Best of 2024: According to Eight Artists

This year, Ocula has had the pleasure of sitting down with the artists we love. As an Aotearoa New Zealand-born magazine, we’ve long been admirers of Mataaho Collective, who received the Golden Lion for the best participant in the international exhibition—the first time a New Zealand artist has done so. It was at the Biennale, in fact, that we fell in love with the sculptures of Korean artist Kim Yun Shin, who later invited us into her studio in Paju, northwest of Seoul, and let us in on her collection of turtle memorabilia. And in Seoul, a visit to Rinus Van de Velde‘s solo show would set the grounds for an amusing interview with the Belgian painter ahead of his Paris debut later in the year.

Louise Giovanelli was a highlight of our trip to Hong Kong for Art Basel, where we slipped off to shoot her paintings of 1980s film stills at White Cube. On the other side of the globe, White Cube hosted the debut paintings of Donna Huddleston, with whom we met in a sunny courtyard in St James’s in one of our most joyous conversations of the year.

As summer greeted London, the team spent a balmy Friday afternoon in Hyde Park at Heman Chong‘s Library of Unread Books, his literary contribution to architect Minsuk Cho’s Serpentine Pavilion—a presentation which coincided with Lorna Robertson‘s summery, soft-hued exhibition of oil paintings at Alison Jacques. And of course, our list wouldn’t be complete without the legendary Josh Smith. As 2024 draws to a close, Ocula caught up with the artists who topped our year to find out the sounds, exhibitions, restaurants, and trips that topped theirs.

Mataaho Collective

There was a lot to celebrate when Mataaho Collective—made up of Māori artists Erena Arapere-Baker, Sarah Hudson, Bridget Reweti, and Dr Terri Te Tau—won the Golden Lion at Venice. The jury described their structure of woven high-visibility straps as ‘a feat of engineering that was only made possible by the collective strength and creativity of the group.’ With shards of light piercing the gaps between each strip, they turned the Arsenale’s cavernous interior into a monumental immersive artwork that sent us all home reeling.

Best sound: Māori MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke in Parliament on 15 November 2024. ‘Kaawana he whakamanuhiritia koe’, her pao and haka resonated around the world. Toitū Te Tiriti.

Best exhibition: Te Rā: Navigating Home (Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum, on view through 17 August 2025). We are massive fans of the master weavers of Te Rā Ringa Raupā, who spent years researching Te Rā, and currently spend their time sharing that knowledge with multiple weaving collectives throughout Aotearoa.

Best restaurant: Tītī, St Clair, Dunedin Te Wai Pounamu. Their set menu lunches are our favourite when we’re working in Ōtepoti. A fresh seasonal menu and friendly staff who are kind to our kids.

Best trip: Our return to the Venice Biennale to deinstall our work Takapau (2022). This time was special as all four members were in attendance, along with our newest art family addition who was born shortly after opening the work.

Best Christmas: We each spend as much of the summer as we can with our families. This summer we will also be harvesting Harakeke for our Dunedin Public Art Gallery exhibition, which will open in March 2025.

Best advice: He tangata, he tangata, he tangata. There’s so much empowerment in relationships. As the artist, you have the agency to choose who you want to work with and can negotiate the terms of that work. Trust your guts.

Kim Yun Shin

‘I love turtles because they live long, their lifespan often exceeding 100 or even 200 years. I also want to live forever.’—Kim Yun Shin in the Studio

At 90 years old, the Korean artist Kim Yun Shin shows no signs of hanging up her brush, or chainsaw for that matter. In January, Lehmann Maupin and Kukje Gallery announced their co-representation of Kim, marking the artist’s first ever commercial-gallery partnership. Eight of her sculptures—four in wood, four in stone—took centre stage at Adriano Pedrosa’s Foreigners Everywhere at Venice, and in October, Lehmann Maupin devoted their first Frieze Masters booth to Kim.

Best sound: Cats meowing and birds chirping—nothing better than that!

Best exhibition: I was particularly drawn to the works of Kay WalkingStick, Aref El Rayess, and Leopold Strobl at this year’s Venice Biennale. Like me, they draw inspiration from the boundless beauty of nature, which resonated deeply with me.

Best restaurant: There’s a cozy pasta spot called Better Protein near my studio in Paju. Their spaghetti is amazing.

Best trip: My favorite destination was Venice, which I had the privilege of visiting this summer as a participating artist in the Venice Biennale.

