Jim Allen will perform On Planting a Native at the gallery from 6pm tonight!
This will be the first time the work has been performed since its original presentation at The Experimental Art
Foundation, Adelaide in 1976. Wednesday's performance will be preceded by a short introduction and background to the
work from Jim.
New Zealand artist and educator Jim Allen is both a formidable influence upon his followers and a prolific artist in his
own right. A leader of post-object practices in the global south, Allen’s immersive installations and light touch share
much with his self-proclaimed heroes, experimental filmmaker and sculptor Len Lye and Brazilian kineticist Hélio Oitica.
This robust reader contains over 300 pages of interviews with Allen, conducted largely by art historian Tony Green and
fellow artist Phil Dadson. Through these colourful and often humorous oral histories, one can trace the narrative of
Allen’s life, including his participation in WWII and formation as an artist and teacher—and sailor!—from the 1950s
until the present day. An important record of a woefully understudied figure of postwar art, The Skin of Years presents
Allen’s dogged persistence to engage in what he has called “the art of the possible.”
ends