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...
Two Rooms is a contemporary art exhibition venue located in a converted warehouse in Central Auckland, New Zealand. Opened in August 2006, Two Rooms presents a program of residencies and projects by leading International and New Zealand contemporary artists. The building houses two exhibition spaces, the Project Room and the Long Room.
An important focus of the gallery is a residency program, supporting ambitious new projects and facilitating the exchange of ideas between New Zealand and international artists. A converted warehouse two doors down from the gallery is available as a studio for invited international artists to stay for a period of up to 3 months. Visiting artists to Two Rooms have been Bridget Smith (UK), Runa Islam (UK), Kevin Appel (LA) Isaac Julien (UK) Basil Beattie (UK) Joachim Bandau (GER) David Thomas (AUS) and Cornelia Parker (UK) Sarah Lucas (UK) and Darren Almond arriving late 2011.
The director of Two Rooms is Jenny Todd, previously of Todd Gallery London. The exhibition program will be developed through the director and supplemented by invited international and local curators.
Elizabeth ThomsonFreedom and Structure–Light and waves II, 2017 glass spheres, optically clear epoxy resin, cast vinyl film and lacquer on contoured wood panel
Elizabeth ThomsonTatio XX, 2018 glass spheres, optically clear epoxy resin, cast vinyl film and lacquer on contoured wood panel
Shaun Waugh60-40 Landscape, foliage, blue sky, 2018 archival pigment print, custom painted frame
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 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...
Ocula Report Julian Dashper: Calling the future 17 February 2016 Julian Dashper was born on a leap day in 1960. Monday 29 February 2016 would have been his fifty-sixth birthday. Or his fourteenth, depending on how you work the calendar calculations. Simultaneously older and younger, Dashper's leap year birth anticipated the basic elements of his art practice: absence and presence, addition and subtraction, a...
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...
Related Press Basil Beattie Drawings at Two Rooms, Auckland EyeContact : 16 August 2018 Senior English painter and ex-Goldsmiths teacher, Basil Beattie, has had a couple of shows already at Two Rooms. This new display in the narrow upstairs gallery presents twenty works on paper, using oil paint and paint stick, rendering symbolic climbing devices like ladders (he uses flattened loops as rungs) and staircases (diagonally stacked up...
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 Surreal and Mimetic Morison EyeContact : 6 September 2017 In the downstairs Two Rooms space, two very different sorts of work are presented by Julia Morison, made fifteen years apart. We see From the Book of Shadows, the larger, older, relief, sponge sculptures positioned on the two parallel longest walls, and Things, the more recent steel and mixed media works aligned on a central dividing axis that...
Related Video & Audio Ingleby Gallery Callum Innes Ingleby Gallery : 23 March 2018 Callum Innes is one of the leading abstract painters of his generation, widely recognised for the distinctive visual language of layering and removing pigment that he has developed over the past 20 years. In this film Innes invites us into his Edinburgh studio and discusses the making of his Exposed Paintings, the series of works for which he is...
Related Video & Audio Cornelia Parker in conversation with Jonathan Watkins Alan Cristea Gallery : 4 November 2015 Artist Cornelia Parker talks to Jonathan Watkins, Director of Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, about her career and biggest print projects to date, One Day This Glass Will Break and Thirty Pieces of Silver (Exposed).
Related Video & Audio Sarah Lucas in conversation with Don Brown, film by Julian Simmons: UK at the Venice Biennale Film by Julian Simmons : 12 May 2015 Sadie Coles HQ is delighted to announce the release of a new film — specially commissioned by the British Council - marking Sarah Lucas's representation of Britain at the 2015 Venice Biennale. Shot and produced by Julian Simmons, the thirteen-minute documentary will be broadcast by The Guardian from Wednesday 6th May, to coincide with the...
Related Video & Audio Callum Innes – 'I'm Curious About Colour' | TateShots Tate : 10 February 2011 TateShots travelled to Edinburgh to meet Callum Innes, one of the artists featured in Tate Britain's 'Watercolour' exhibition.
