Ocula Report 58th Venice Biennale: May You Live In Interesting Times 24 May 2019 : Mohammad Salemy for Ocula The 58th Venice Biennale, May You Live In Interesting Times (11 May–24 November 2019), certainly benefitted from low expectations, given the lacklustre curatorial of the previous edition, when different segments of the show were conceptually framed with titles like 'Pavilion of Joys and Fears' and 'Pavilion of Colours'. Add to this the...
Ocula Conversation Zheng Bo Hong Kong-based artist Zheng Bo's social, ecological, and community-engaged art practice has, in recent years, focused on moving beyond a human-centred perspective to an all-inclusive, multi-species approach. He takes up marginalised plants and communities of people as subjects in his large-scale interventions, which reintroduce wildness into...
Ocula Report Auckland Art Fair 2019: Conversations Extended 24 May 2019 : Sherry Paik for Ocula The weather was clement for the annual Auckland Art Fair (2–5 May 2019), which was again at The Cloud on Queens Wharf. This year's edition was a get-together of 41 galleries, mostly from around Auckland and across New Zealand, with 5 spaces hailing from Sydney and the rest from Cook Islands (Bergman Gallery), Hobart (Michael Bugelli Gallery),...
Located in Civic Square, City Gallery Wellington opened in 1980 as the first non-collection, exhibition based public gallery in New Zealand. As a pioneering gallery, City Gallery Wellington is suitably located in Wellington, New Zealand’s capital of art and culture, known for offering alternative and innovative perspectives. The gallery is a non-profit institution and is managed by the Wellington Museums Trust, and is funded by the Wellington City Council.
As the City Gallery Wellington has no collection, the gallery operates though exhibitions of local and international work. This concept allows the gallery to show the work of new and up-to-date artists, as well as of famous and historic artists, without the financial constraints of purchasing works. Since its opening, the City Gallery Wellington has hosted many successful exhibitions featuring international artists such as Yayoi Kusama, Tracy Emin and Frida Kahlo; and New Zealand artists including Bill Hammond, Ralph Hotere and Shane Cotton.
The gallery also runs a public education programme, featuring events and lectures relating to current exhibitions. This programme is also involved in the art education of Wellington primary and secondary schools.
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 Yvonne Todd Artist, New Zealand In 2002 young Auckland-based artist Yvonne Todd was surprise winner of the inaugural Walters Prize, New Zealand’s premier contemporary art award. Tempting the ire of conservative critics, prize judge Harald Szeemann made the insightfully deleterious statement that Todd's was ‘the work that irritated me the most.’Her...
Ocula Conversation Robert Leonard Chief Curator, City Gallery, Wellington Robert Leonard is one of New Zealand’s most well-respected curators of contemporary art. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s he produced a series of significant exhibitions at the country’s leading museums, including the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, the Dunedin Public Art Gallery and the Auckland Art Gallery. In 2005 Leonard took up...
Ocula Conversation Seung Yul Oh Artist, Korea Born in Korea in 1981, Seung Yul Oh moved to New Zealand in 1997 and graduated from Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland in 2005. He has exhibited widely in New Zealand and Korea. In 2013 he was recipient of the SEMA Nanji Residency in Seoul and in 2011 was recipient of the Harriet Friedlander New York Residency, supported by...
