SCANZ 2009: February 6 – 29 March

Media Release

28 January 2009

SCANZ 2009
February 6 – 29 March

The Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in association with Solar Circuit Aotearoa New Zealand (SCANZ) presents the SCANZ exhibition – Raranga Tangata – opening 6 February 2009.

SCANZ is a project-based residency and workshop for international and national artists, theorists and curators working at the intersection of art, culture and technology.

This year’s theme is Raranga Tangata –The Weaving Together of People – a phrase originally given by Charlie Tawhiao and adopted by Sally Jane Norman and Sylvia Nagl to describe the internet. The aim is to fuse an enduring fabric of people and technology located in Taranaki.

From an initial call to SCANZ participants for proposals for the exhibition, Mercedes Vicente, Govett-Brewster curator, and Sarah Cook, UK guest co-curator, have selected eight projects by Stella Brennan (NZ), Nina Czegledy/Greg Judelman/Daniel Barber (Canada), Sean Kerr (NZ), Naomi Lamb (NZ), Alex Monteith (NZ), Sally Jane Norman/Jacques Sirot (NZ/France), Amanda Newall (NZ), The Polytechnic (UK) and Dan Torop (USA). Some of these artworks have been developed during this year and the previous SCANZ workshop in 2006.

Co-curators Vicente and Cook are delighted to be exhibiting the results of these artists’ long-term commitments to working with new technologies being developed during the SCANZ residency.

“This is a rare opportunity for Taranaki to host projects that demonstrate artists’ use of diverse digital and electronic media, from ultrasonic sound to data visualization, 3D graphics to kinetic responsive sculptures, performance and participatory public projects.”

The exhibition, opening on Saturday 7 February at 6pm, will feature performances by New Zealand artists Sean Kerr and Naomi Lamb. During the opening weekend a symposium will be held featuring international speakers from Hawaii, the UK and Australia, including the writers and theorists on the SCANZ residency. The symposium will focus on weaving together Indigenous, Asian, Polynesian and Maori knowledge and belief systems in the context of new media technologies and art. Then on Sunday 8 February join the SCANZ artists at 11.30am for a floor talk with co-curators Vicente and Cook.

This exhibition has been organised in partnership with Intercreate Research Centre at the Western Institute of Technology at Taranaki (WITT), Puke Ariki, Creative New Zealand and Shell.

For further details, please refer to www.intercreate.org

ENDS

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