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Get Re:Freshed At The Adam Art Gallery

Published: Tue 13 May 2003 03:53 PM
MEDIA RELEASE 12 May 2003
Adam Art Gallery
Ph: 463 5229; Fax: 463 5024
Get Re:Freshed At The Adam Art Gallery
Re:fresh, a series of exhibitions profiling young and emerging curators, opens at Victoria University's Adam Art Gallery this month, with objects as diverse as jigsaw boxes, crime scene recreations and table tennis tables taking centre stage.
Gallery Director Sophie McIntyre says the Re:fresh series is designed to allow up-and-coming curators in New Zealand the opportunity to pursue their curatorial interests and develop exhibition projects in collaboration with the Adam Art Gallery.
The first exhibition, Practice (May 31-June 29), curated by Charlotte Huddleston, displays the work of five artists from Australia and New Zealand, John Abbate, Richard Lewer, David Simpkin, Patrick Pound and Tao Wells.
Sophie McIntyre says the artists share an interest in the 'process' involved in making art, both on a conceptual and experiential level. Many of the artists in the exhibition are interested in the everyday –collecting objects such as photographs, office materials and strawberry donuts – which they re-configure into new systems of order and classification, creating new meanings and relationships between things.
Patrick Pound's Piano World is a collection of jigsaw boxes and lids. By drawing together these found objects, he creates a pictorial puzzle, which the viewer is compelled to interpret according to their own experience. Girlfriends is similarly a collection of bought and found photographs of teenage girls. The title is suggestive - are the girls a group of friends, or are they photographs of Pound’s childhood partners?
Richard Lewer's work relates to research he has been carrying out into unsolved crimes in Australia. His drawings link to both identikit drawings and crime scene photographs, and in this exhibition, he has created a large-scale, site-specific wall drawing that is an aerial view of a crime scene.
David Simpkin has created several small-scale replica table tennis tables mounted on poles, each with an accompanying object such as a super eight projector, a surveillance unit, a martini glass with speakers and a coffee plunger. The work creates complex connections that are open to interpretation.
John Abbate's work deals with the nature and structure of archives. He uses materials such steel shelving and office furniture to promote a rethinking of our systems of organisation.
Wellington-based artist Tao Wells will install a long line of found and altered objects, creating both a line of individual objects and a set of objects placed in series. The lines give the feeling of an endless production line of interesting things as if products from a factory.
The Imaginary Museum, also running from May 31 to June 29, will see sounds and images from a selection of international art museums presented at the Adam Art Gallery in a major audio-visual installation project by New Plymouth-based artist David Clegg.
The Imaginary Museum invites the visitor to actively consider the museum or gallery as physical container - in which artworks are habitually viewed and interpreted. In this installation the artist empties the gallery of its art objects and instead brings into focus aspects of the built environment.
The stairway, balcony, entrance foyer, ramp, corridor and window become central points of reference –except that for each of the locations the audio and visual materials provided are from ten different international museums. The installation will offer visitors to the Adam Art Gallery the opportunity to create an 'imaginary museum' from sound, image and text fragments.
Public Programme
Opening Event
Friday 30 May 13, 2003 Join exhibiting artists, curators and gallery staff for the 5.30pm opening of The Imaginary Museum and Practice.
Floortalks
Saturday 31 May Exhibition curator, Charlotte Huddleston, introduces
11am Practice and reveals, in discussion with exhibiting artists, the processes, themes and ideas informing the works in the show.
Saturday 28 June Exhibiting artist, David Clegg, and freelance curator
3pm and writer, Aaron Kreisler, discuss the conceptual ideas underpinning The Imaginary Museum, placing the work in the context of Clegg's ongoing creative practice.
Adam Art Gallery, Victoria University, Tuesdays - Sundays 11am - 5pm. Closed Mondays and Public Holidays.
Contact Kate Griffin, Exhibitions and Public Programmes Officer, 04 463 5229.
Issued by Victoria University of Wellington Public Affairs
For further information please contact Antony.Paltridge@vuw.ac.nz or phone 04 463 5873 or 029 463 5873

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