and the ongoing precarity faced by artists have acquired a new urgency in the past two years, as the Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated already existing difficulties of navigating art’s ecosystem. This talk is an opportunity to hear from individuals who have experimented with models for working differently, against, within and to the side of art’s infrastructures. Having developed projects guided by their own values and committed to foregrounding artists’ voices, we ask: how have you made it work, and what have you learned along the way?
Join Zara Stanhope in conversation with Ruth Buchanan, Melanie Tangaere Baldwin and Dane Mitchell.
PRETTY GOOD FOR THE 21st CENTURY: THE COLLECTABLE LEN LYE
Inspired by the historical challenges of collecting kinetic sculpture and moving image art works, the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery’s Len Lye curator, Paul Brobbel, leads a discussion around the contemporary collectability of Len Lye. In conversation with Kelly Carmichael, director of Starkwhite Queenstown, Paul will consider the position of Lye’s “art that moves” in both institutional and private collections, the challenges of collecting “difficult” art and the place of the collector in Lye’s 21st Century vision.