Front Page of the Art World: What’s Hot & What’s Not — 11 Feb 2022
What’s on the front page news of the art world? Read on to discover what’s hot and what’s not this week — from the hyperlocal to the global.
1. New Zealand government announces Arts and Culture Covid Recovery programme
Last week, Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Carmel Sepuloni announced that the Government is increasing financial support for the cultural sector. The funding boost of more than $120 million will soften the blow dealt to the arts and culture industry after its events calendar was crippled by Omicron.
Arts and Culture Event Support Scheme are now open under the new settings — meaning events scheduled through to January 2023 can register with the Scheme.
The Schemce will be open for applications to the self-employed scheme ($5,000 grant) within a couple of weeks.
The initial reaction to the $121 million Omicron support package has been very positive.
Speaking in The Big Idea, Equity NZ President Jennifer Ward-Lealand said, “I think the Government has been responsive. They’ve said you can’t just give (financial support) to the big companies, it’s the smaller ones that will be in strife without this.”
Meanwhile, in Stuff.co.nz’s coverage, The Others Way organiser Matthew Davis — who sadly had to pull the plug on the popular Auckland music festival only two weekends ago — said the provision to ensure payment to artists and crew was a big help: “Just knowing that people are hearing the issues that have been raised will hopefully give people some confidence.”
Read the stories from the New Zealand Herald, Radio New Zealand, and Stuff.
Applications are not yet live but will be published here: https://mch-cp.enquire.cloud/rounds
2. Art world gallivanting with Minister of Arts and Culture Carmel Sepuloni
Over the last year I have had the pleasure of visiting several of New Zealand’s iconic arts locations. Some highlights below!
Connells Bay visit (2021)
Artist of this piece Fatu Feu’u was born in Western Samoa. He arrived in New Zealand as a 20-year-old in 1966. In a country only recently recognizing the place and contribution of the Pacific peoples, he holds the honorary title of ‘father’ of Pacific arts in New Zealand. His art is about the spirit and soul of his people and is characterised by the patterns of the Pacific — the flowers, the sea, the lines of traditional carving. His major works include the mural Tautai Matagofie in Aotea Centre, Auckland and the Pathfinder Mural in New York.
The above installation is by artist Gregor Kregar, who was born in Slovenia in 1972 and received his BFA from the Academy of Fine Arts, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and an MFA from Elam, University of Auckland. He exhibits in New Zealand, Australia, USA and Europe. Gregor has won a number of awards including the Wallace Art Award in 2000.
Gibbs Farm visit (2022)
Anish Kapoor is one of the most influential sculptors of his generation. Born in Bombay in 1954, he moved to Britain in 1972 and studied at the Hornsey College of Art and Chelsea School of Art Design; and he has lived and worked in London since the early 1970’s. Over the past twenty years his work has been seen in most of the leading galleries and museums, including Kunsthalle Basel; the Tate Gallery and Hayward Gallery, London; Reina Sofia, Madrid; Haus der Kunst, Munich; the Whitechapel Art Gallery and The Royal Academy, London, and at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
Composed of a vast PVC membrane stretched between the two giant steel ellipses, Kapoor’s work is architectural, and yet it also has a fleshy quality which the artist describes as being “rather like a flayed skin”. The fleshy dark red membrane that this work shares with two earlier temporary works commissioned for the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art and the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall (refers to Joan of Arc). Kapoor has commented, “I want to make body into sky”. At the farm he achieves this. Here, the artist had to devise a form that was both freestanding and capable of surviving a constant arm-wrestle with the sky and the mercurial weather conditions.
3. New Zealand Art Foundation introduces New GM — Kaiwhakahaere Matua
This month we farewell and celebrate the wonderful Hannah Wilson, who has been managing our artists and awards programme over the last two years with remarkable care and aplomb.
To further the work and journey of the Foundation, we are delighted to introduce the Foundation’s first GM — Kaiwhakahaere Matua, based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Please meet Jessica Palalagi.
As well as nurturing our artist relationships, Jessica will lead the organisation and the team into the next three years. Born in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Jessica traces her ancestry to Niue/Nukututaha in Te Moananui a Kiwa and Aberdeen, Scotland. She has an MA in Art History from Auckland University where she focused on contemporary Maori and Pasifika art.
