Ocula Report 4th Kochi-Muziris Biennale: Possibilities for a Non-Alienated Life 15 Feb 2019 : Natalie King for Ocula 'Poems are like sentences that have taken their clothes off.' Marlene Dumas' poetic and sensual refrain accompanies her figurative watercolours on view in Possibilities for a Non-Alienated Life, the fourth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB) in the southern state of Kerala, India (12 December 2018–29 March 2019).Dumas' new series...
Ocula Conversation Ellen Altfest The paintings of Ellen Altfest are ethereal in their detail. Fields of minutiae come together as pulsating images; small brushstrokes of oil paint accumulate over a series of months to single out seemingly innocuous subjects, such as a hand resting atop patterned fabric (The Hand, 2011) or a deep green cactus reaching upwards from beneath a bed of...
Ocula Report Colomboscope 2019: Cross Currents and Dissonance 8 Feb 2019 : Nada Raza for Ocula On the rooftop of the former Rio Hotel complex in Colombo, it was hard to ignore the high-rise buildings, still under construction, blocking all but a sliver of what used to be an open view over Slave Island, once an island on Beira Lake that housed slaves in the 19th century, and now a downtown suburb. The hotel was set alight during the...
Jonathan Smart has been showcasing contemporary New Zealand art since 1987. The gallery is dedicated to the exhibition of contemporary visual art, ranging from painting and photography to sculpture and moving image work.
Exhibitions change on a monthly basis.
Miranda ParkesPapatūānuku piece / weekend press, 2017 Acrylic and indian ink on papier-mâché
Emily Hartley-SkudderLemon-Lime Sweetheart, 2018 Mixed media, including: ceramic tiles on aluminium composite panel, found sink, oil on linen
Melissa MacleodDead Wood, 2018 flood socks (pine chips from drowned trees – Brighton estuary,
mixed chips, EnviroCore filtering felt), plastic ties, ground staples
Ocula Conversation Fiona Pardington Artist, New Zealand Working closely with City Gallery Wellington curator Aaron Lister, the New Zealand photographer Fiona Pardington has developed a retrospective that speaks to the extraordinary breadth of her practice. Fiona Pardington: A Beautiful Hesitation includes very early family portraits from the 1980s alongside her well-known photographs of objects and...
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...
Ocula Conversation Maud Page Deputy Director, Collections & Exhibitions at Queensland Art Gallery & Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane Maud Page is Deputy Director, Collection and Exhibitions at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art. Her position oversees all aspects of the Gallery’s curatorial activities, and is directly responsible for the management and development of the Gallery’s collections and exhibitions. She has been instrumental in the...
Ocula Conversation Lisa Reihana Artist, New Zealand The Auckland artist Lisa Reihana has recently opened her most ambitious project to date: in Pursuit of Venus (infected), a filmic animation that has been six years in the making. Projected across a panorama of mutliple screens at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Reihana’s lushly rendered film ‘reanimates’ the picturesque...
Related Press Artists in residence: Where artists find their happy place The New Zealand Herald : 23 May 2018 Auckland Art Fair puts the spotlight on this city as a place to see the best in contemporary art from the Pacific Rim. Dionne Christian asks some of the artists what 'place' means to them — in particular the space they work in.
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...
Related Press Art reviews: Martin Boyce | Nathan Coley | Sahej Rahal The Scotsman : 3 October 2017 Imagining places in which to explore ideas is a fruitful field for many contemporary artists, from a single room to an entire world. The fact is, architecture is a common language; whether or not we know the specialist terms, we know our brutalism from our Belle Époque, and the ideas associated with each. That means there's a lot for an artist to...
Related Press 11 national pavilions and exhibition to see at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017 Art Radar Journal : 23 May 2017 Rock, Paper, Scissors: Positions in Play — United Arab EmiratesCurated by Hammad Nasar, commissioned by the Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation and supported by the UAE Ministry of Culture and Knowledge Development, the exhibition features existing, new commissions and re-fabrications of 'lost' works by five UAE-based artists. The show...
