Auckland Art Fair: 1000 works on show at The Cloud

Auckland Art Fair
The Cloud
August 8 - 11

The biggest event on the visual arts calendar opens on the waterfront next month at The Cloud. 

The Auckland Art Fair is an opportunity to see a year's worth of art in a day and a chance to meet artists, art commentators, gallery dealers and collectors.

The fair, which features nearly 40 galleries and work by 200 artists, provides access to blue-chip contemporary art as well as featuring some of the latest emerging artists. While many of the galleries are local, there are several from throughout the country and some from Australia.

This year, Auckland Art Fair will be running several art projects sited in The Cloud and outside.

At the city end of the wharf, the Digibox will feature multi-media work on screens inside a 40ft container and, near the fair’s entrance, Alex Monteith, one of the finalists in the Walters Prize three years ago, will be showing a dual channel video work based on the Rena disaster which will be projected onto the outside of two back-lit shipping containers.

Inside The Cloud, the programme includes new and reinterpreted works by leading artists including Bill Culbert and Scott Eady - two Kiwis who have projects at the VeniceBiennale - along with Niki Hastings-McFall, Rohan Wealleans, Seung Yul Oh, Israel Birch and Alex Monteith.

More than 30 years
Bill Culbert’s sculpture, photography and installations have been shown internationally for more than 30 years, with work in several major institutions.

He explores the transformative potential of light and builds on an ongoing fascination with everyday objects including plastic bottles, wine glasses, domestic furniture and, most prominently, light bulbs and fluorescent tubes.

A plasma screen mounted at the far end of the exhibitions will present a selection of short film and video works by New Zealand and Australian artists.

This year there is a focus on new media and the fair's special guest is Sandra Phillips, curator of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Her keynote speech on August 9 at 6.30pm is intended as an insight into her current interests, which include the way photography is associated with voyeurism and surveillance.

There is an extensive public programme of talks and seminars each day with a changing panel of artists, curators, collectors and cultural commentators discussing collecting new media and new directions in the visual arts scene locally and internationally.

One of the panel discussions is entitled What Photography Sees? It will feature a panel of photographer and commentators including Harvey Benge, Sandra Phillips, Yvonne Todd, Marie Shannon and Ron Brownson of the Auckland Art Gallery, who will also be taking a guided tour of the show.

Another session is devoted to Collecting & Curating New Media, with panelists Dick Quan (Sydney collector), Lars Jerlach, (AUT), Melissa Loughnan (Utopian Slumps) and Sue Gardiner of the Chartwell Trust.

The fair’s opening event, The Vernissage on Wednesday, August 7, is a big night out for the art world, involving 1000  artists, galleries, curators and collectors.

www.artfair.co.nz