SIMON DENNY

Michael Lett
Booth S17
Art 43 Basel | Art Statements
Messeplatz
CH-4005 Basel

VIP Opening Monday 11 June, 4 - 7 pm, by invitation only
Public days 14-17 June, 11am - 7pm

Michael Lett is pleased to present a new solo project by Simon Denny created for Art Statements. Channel Document continues Denny’s investigations into the changing role of media and television in today’s world of rapid technological development, and focuses on the inadvertent relationship between an attempt at state-funded television in New Zealand and the redesign of the nation’s passport.

Spurred by a need to update the country’s passport to conform with new biometric technology, a redesign of the document was initiated by the 2008 Labour Government of New Zealand. Considering the existing passport “fairly indistinguishable from many others around the world”, the new passport is intended to “capture New Zealanders’ adventurous spirit” with a “distinctive New Zealand design”. The result is a black-faced, intricately detailed document in which a series of images and symbols tells an equivocal story of the nation’s bicultural history, native wildlife, and unique attitude to travel as a result of relative geographic isolation. A second series of graphics shows the chronological development of navigational tools used in travel to and from foreign lands. Highlighting ideas of ‘discovery’ and ‘arrival’, the document is intended to inform and excite foreign and local travellers alike.

Around the time of the initial proposal for a redesigned passport, the New Zealand Government launched a new state-funded television channel called TVNZ 7, with the intention of providing non-commercial, digitally broadcast programmes with a focus on current affairs. The channel has only been funded through to June 2012, and despite recent public petitions to save it, the end seems inevitable.

For Art Statements Denny has commissioned former TVNZ 7 journalist Simon Pound to create a short documentary video which, through a series of interviews, investigates the 2009 redesign and subsequent roll out of the new New Zealand passport. As prescribed by Denny, the video will follow the grammar and visual style of reportage typical of TVNZ 7, and will be screened on the newest Samsung ‘Smart’ TV screen. This video marks the end of a time-line which will wrap around the walls of the booth, comprising a series of graphic acrylic panels depicting key moments in the channel’s lifespan.

Denny will also produce a number of vitrine-based works containing archival details and contextualising technological paraphernalia, including further Samsung ‘Smart’ TV monitors. Channel Document combines and contrasts examples of state-funded journalism, government-issued ‘identity’, and technological development using specific local examples to highlight issues of global relevance. A poetic illustration of the agency of (un)popular media and an elegiac meditation on the nature of national representation, the project considers ideas of both state-funding and non-commercially oriented knowledge presentation – key themes in today's rapidly privatizing global world. Channel Document also looks critically at what is perhaps becoming a general tendency to equate ‘development’ with technological advance.

Simon Denny (born 1982 in Auckland, New Zealand) lives and works in Berlin, Germany. He graduated from the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste (Städelschule) in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 2009. Recent solo exhibitions include Full Participation, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2012); Cruise Line, NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen, Germany (2011); Corporate Video Decisions, Michael Lett, Auckland, and Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York (2011); Negative Headroom: The Broadcast Signal Intrusion Incident, Halle für Kunst, Lüneburg, Germany, and Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis (2010). Recent group exhibitions include Remote Control, ICA, London, (2012); That's the way we do it, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2011); Based in Berlin, KW Center for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2011).

We are delighted to announce that Simon Denny has recently been awarded the Ars Viva-Preis für Bildende Kunst from Der Kulturkreis der deutschen Wirtschaft im BDI e. V.