Award Winner at City Gallery
In 2005 video and installation artist Sriwhana Spong won the Trust Waikato National Contemporary Art Award. Hailed by
The Herald for her “great powers of invention…,” Spong is widely considered one of New Zealand’s leading young artists.
In her installation Twin Oak Drive, part of the Telecom sponsored 2 x 2 Contemporary Projects, Spong addresses and
explores links between physical and spiritual worlds, the known and the unknown and the differing cultural attitudes of
east and west toward these states.
Raised in New Zealand, Spong had little connection with her Balinese heritage while growing up and describes it as “a
glimmer of something fed to me through shadows and whispers.” Sriwhana Spong’s work mixes images and references, delving
into her father’s homeland of Bali through a process she describes as “borrowing, stealing and adapting”. Her video and
sculptural works place her own heritage alongside other areas of exotic and uncertain terrain—from space travel to
horror movies. The work references the Balinese tradition of making offerings to the gods with the offerings constructed
from everyday found objects: food, cigarettes, even shopping bags.
Twin Oak Drive references the filmic. The title references David Lynch’s cult TV series Twin Peaks (as well as a walkway
in Cornwall Park in Auckland). The viewer of Spong’s video travels with her into a world where all is not as it seems;
where the seemingly tangible is not quite, and the dark is lighter and more amusing than may have been expected.
Spong plays with dislocation, space, the unfamiliar and the mysterious. Her video and installation work has been seen in
exhibitions around New Zealand, Australia and Germany. Spong has previously shown work at City Gallery Wellington as
part of the SQUARE2 video art programme. She has had three solo exhibitions at Anna Miles Gallery Auckland: Candlestick
Park (2006), Muttnik (2005) and C’est La Vie ma Cherie (2003). Recent group exhibitions include Cultural Futures, St.
Paul St., Auckland (2005) and Playing Favourites at Enjoy Public Art Gallery, Wellington (2005).
City Gallery Wellington is pleased to present 2 x 2 Contemporary Projects, a series of two exhibitions, each showcasing
two contemporary artists’ solo exhibitions – photographer Edith Amituanai and Palmerston North-based painter Kelcy
Taratoa in the first and multi-media artist Lonnie Hutchinson and Spong in the second. Fresh and innovative, these
artworks and artists are at the forefront of contemporary practices.
Whilst these are four distinct exhibitions, each with their own sets of agendas and concerns, they have been carefully
selected by curator Emma Bugden to speak to each other, to generate dialogue. Individually they explore a diverse range
of issues from the impact of colonisation on Maori identity to the never-ending resonance of a heritage in a distant
land. Together they create a conversation about the complexity of personal and cultural identity in today’s urban and
global environment.
Sriwhana Spong
Twin Oak Drive
2 x 2 Contemporary Projects:
Lonnie Hutchinson/Sriwhana Spong
5 August – 24 September 2006
Free Entry
Principal Sponsor: Telecom
ENDS