Best holiday season: I love this time of year, even though it gets chilly day by day. I don’t think I have a special way to enjoy the holidays, but I celebrate every day by doing what I always do and working hard.

Best advice: Keep working hard, no matter what it is—that’s the best advice I remind myself of every day.

Rinus Van de Velde

‘Art gives me a purpose in life. If I didn’t draw, I’d be so bored I’d end up running around the city or sitting around in coffee shops. Drawing is a way to spend time in a useful way.’—Rinus Van de Velde Dreams Big

While Van de Velde himself prefers to stay inside and fantasise about the life that he could have if he were to venture outdoors, his artworks have managed to get out and about. Seoul was the first leg of his exhibition tour in March, when Art Sonje Center and Space ISU hosted a solo exhibition of his paintings, drawings, and videos, which segued into his Italian debut at Tim Van Laere Gallery in May. Paris next, where Galerie Max Hetzler hosted his first show in France. (In January 2025, Max Hetzler will present Van de Velde’s work across their two Berlin spaces.) Whether the artist attended these shows is another question—having admitted to Ocula that a mask of his face used in his videos is a useful double for when he doesn’t want to go to events.

Best sound: The voice of David Lynch, reading his autobiography, Room to Dream (2018), on audiobook.

Best exhibition: Josephsohn vu par Albert Oehlen at Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris.

Best restaurant: I am still sad that the Stanny in Antwerp, my favourite restaurant where I ate every day for 15 years, closed its doors this year. I am still looking for a new place.

Best trip: A week in Rome when I was preparing my exhibition at Tim Van Laere Gallery while the 2024 Italian Open was taking place.

Best Christmas: Every Christmas since my children were born. They eagerly look forward to the evening when they can open presents and play and eat chips with their cousins.

Best advice: A quote on a lightbox from Sam Durant which hangs here in my studio: ‘later is too late’.

Louise Giovanelli

‘Painting is a way for me to work things out, and a way to discover what fascinated me about a particular image—that’s why I work in series. It’s not that I become bored of specific images, it’s just something else might come into my orbit.’—Louise Giovanelli in the Studio

Louise Giovanelli’s year kicked off in Mallorca, where she completed a five-week residency at the John Pawson-designed Neuendorf House, producing paintings for her solo exhibition at White Cube Hong Kong in March. Only a few days before, her first solo show in Asia opened at He Art Museum in Foshan. Her exhibition at Hepworth Wakefield is now open through April 2025—we highly recommend the trip to northern England—and in May, Giovanelli will head to New York for her solo exhibition at GRIMM, coinciding with Frieze New York. All the while, she’s been running Manchester’s non-profit Apollo Painting School alongside co-founders Alice Amati and Dr Ian Hartshorne.

Best sound: ‘Madame Butterfly’ (1984) by Malcolm McClaren.

Best exhibition: Rudolf Stingel at Gagosian, 980 Madison Avenue, New York.

Best restaurant: Jondal, Ibiza.

Best Christmas: The one I’m about to share with my new nephew.

Best trip: Hong Kong and Shunde in Foshan, China, in March.

Best advice: Luck has to find you working.

Donna Huddleston

‘I fell in love with the psychology of performance and the collaboration that theatre offers. Some nights it works, others it may not, but that’s the beauty of it.’—Donna Huddleston Takes the Stage at White Cube.

Tucked away in her East London studio, Donna Huddleston was having a sap-green summer. Far from the abrasive hue plugged by British pop provocateur Charli xcx, Huddleston’s earthy green shade of Caran d’Ache colouring pencil was repeatedly sharpened into action throughout the sunnier months as she prepared for her biggest show to date: a solo presentation of all-new drawings and paintings for her debut show Company at White Cube, Mason’s Yard, in London.

Best sound: Beeps and squeaks. Electronic music really kept me going in the studio this year.

Best exhibition: Mike Kelley at Tate Modern. His work thrills me every time.

Best restaurant: The Park, a new restaurant in London full of timeless charm.

Best trip: To Rome with my teenage son in the autumn. His first time there and my first holiday after working all year. The city is always mindblowing, but it was extra special seeing it through his eyes.

Best Christmas: The one I’m about to have with family and friends in Switzerland.

Best advice: Follow that gut feeling!

Heman Chong

A balmy walk through London’s Hyde Park in the summer would have landed you in The Library of Unread Books, Heman Chong’s contribution to architect Minsuk Cho’s Serpentine Pavilion. The work (its inclusion a suggestion from Hans Ulrich Obrist) was a ‘living’ reference library, where visitors were encouraged to sit down and read the selection of donated books in the sun.

