Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Give Me SPACE!

Top: Elmgreen & Dragset, “Short Cut” Fondazione Trussardi, Milan, 2003. Photo: courtesy of the Artists. Bottom: Carmela Gross, “Aurora” (installation view at the Second Moscow Biennial of Contemporary Art), Russia 2007. Photo: Carmela Gross The days are getting longer, the spring bulbs are flowering and that can mean only one thing – we’re closer still to the launch date of ‘Wandering Lines: Towards a New Culture of Space,” which opens in Christchurch on September 19. The SCAPE Christchurch Biennial of Art is New Zealand’s only international biennial dedicated to public art – and, as someone who has now photographed almost every piece of public art in the city, I’m looking forward to some new subject matter. And I’m thrilled to hear today that things are kicking off with the unveiling of Regan Gentry’s commission for a permanent sculpture for that ‘lost wilderness’ on the corner of Colombo and Hereford Streets that is now called Stewart Plaza. I featured one of Gentry’s works (now showing at Wanganui’s Sarjeant Gallery) here last week – put ‘Art & The Bridge to Nowhere’ into the above left search box to see it – and I’m looking forward to something dynamic and illuminated. In the meantime, here are works by two of the fifteen artists from 25 countries who will be participating in SCAPE 2008 - “Aurora” by leading Brazilian artist, Carmela Gross, whose text-based fluorescent signs will be sited in a high profile pedestrian traffic precinct in the middle of the city; and “Short Cut” by Berlin-based Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, who have been collaborating since 1995. In 2005 they created a Prada boutique in the middle of the Texas desert. Roll on September 19 – let’s get the arts party started!

No comments:

LinkWithin

Blog Widget by LinkWithin