Ocula Conversation Pierre Huyghe: The Artist as Director Pierre Huyghe is a producer of spectacular and memorable enigmas, with works that function more like mirages than as objects. Abyssal Plain (2015–ongoing), his contribution to the 2015 Istanbul Biennial, curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, was installed on the seabed of the Marmara Sea, some 20 metres below the surface of the water and close to...
Ocula Report MoMA Expansion: Once the Modern, Always the Modern 29 Nov 2019 : Mohammad Salemy for Ocula In the early decades of its existence, New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), founded in 1929, transformed from a philanthropic project modestly housed in a few rooms of the Heckscher Building on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, to an alleged operating node in the United States' cultural struggle during the cold war, and one of the...
Ocula Insight | Video Hans Hartung and Art Informel at Mazzoleni London (1 October 2019-18 January 2020) presents key works by the French-German painter while highlighting his connection with artists active in Paris during the 50s and 60s. In this video, writer and historian Alan Montgomery discusses Hartung's practice and its legacy.Born in Leipzig in 1904, Hans...
Overview and History
Bartley + Company Art, established in 2009 by its current director Alison Bartley, is a leading contemporary art gallery that presents and distributes the work of established and emerging New Zealand artists. Operating out of an intimate space in the Cuba Street art quarter at the centre of Wellington, the gallery’s ethos is to treat art as a social activity and form of communication. With an art history background and 20 years of experience in the art world, accompanied by an approach based around productive dialogue with artists, from the outset Bartley has worked with prominent New Zealand names for many year; her opening exhibition was to present work by Brett Graham and Rachael Rakena from their installation for the Venice Biennale, closely followed by an exhibition by prominent public artist Mary-Louise Browne.
Artists Represented by Bartley + Company Art
Bartley + Company Art represents artists working in everything from drawing, painting, and sculpture to photography, video, and installation art. Among this roster of artists are prominent figures in New Zealand contemporary art such as Roger Mortimer, Brett Graham, Anne Noble, Peter Trevelyan, Lonnie Hutchinson, and Ann Shelton. Emerging artists such as Marie Le Lievre, Claudia Jowitt, Elliot Collins, and Catherine Clayton-Smith also form the gallery’s roster. Bartley + Company Art has also held significant exhibitions by key associated and non-affiliated artists such as Julia Morison, whose exhibition, Omnium Gatherum (2015), marked a return to painting after a hiatus following damage to her studio in the 2011 Christchurch earthquakes.
What to look out for at Bartley + Company Art
Expanding beyond national borders Bartley + Company Art participates in the major Australian art fairs, including Sydney Contemporary and the Melbourne Art Fair, as well as Auckland Art Fair in New Zealand.
Ocula Report Melbourne Art Fair: ‘finding its political and global footing’ 9 Aug 2018 : Carol Que for Ocula The fifteenth edition of the biennial Melbourne Art Fair (MAF) (2–5 August 2018), which returned after skipping its 2016 edition, was understated in its ground-level presentation. Forty participating galleries from across Australia, with the exception of eight spaces from New Zealand (including Two Rooms, Michael Lett and Bartley + Company Art) and...
Ocula Conversation Ann Shelton Artist, New Zealand Through a wide range of photographic investigations, Wellington-based artist Ann Shelton has, over her 20-year career, explored the construction of narratives that surround social, political and historical contexts. A selection of Shelton's prolific practice has been brought together in her review exhibition, Dark Matter, at Auckland Art Gallery...
Ocula Conversation Judy Millar Artist, New Zealand New Zealand artist Judy Millar has long been concerned with art’s relationship to the phenomenal and sensorial world. Her ambitious works test both the limitations and possibilities of traditional painting and sculpture. More than simply referencing art history, Millar’s captivating paintings and ‘space works’ invite the...
Ocula Conversation Julia Morison Artist, New Zealand Two thousand and fifteen marks the 40th anniversary of New Zealand artist Julia Morison’s first exhibition. Morison studied graphic design at Wellington Polytechnic in 1970-2 and painting at the University of Canterbury in 1973-5. After showing a number of severely formalist paintings she took a break from exhibiting: from this came two...
Related Press STUDIO INVESTIGATIONS | A DAY IN THE LIFE OF PAINTER JUDY MILLAR Verve Magazine : 13 October 2018 Having just had the Guardian list her latest UK show at Fold Gallery as one of the top five in London, Judy Millar is undoubtedly one of New Zealand's most successful international painters. Her work is part of Australasia's compendium of contemporary painters and is scattered throughout museums, galleries and private collections worldwide.
Related Press Three Judy Millar Paintings EyeContact : 19 April 2018 'Gesture' and 'gestural' are vastly overused words in talking about abstract painting but remain unavoidable in talking about Judy Millar's work. As Kundera intimates above, perhaps gestures perform us, rather than the other way around, memes proliferating like living things. Perhaps art is merely a long war to determine who is in charge.
Related Press Judy Millar: The Sinew of Space Contemporary HUM : 12 February 2018 It's frustrating to her, Judy Millar tells me from the West Coast of Auckland as we discuss her exhibition in Zurich, Swallowed in Space, that people are so rarely asking 'what does painting do to us?' [1] . An affective painting, after all, is something we want to go and see, and revisit, and make part of our wider experience. I wholeheartedly...
Related Press Artist's New Year honour: 'We don’t value the arts highly enough' Stuff : 30 December 2017 Julia Morison didn't need to give much thought to whether or not to accept her latest accolade. The Christchurch artist has been made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the New Year Honours, arguably the highest recognition of a 40-year career.'Anything that promotes the arts is a really good thing,' she said.'We have so much but we...
