Live Feed From Artspace, Auckland Contact Performance
Part one, Computer Dance Saturday 5 March 2011, 6pm
Part two, Parangole Capes Saturday 12 March 2011, 6pm
Part three, Body Articulation/Imprint Saturday 19 March 2011, 6pm
Main lecture theatre, Architecture School of Art and Design, 139 Vivian Street, Te Aro, Wellington.
In 1974 Jim Allen presented the performance Contact at the Auckland City Art Gallery. Famed for its dramatic focus on
live action rather than the static object, Contact is acknowledged as a pivotal work in the development of post-object
art in New Zealand. The work elaborates a release from social alienation through collective activity whereby performers
move within a structured framework, shifting from tentative interaction to cooperation to possible transcendence.
Re-performed at ARTSPACE in Auckland as part of the Auckland Festival over three weekends in March 2011, Contact will be
simultaneously re-presented as a ‘live feed’ in Wellington via the capabilities of the internet.
FORTHCOMING EXHIBITION
Points of Contact: Jim Allen, Len Lye, Hélio Oiticica is an exhibition that traces the historical and conceptual connections between New Zealand artist Jim Allen (b.1922), a
significant figure in the development of post-object art in New Zealand, and two of his key contemporaries: expatriate
experimental filmmaker and kinetic sculptor Len Lye (1901-1980) and Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica (1937–1980).
Organised and toured by the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery with assistance from Creative New Zealand and Michael Lett and
curated by Tyler Cann and Mercedes Vicente, Points of Contact draws together bodies of work which share certain material and conceptual qualities, most especially their engagement
with light, movement, colour, and the body.
Central to this exhibition is the reconstruction of Allen’s pivotal 1969 Small Worlds exhibition at Barry Lett Galleries in Auckland, one of the earliest instances of environmental sculpture to be
presented in New Zealand.
These installations are joined by other works by all three artists that are variously originals, reconstructions and
photographic documentation. This re-staging enables viewers to dwell on the challenges and possibilities posed by the
re-presentation of ephemeral or conceptual works of art, and therefore to explore the complex legacy of the
‘post-object’.
This exhibition presents Hélio Oiticica’s work for the first time in New Zealand.
Points of Contact joins a number of recent surveys that challenge the European and North American art historical paradigm, proposing and
examining instead parallel and specific art historical trajectories outside these centres, in both their local and
global dimensions.
The exhibition will be presented at the Adam Art Gallery 19 March – 22 May 2011.
A public programme of artist talks, discussion and ‘live feed’ performances has been designed to provide a platform for
critical discussion and to enhance engagement with the exhibition.
Opening: Friday 18 March, 6pm
Opening speaker, artist Phil Dadson
All welcome
ends