Pulp fictions: Art of Giovanni Battista Piranesi

MEDIA RELEASE

11 September 2007

Pulp fictions: The Art of Giovanni Battista Piranesi and Andrew McLeod

A new exhibition at the Adam Art Gallery Te Pataka Toi showcases the very best of Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s etched work from the collection of the Alexander Turnbull Library. In conjunction with this exhibition, contemporary artist Andrew McLeod will be undertaking a wall drawing in the gallery.

Pulp Fictions: The Art of Giovanni Battista Piranesi is an exhibition curated jointly by David Maskill, Senior Lecturer in Art History at Victoria University, and his honours-year postgraduate students. Its title refers both to the paper-based medium in which Piranesi excelled, and to the popular nature and sensationalism of his work.

Piranesi (1720-1778) was arguably the greatest Italian printmaker/publisher of the eighteenth century. His views of Rome, both ancient and modern, defined the age of the Grand Tour. His fantastical descriptions of ancient buildings inspired artists, writers and architects both to image and lament the grandeur that was Rome. His famous series of imaginary prisons, the Carceri, appealed to the Romantic sensibility of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

To accompany this exhibition, leading Auckland-based artist Andrew McLeod will carry out a temporary room-sized wall drawing in the Adam Art Gallery’s Kirk Gallery, exploiting the black walls as ground for his work. Precise architectural rendering unravels into dream-like states in the work of this artist, giving an apt contemporary correlation to Piranesi’s technically masterful yet fantastical scenes.

This exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue with essays on Piranesi’s work written by the exhibition’s student curators, and an artist’s book by Andrew McLeod. It will be supplemented by an informative programme of lectures and workshops on topics relating to architecture.

The exhibition's official opening will be held on Friday 19 October at 6pm.

ENDS

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