4. Reminders — see before they end — Mary Quant and Hilma af Klint
If you’re anything like me, all the pings are making you nervous. Omicron has played out in a series of strange stages in Australia. Here’s what to expect when the wave hits, from the Guardian.
Be careful, stay safe, wear a mask, wash your hands. Hopefully we get rapid antigen testing soon — in the meantime, look out for each other.
And — run around while you can! Support your local galleries. Two exhibitions not to miss if you are in New Zealand:
Mary Quant: Fashion Revolutionary. At the Auckland Art Gallery until Sunday 13 March.
Receiving unprecedented access to Dame Mary Quant’s Archive, as well as drawing on the V&A’s extensive fashion holdings, which include the largest public collection of Quant garments in the world, the show will bring together over 120 garments as well as accessories, cosmetics, sketches and photographs.
Mary Quant is a V&A exhibition touring the world.
Hilma af Klint: The Secret Paintings. At Wellington City Gallery until Sunday 27 March.
5. New Zealand auction house becomes the first to auction NFTs
The digital and physical art worlds are combining with the auction of two non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for black and white photos of the Kiwi artist Charles Goldie.
6. A Cube Made From $11.7 Million Worth of Solid Gold Is Sitting in Central Park — and Has Its Own Security Detail
7. Julie Saul, New York Gallerist and Champion of Avant-Garde Photography, Has Died at 67
Julie Saul, a New York art dealer and curator championed avant-garde photography, has died at 67. Julie Saul Projects, the gallery she founded in 1986, confirmed the news.
8. Event: Luncheon on the Grass — Los Angeles
Luncheon on the Grass
Contemporary Responses to Édouard Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe
February 19–April 23, 2022
All-day Opening Saturday, February 19, 11 AM-7 PM
Jeffrey Deitch
925 N. Orange Drive, Los Angeles
la@deitch.com
9. Portraits and NFTs of New Zealand artist Charles Goldie fetch record prices
Two glass-plate negatives showing Charles Frederick Goldie at work, and two NFTs (non-fungible tokens) of the photos, sold for a record $131,000 at a Webb’s online auction last night. What would Goldie have thought of it all?
Read the story from the New Zealand Herald.
10. ASSEMBLY February 17–March 6, 2022 at the Park Avenue Armory
Assembly is a new, site-specific commission by interdisciplinary artist Rashaad Newsome that features the artist’s Artificial Intelligence-powered creation, Being, as both the centrepiece of an exhibition spanning the many facets of Newsome’s practice and the teacher of daily interactive workshops. In tandem, Newsome will premiere a new performance featuring live poetry, music, vocalists, and dancers from across the globe — presenting contemporary movements that synthesise vogue with the traditional dance from the performers’ territories.
Get more info and buy tickets.
11. Neon art installation begins tour of US states where abortion rights are threatened
The month-long tour of Alicia Eggert’s neon text work ‘OURs’ was organised by Planned Parenthood to pressure lawmakers and raise awareness of efforts to restrict abortion rights.
Read the story from The Art Newspaper.
12. Opinion: Do We Really Need a Mona Lisa Immersive Experience?
The only surprise perhaps is that this hasn’t come sooner given the extent to which the Louvre Museum expansively brands itself and its collection around the figure.
Read the story from Hyperallergic.
13. Anicka Yi’s Turbine Hall review — invasion of the floating pod creatures
Tate Modern, London. Attracted by human heat, Yi’s flying organisms home in on visitors and release smells — perhaps we should be glad they don’t quite fulfil their promise.
Read the review from The Guardian.
14. ‘You Have to Experience It in the Radical Present’: How Anicka Yi’s Ultra-Sensorial Tate Commission Resists the Age of Instagram Art
“In the aftermath of Kara Walker’s monumental fountain, Carsten Holler’s playground of slides, and Olafur Eliasson’s unforgettable indoor weather project, I had certain expectations for Tate Modern’s latest Turbine Hall commission, which opened yesterday. But the U.S. artist Anicka Yi, who has been tapped for the annual project, has a more subtle flavor than her noisier predecessors.”
The artist’s Turbine Hall commission involves a lot of smells.
