Adam Art Gallery Public Programme March 2009

Adam Art Gallery
Public Programme
March 2009

SOUND CHECK

Live feed
Performance by Christine White and Chris Black

Recent graduates of the Sonic Arts programme at the New Zealand School of Music, Chris Black and Christine White will present two new site-specific sound works at the Adam Art Gallery. Each work is designed to emphasise the unique acoustic properties of the gallery space through an intricate speaker arrangement. Using contact microphones attached to the internal fixtures and surfaces of the building, microscopic sounds within the walls, floors, stair railings, and air ducts will be amplified, manipulated and used as raw compositional material. The compositions, built from both pre-existing recordings and live sound material, will be played back to the gallery further amplifying the resonance of the architecture to produce a multi-layered feedback environment.

Adam Art Gallery
Tuesday 3 March 2009
8pm
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LECTURE

The artist as harrow
Keynote lecture by Anna Smith from the School of Culture, Literature and Society at the University of Canterbury, commissioned by the Adam Art Gallery on the occasion of the exhibition I, HERE, NOW Vivian Lynn

The machine that Franz Kafka invents in his short story In the Penal colony is called the Harrow. It is an elaborate torture and execution device that carves the sentence of each imprisoned man on his skin before letting him die. As the plot unfolds, the reader learns more and more about the machine and is intentions. Anna Smith will investigate the relationship of the accumulative nature of harrowing to the artistic production of Vivian Lynn, citing her critique of the capitalist ‘machine’ and discussing her use of human hair as another harrowing of the grotesque. Departing from the evident process of Lynn’s work, Smith will also look at the strangeness of adults caught in ‘play’and whether – by implication – art can save us by its playfulness and aesthetics; or whether in the end we are only left with excoriation.

Anna Smith teaches children’s literature, cultures of the supernatural and postcolonial writing at the University of Canterbury. She has published work on Margaret Mahy, Keri Hulme, Julia Kristeva, Ben Okri and New Zealand women artists. She edited a collection of essays on cultural studies for Victoria University Press with Lydia Wevers and in 2006, published her first novel, Politics 101.

Adam Art Gallery
Thursday 5 March 2009
6-7.30pm

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WORKSHOP
Out Loud: Using the ‘F’ Word Today

On the occasion of I, HERE, NOW Vivian Lynn, the Adam Art Gallery has invited a range of artists, curators, writers and thinkers to consider the very real question of whether a feminist position is viable, useful and necessary in our present moment. Key questions that will be addressed include: why do artists today shy away from calling themselves feminist? What do we understand to be the legacy of feminism as a driver for contemporary art since the 1960s (if not earlier)? Have the social and political issues with which feminism engaged gone away? What status does feminist theory now have in our thinking about the meaning and function of art? How do we account for the recent interest in the history of feminist art practice that has resulted in a number of important exhibitions? Do we look up to our senior woman artists? And what are the potential strategies and possible exhibition situations that could mine feminism’s complex history to bring the agency of the movement back into play?

Participants include: Christina Barton, Ruth Buchanan, Judy Darragh, Charlotte Huddleston, Vivian Lynn, Sandy Callister, Louise Menzies, Gaylene Preston, Anna Sanderson, and Ruth Watson.

Adam Art Gallery
Thursday 12 March 2009
5-7pm
Followed by refreshments

We are open Tuesday to Sunday 11-5

K.I.S.S. BILLBOARD
MATTHEW CROOKES
An artwork in public space that explores typographical form in relation to the function of design and the site of a commercial billboard. Timed to coincide with TypeSHED11. http://www.typeshed11.co.nz. Sponsored by Oggi.
2-28 February 2009

I, HERE, NOW
VIVIAN LYNN
A long-overdue survey of the work of artist Vivian Lynn curated by Christina Barton and Laura Preston, this exhibition canvasses the diversity of Lynn’s practice and brings to light works that have not been seen for many years.
Until 15 March 2009

Billy Apple®
New York
1969-1973
28 March – 17 May 2009
One Day Sculpture Project (Litmus, Massey University) Saturday 28 March 2009

ENDS

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