Chong’s exhibition at Amanda Wilkinson Gallery in nearby Mayfair followed, which coincided with his second institutional show in China on view at UCCA Dune through to 6 April 2025. Next year, Chong looks forward to a retrospective at Singapore Art Museum, opening in May, and inclusion in the Sharjah Biennial 16.

Best sound: Giorgio Moroder sharing his origin story to Daft Punk, played over music on the track, ‘Giorgio by Moroder’, from their 2013 album Random Access Memories.

Best exhibition: Based on the idea of a Korean courtyard, Minsuk Cho’s Serpentine Pavilion unfolded as a series of multiple possibilities: a library, playground, stage, tea house. He defined it as an Archipelagic Void, a view of emptiness as a setting for new gatherings.

Best restaurant: PeraMakan in Little India, Singapore.

Best trip: A six-hour walk from my apartment on the Lower East Side all the way up north to the Met Cloisters along the Hudson.

Best Christmas: I don’t subscribe to Christmas. Or any holidays. Every day is spent purposefully, and when necessary, I celebrate life (and loss) with the people I love.

Best advice: Walk. Unafraid.

Lorna Robertson

‘A painting show read like a good book; it holds enough back to get you thinking while allowing you to take something of yourself into it.’—Paintings Give Lorna Robertson Somewhere to Go

Every morning, Lorna Robertson swims in the Arlington baths in Glasgow. After plugging in her earphones (David Bowie, Sinéad O’Connor, Erik Satie, Claude Debussy), she’ll head to the studio, clean her brushes, and start painting. Ocula spoke to Robertson ahead of her fantastic London debut at Alison Jacques in June, when a swim in Glasgow—or in the deep pool in Glen Rosa on the nearby Isle of Arran—was a more inviting prospect than this week, when the city is set to experience single-digit temperatures.

Best sound: ‘Damn’ (2019) by Aldous Harding, and ‘Dona Nobis Pacem 2’ (2014) by Max Richter. However, the very best thing I heard this year was my dear friend Margaret’s daughter, Sophie McSherry-Gunneburg, singing ‘Sunshine on Leith’ (1988) by The Proclaimers in The Cecilian Society’s production at Platform theatre in Easterhouse, Glasgow.

Best exhibition: Cathy Wilkes at the Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow.

Best restaurant: Gjusta in Venice Beach, California; State Bird Provisions, San Francisco; and Bar Brett in Glasgow.

Best trip: Wild camping in Glen Rosa, Arran, and swimming in the freezing rock pools (pre-midge season).

Best Christmas: When my son Joseph was born in late November 2008, and his two older brothers, Lewis and Jude, were delighted. A very happy time.

Best advice: Enjoy yourself (it’s later than you think).

Josh Smith

‘I like art that shows exactly how it was made. Art that is not a mystery, but just coalesces into an image. It’s not like Leonardo da Vinci or like magic. The only magical part is the miracle that all these things can work as a painting.’—Josh Smith: ‘My life is soup. I just eat it and spit it out.’

Josh Smith was fresh out of the shower in his hotel room in Vienna when we interviewed him. It was the morning of his solo exhibition opening at Galerie Eva Presenhuber, where the New York artist was showing a new group of stencilled bat paintings (‘They’re like birds, just way cooler,’ he described). Elsewhere, Smith presented a solo exhibition of drawings—an homage to Frank Walter—at The Drawing Center in New York, and was included in David Zwirner: 30 Years in Los Angeles.

Best sound: I have listened to Yeat’s new LYFESTYLE LP a lot this year.

Best exhibition: The one that sticks in my head is Doug Wheeler’s Day Night Day at David Zwirner. That was a magical surprise; a once-in-a-lifetime type of thing. Pictures cannot capture the experience.

Best restaurant: I often go to Peacefood on East 11th Street—quality vegan food and it’s quiet. Another favourite is Newtown in East Williamsburg, conveniently located near my studio.

Best trip: I was able to go to Shanghai in March. That was a highlight. I was working so I didn’t experience much there but the look, feel, scale, and energy of the city was overwhelming. I wish I can return one day.

Best Christmas: My favourite holiday tradition is being in my studio. New York gets quiet and the cold outside is comforting. It is a good time to think, rest, and have lots of unbroken studio time. I love it. —[O]

Main image: Photo: William Waterworth.