Art on a bus
John Daly-Peoples | Friday February 20, 2009
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Visual Arts Events
Auckland Festival
March 5 -22
The visual arts programme for next month's Auckland festival was rolled out this week with the unveiling of The Art Bus which was commissioned by NZ Bus and designed by local artist Sara Hughes.
The bus is covered with elaborate patterns that transform its exterior into an original artwork. The bus will transport passengers around Auckland art events during the festival, and will then stay on the streets for several months afterward.
Speaking about her design, Ms Hughes says “the concept is connected to aspects of travel; road trips, highway loops, byway detours and the desire to be picked up and whisked away to another reality. Drawing upon as wide array of influences and imagery connected to the embellishment of vehicles, I am influenced by my experiences of riding ornately painted open backed trucks in the Philippines, of late night rides in decorated tuktuks in Bangkok, of overtaking glossy hot rods on American freeways. Memories of rainbow painted house trucks from my youth get melded with my admiration for the perfect pin stripe.”
International art stars will sit alongside some of New Zealand’s best contemporary artists in the Auckland Festival 2009 visual arts programme; a collection of high calibre, high impact contemporary work, exhibited across the city in galleries, found environments and art spaces.
This is the second time the festival has had a significant visual arts programme. Auckland Festival 2009 features strong solo exhibitions, dynamic group shows, and exciting crossover projects that explore the visual arts within the context of a multi-art form festival.
One of the most anticipated is sound-art installation Siren, by UK artist Ray Lee, which will be performed at MOTAT. A sell-out hit of the 2007 Edinburgh Festival, Siren is an immersive experience that sits at the intersection of art and science – a spinning, whirling spectacle of mechanical movement, electronic sound, and light.
Tipped to have wide appeal is the playful and irreverent Art Crazy Nation, an exhibition of work by The Little Artists (aka John Cake and Darren Neave) who are famous for their ironic reproductions in Lego of modern art works and personalities; including Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, and Damien Hirst – complete with Lego shark in Lego tank.
Equally absorbing is a video/sculpture installation from New Zealander Terry Urbahn, The Sacred Hart, which will be shown in St Mathew-in-the-City. Urbahn investigates ideas of ritual, memoryand community through a record of the living past of much-loved New Plymouth landmark theWhite Hart Hotel.
New Zealand work will sit alongside that from internationalartists in two major group exhibitions that investigate notions of reality and fakery (F for Fake), and cultural translation and representation (MASH UP).
The cultural currents flow in the opposite direction for Paolo Pivi and Isaac Julien, two major European artists who are presenting solo works created in New Zealand, in response to the localenvironment. Julien’s evocative photographic series, Te Tonga Tuturu / True South (Apparatus) 2008, is the result of a journey through the remote Urewera Ranges during his recent residency.
Pivi, whose star has continued to rise since she came to prominence at the 50th Venice Biennale, will be in Auckland during the festival to install, exhibit, and close an original temporary artwork in a found space, all within in 24 hours – as part of New Zealand initiative the One Day Sculpture Project.
The festival will also showcase the talents of a new generation of New Zealand artists – current students and recent graduates of Elam School of Fine Arts – with an exhibition in the corporate foyers and lobbies of Shortland Street in Elam Art Upfront.
The visual arts programme is rounded out by Ice Terrane, a new exhibition by contemporary New Zealand jeweller Kirsten Haydon, inspired by her 2005 Antarctic Arts Fellowship; Transform, a major survey of four decades of work by master abstractionist Milan Mrkusich; Presentation/Representation, a cross-section of contemporary German photography and TheIdiot, a Dostoyevsky-inspired work by neo avant-garde Russian collective Factory of Found Clothing (FNO).
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