15. Pissarro — Impressionism’s overlooked outsider
The Ashmolean Museum pays tribute to the unshowy artist’s pivotal role in the revolution of 19th-century French painting.
Read the story from the Financial Times.
16. Interview: Art Spiegelman on Maus and free speech: ‘Who’s the snowflake now?’
Since his early days in the underground comix scene, Spiegelman has reveled in ‘saying the unsayable’ and subverting convention.
Read the story from The Guardian.
17. Environmental artist Mandy Barker’s hauntingly beautiful undersea creatures are actually plastic pollution
“If you take photographs, make the photographs useful,” the photographer and environmentalist Ansel Adams once said.
In a similar way to how Adams’ iconic photographs promoted conservation, the work photographer Mandy Barker has been creating over the past decade surpasses pure aesthetic appreciation.
18. Meet the driving forces behind the watershed Wairau Māori Art Gallery
When Friedensreich Hundertwasser made Aotearoa his home in the 1970s, buying property in the Bay of Islands, he was one of Austria’s most famous avant-garde artists, and an architect considered “the Gaudi of Vienna”.
Visitors to the Austrian capital will have seen Hundertwasser House, his most famous architectural work, with its organic, irregular structure and undulating lines that evoke the natural landscape. Here many of us may have seen a mini version: the Hundertwasser Public Toilets on the main street of Kawakawa, covered in the artist’s signature multi-coloured tile collages.
19. Venice Biennale Names 213 Artists for ‘Transhistorical’ 2022 Edition
The Venice Biennale, the world’s biggest art exhibition, has named the 213 artists from 58 countries that will participate in its 2022 edition, which is due to run from April 23 to November 27 in Italy. Of those 213 artists, 180 of them have never before shown at the Venice Biennale.
20. Venice Biennale 2022: Exhibition highlights
From Anselm Keifer and Anish Kapoor to oceanography and neuroscience: our round-up of the most exciting museum and other temporary exhibitions in Venice during the Biennale.
Read the story from The Art Newspaper.
21. First glimpse at New Zealander Yuki Kihara’s exhibition at Venice Biennale
Small island ecologies, climate change, queer rights and decolonisation are explored by interdisciplinary artist Yuki Kihara for Aotearoa’s pavilion at the upcoming 59th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia.
22. Julian Assange and Crypto-Artist Pak Are Working on a Top Secret NFT Collaboration
The two-part sale will include a single-edition NFT and a “dynamic,” open-edition NFT meant to draw in a larger pool of collectors.
23. Charles Ray Is Pushing Sculpture to Its Limit
With four surveys, the challenging Los Angeles artist has redefined his art form in a flat-screen world.
Read the story from the New York Times.
24. David Byrne, the Artist, Is Totally Connected
There’s a new gallery show and book of his whimsical line drawings — and coming this summer, an immersive art-and-science experience.
Read the story from the New York Times.
25. Protesting Lockdown Measures, Dutch Museums Open as Gyms, Salons
A number of arts organisations across the Netherlands today opened their doors in entirely new and unexpected capacities today in order to protest what they see as unfair lockdown rules.
26. Whitney Biennial Reveals Artist List For 2022 Edition
The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, has announced the artists who will be participating in the 2022 Whitney Biennial. Titled “Quiet as It’s Kept,” after a colloquialism inspired by novelist Toni Morrison, jazz drummer Max Roach, and artist David Hammons, all of whom have invoked it in their works, the event will feature the work of a diverse array of sixty-three artists and collectives in various stages of their careers.
27. Picasso Family Says Reports of Major NFT Sale Are ‘Completely Wrong’
Earlier this week, Pablo Picasso’s granddaughter Marina and great-grandson Florian announced they were going to release a series of 1,010 NFTs of a ceramic work by Picasso himself. After AP’s initial report went up, the Picasso family and Sotheby’s told the press agency that that sale was not actually happening.
28. Earthquake in the art world: Art Basel succeeds Fiac in Paris
Thunderbolt in the art world: to strengthen its “global influence”, Paris decided on Wednesday to bet on the international giant of contemporary art fairs Art Basel to succeed the Fiac, which had been exhibiting for almost a year. half a century in the French capital.
Read the story from The Media World.
