GAVIN HIPKINS

Starkwhite is pleased to announce the launch of a solo exhibition by Auckland based photographer and filmmaker Gavin Hipkins. Second Pavilion is a photographic installation that brings together a set of 40 colour photographs, The Pavilion, with his ongoing Monuments series.

Building on earlier major constructed photographic series including The Blue Light (1997) and The Colony (2002), Second Pavilion juxtaposes different photographic genres including makeshift studio models with picturesque clouds and monochromes. Second Pavilion continues Hipkins' broader project of mapping modernity by sampling modernist aesthetics and motifs - from European fascism to pictorialist photography - while reconfiguring these idioms in extended and fractured narrative structures. In Second Pavilion this exploration plays with the legacies of national displays including the modern Olympics and international expositions. While Hipkins references historical documentation of events in his projects such as Leni Riefenstahl's 1938 Olympia, a reworking of his own archival images alludes to more personal travel photography alongside cultural tourisms.

Gavin Hipkins is an Auckland-based artist. His photography and films have been exhibited extensively at national and international levels including: Armory Film, New York, 2012; Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2011; MAK, Vienna, 2011; New Zealand International Film Festival (2011); National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; The Queensland Art Gallery, 2010; The San Diego Museum of Photographic Arts, California, 2007; International Museum of Photography and Film, George Eastman House, Rochester, NY, 2006; Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 2004; CCA Wattis Institute, Oakland, 2002; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2000; Palazzo Re Rebaudengo, Guarene d' Alba, Italy, 2000.

He represented New Zealand at the 25th Sao Paulo Biennale, Brazil in 2002, and the 11th Biennale of Sydney in 1998. He has completed artist residencies at Artspace, Sydney in 1998; the Dunedin Public Art Gallery in 1999; Waikato Museum of Art and History in 2000; the International Studio and Curatorial Program, New York City in 2006; and the McCahon House, French Bay, Auckland in 2008.