Auckland Art Gallery Announces Contemporary Art Triennial

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Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki will launch a new triennial exhibition in Aotearoa New Zealand on Saturday 6 July. Aotearoa Contemporary will continue through 20 October 2024.

'Aotearoa needs a contemporary art triennial and it now has one,' said the gallery's director, Kirsten Lacy, in a statement.

'Set to occur every three years, the exhibition provides ongoing representation and pathways for new artistic voices, bolstering the future resilience of New Zealand art,' she said.

Emphasising artists who haven't previously shown at the gallery, the inaugural exhibition will feature 27 artists and 22 compelling new projects in a range of media including painting, textiles, sculpture, ceramics, photography, and performance. It will also include a talks programme.

'Aotearoa Contemporary reveals a new cluster of artists who work afresh with ritual and storytelling, mythology, rhythm, indigenous space and materials,' said Natasha Conland, the gallery's senior curator of contemporary art. 'There is also a special emphasis on art's relationship with choreography through the commission of four dance works.'

'From Ruth Ige's enigmatic blue paintings of anonymous figures, to the art collective The Killing's installation of supersized soft-toys in a state of play, there is something for everyone in this exhibition,' said Cameron Ah Loo-Matamua, curator of Pacific art.

'Amongst the ambitious new commissions is a three-channel video by Qianye and Qianhe Lin featuring mythology set in Hailing Island off the coast of China and Aotearoa,' they said.

The exhibition will receive financial support from the Auckland Art Gallery Foundation, the Chartwell Trust, and local hapū (sub-tribe) Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei.

'Our tupuna [ancestor] Apihai Te Kawau gifted 3,000 acres of land on the Waitematā on 18th September in 1840 to become a city which welcomed people, cultures and ideas from afar,' said Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei Trust Deputy Chair Ngarimu Blair.

'Our relationship with Auckland Art Gallery is founded in the shared goal to foster the arts reflective of our multicultural community in Aotearoa,' he said. —[O]

Main image: Maungarongo Te Kawa, Celestial Stargate for Invisible People (2024) (detail). Courtesy the artist and Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. Photo: Jemma Mitchell.