Ocula Report Havana Biennial 2019: Constructing the Possible 17 Apr 2019 : Federica Bueti for Ocula I first visited Havana in November 2016, a few days after Fidel Castro died, and just under a year before Hurricane Irma hit Cuba in September 2017. Since then, much has changed, including the hand-painted signs that punctuate the journey from the airport to the city centre, which today do not celebrate the revolution so much as the 'Unidad y...
Ocula Conversation Andrew Stahl and Guo Xiaohui The exhibition Beyond Boundaries at Somerset House in London (12 March–2 April 2019) marked the historic contributions of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing (CAFA) and the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, on the occasion of their 100th and 150th anniversaries, respectively. Spread across several rooms of Somerset House's...
Ocula Report The National 2019: New Australian Art 13 Apr 2019 : Elyse Goldfinch for Ocula The National 2019: New Australian Art features work by 70 contemporary Australia-based artists split across three venues: the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), Carriageworks, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) (29 March–21 July 2019), as curated by Isobel Parker Philip, curator of photographs at AGNSW; Daniel Mudie Cunningham,...
Michael Lett opened in 2003. The gallery's focus has been on engaged, distinctive practices of both emerging and established artists making new work based (for the most part) within the Australasian region. The gallery represents a core group of artists and practitioners, however the program is also opened to allow opportunities for other artists (including those from Europe and America) on a project basis. In May 2014 Michael Lett moved to a new location. The gallery has two floors of exhibition space and is located in an elegant building, formerly a private bank, built in 1928 in Auckland’s central city.
Gallery hours are Tuesday - Friday, 11am - 6pm and Saturday, 11am - 3pm.
Ocula Photolog Art Basel in Hong Kong 2019 31 March 2019 'Art Basel reinforces its ongoing commitment to showcasing exceptional art from Asia and the Asia Pacific, with over half of the participating galleries having exhibition spaces in the region. The main sector of the show features 196 of the world's leading galleries presenting the highest quality of painting, sculpture, drawings, installation,...
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 Sriwhana Spong Artist Sriwhana Spong's first solo museum exhibition in New Zealand at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, a hook but no fish (12 May–22 July 2018), explored a unique language—the Lingua Ignota (Latin for 'unknown language')—used by a medieval female German mystic, abbess, composer, and writer Hildegard von Bingen. After its first showing in...
Ocula Report Auckland Art Exhibitions: The Lowdown 22 May 2018 : Anna Dickie for Ocula The time is ripe to galvanise New Zealand's public to more fully support its visual arts. With New Zealand-born artists like Simon Denny, Michael Stevenson and Francis Upritchard continuing to gain international acclaim, and a Turner Prize nominee in Luke Willis Thompson, the international art world is beginning to take notice of this small...
Related Press The Unmissables: March The Pantograph Punch : 21 March 2019 Auckland Arts Festival has dawned on the city, offering a delicious spread of ways to spend your time this month. However, if you have no idea where to start and prefer a slightly smaller menu of arts offerings then you've come to the right place. This month our review team of art critics Lucinda Bennett, Lana Lopesi and Francis McWhannell has...
Related Press Secret Languages, Strangers' Houses, Snakes: On Sriwhana Spong Lucinda Bennett : 25 June 2018 What could a medieval female mystic have to offer a contemporary artist?Sriwhana Spong has seen a snake, befriended a rat, cast a spell for a critically endangered bird. She has engaged with all manner of living creatures in her work and yet her latest exhibition is titled for a lack of animal: a hook but no fish.For me, this is a foreboding...
Related Press Peter Stichbury’s ‘Outer Body’ Portraits EyeContact : 23 June 2018 Peter Stichbury's last portrait exhibition at Michael Lett's was of wonderfully delicate graphite drawings, but in this presentation he is back to his characteristically glowing, clean-faced, intensely psychological, painted heads. With a graphic flatness that links them to comic strip art, but with extraordinarily fine detail (such as precision...
Related Press Spong’s Polyphony - Sriwhana Spong: a hook but no fish, Govett Brewster Art Gallery
12 May–22 July 2018 Circuit : 20 June 2018 A warning, perhaps, for reviewers. On the second floor of the Govett Brewster large sheets of paper are lit by vivid red lights. In the gloom, we can make out semi-deconstructed poems and brief statements: coherent, unclear, clear – she / shallowness-depth-she / Less-less-than lack-she. The artwork is Bad Review (2018), and in it Sriwhana Spong has...
Related Video & Audio Secret languages - Sriwhana Spong Radio New Zealand : 6 May 2018 New Zealand/Balinese artist Sriwhana Spong's new exhibition in New Plymouthexplores a unique language used by a medieval female German mystic and abbess, Hildegard von Bingen. She's added some new elements to the show a hook but no fish, during her time as the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery's 2018 artist in residence since it was first shown in London...
Related Video & Audio Sriwhana Spong : ‘a hook but no fish' London Live : 10 January 2018 A new exhibition inspired by a secret 12th-century language created by a German mystic has opened in Battersea. Through her paintings, the artist Sriwhana Spong explores the relationship between language and sounds. Sriwhana Spong : a hook but no fish is on at the Pump House Gallery until April.
Related Video & Audio Making of the Anzac Centenary Print Portfolio – Sriwhana Spong Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa : 8 September 2016 The Australian War Memorial invited five New Zealand and five Australian artists to each create an artistic response to World War I (1914–19). These videos record the responses, thoughts, working processes, and printmaking techniques of the ten artists as they develop their prints in dialogue with Australian master printmaker John Loane.
Related Video & Audio Here is the video for Martin Creed's 'Princess Taxi Girl Part 1' ARTNews : 17 July 2016 Today, the video for Martin Creed’s Princess Taxi Girl Part 1 was released, off of the artist and musician’s newest album, Thoughts Lined Up, which came out last week on Telephone Records. Creed’s balloon-heavy exhibition The Back Door is currently on view at New York’s Park Avenue Armory through August 7.