29. Help Tonga! Contemporary art organisation TBA21 calls for support following volcanic eruption
Danish artist group Superflex made a 2018 film on the island destroyed by the explosion.
Read the story from The Art Newspaper.
30. What plague art tells us about today
How have artists portrayed epidemics over the centuries — and what can the artworks tell us about then and now? Emily Kasriel explores the art of plague from the Black Death to current times.
31. Yves Saint Laurent Takes Paris
For the first time, one designer’s work is being showcased — simultaneously — at five major French museums.
Read the story from the New York Times.
32. Who Are the Most Underrated Artists, Alive or Dead? 12 Leading Art-World Figures Share Their Picks
The art world moves fast, with new trends, movements, and names popping up every day. The pace of change — not to mention structural biases — can leave many artists who are worthy of the spotlight in the shadows instead.
33. Francis Bacon’s ‘Screaming Pope’ Embodied Postwar Anguish — Here Are 3 Surprising Facts About the Influential Painting
The facts of Francis Bacon’s life are the ones that tend to envelop interpretations of his work: he was an alcoholic, atheist, gambler, and homosexual in an intolerant age.
34. Have archaeologists discovered Captain Cook’s ship Endeavour? Experts in the US and Australia fight it out
The director of Sydney’s Australian National Maritime Museum announced that he is “convinced” it is the long-lost vessel, while the director of Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project says the findings are not conclusive.
Read the story from The Art Newspaper.
35. Introducing Percussionist Extraordinaire: Fabian Ziegler
During the last four years Fabian and I have collaborated on many amazing projects together, including a new 21st-century version of View From Olympus, the amazingly successful Atalanta, the soon-to-be-premiered solo work RealBadNow , and the (ink-still-wet) new double percussion concerto The All-Seeing Sky, due to be premiered (with Luca Staffelbach) in New Zealand and Switzerland in May and June this year.
Watch Fabian performing Atalanta with Akvile Silekaite.
36. U.S. President Biden Has Reversed a Trump-Era Rule Requiring Pro-American Art in Federal Buildings
President Joe Biden has reversed a Trump-era order requiring that any visual art added to government buildings must portray American historical figures or ideals — and not be abstract.
37. MUST SEE: “Dürer’s Journeys: Travels of Renaissance Artist” at the National Gallery, London
See the Dürer exhibition art historian Christopher P. Heuer calls “once-in-a-lifetime.”
Through February 27.
Read Christopher P. Heuer’s reflections on Albrecht Dürer’s revolutionary post-studio practice from Artforum.
38. The Artists Behind the Ribbon-Filled Set of Loewe’s Men’s Show
Joe McShea and Edgar Mosa first caught the attention of Jonathan Anderson with their flag installations on Fire Island. Then they flew to Paris to make something new.
Read the story from the New York Times.
39. Cybercriminals Hacked One of Milan’s Hottest Galleries — And Duped a German Collector Into Sending $33,000 to a Fake Account
More than a dozen collectors and advisors were contacted by someone pretending to be the directors of T293 gallery.
40. Tickets now available for Storm King’s Winter Weekends
Explore works from world-renowned artists right here in the Hudson Valley during Storm King’s Winter Weekends. Advance tickets are required for all visitors. Members visit for free!
Tickets available 8 January to 27 March 27.
Storm King will be closed March 28 — April 5, to prepare for our regular season opening.
41. 40 Under 10 is here! Live Now through February 16
Artnet’s 40 Under 10 sale returns with desirable contemporary prints, each under $10,000. Don’t miss this chance to collect works by some of the most celebrated artists at accessible prices. Discover prints and multiples by John Baldessari, Romare Bearden, Judy Chicago, George Condo, Alice Neel, Robert Longo, and many more. Place your bids now through February 16.
42. Christie’s sale: OCEANIA NOW : Contemporary Art from the Pacific
Christie’s proudly presents OCEANIA NOW: Contemporary Art from Pacific, curated by Christie’s African and Oceanic Art and Post-War & Contemporary Art departments in Paris. OCEANIA NOW represents Christie’s first dedicated online auction of contemporary artists from the Pacific, an exciting and unique opportunity to engage with some of the most important emerging and established artists in the region today.
