Blue Oyster 10th Anniversary: Party, Publication & Exhibition

Dunedin's only dedicated experimental art project space is turning 10! In celebration of a decade of continuous busyness the Blue Oyster Art Project Space is launching a reflective exhibition and publication on Tuesday 8 September 2009. But, to get the festivities started we are throwing a tenth anniversary party (themed in the traditional anniversary material - tin), on Friday 4 September.

PARTY
Starting at 8pm on Friday 4 Sept, and a mere $10 on the door, this is the best way to spend your Friday and support New Zealand’s southernmost art project space.
Teaming up with New Zealand’s southernmost brewery, we are absolutely thrilled to be able to offer you a free mug of Invercargill Breweries' deliciously rich Pitch Black stout or crisp Nelly Cider. In addition to delicious refreshments, with your door entry you will be exposed to sounds by Wetlooks (Wgtn), Mike Fabulous (Dun) and DJ Jubi (Dun).
You will also have the chance to advance-order your copy of our limited edition anniversary publication.
What's more, local graffiti artists will be putting the finishing touches on our new mural and we will be sizzling some sausages and vege variations.
See you there! Bring your friends!

EXHIBITION
Curated by Ali Bramwell, Unstable Institutional Memory: 10 Years at the Blue Oyster will open at 5:30 on Tuesday 8 September. The exhibition involves a group of iconic works produced by Hannah Beehre, Steve Carr, Richard Crow & Michael Morley, Julian Dashper, anonymous and Margaret Roberts for the Blue Oyster over the course of its history, as a starting point. Instead of attempting a faithful restaging, Bramwell has asked the artists responsible to reprise their original works in some negotiated way, in full knowledge that a return to the same starting point is impossible in every case. The exhibition compels the artists involved to consider the sensation of incomplete memory and the distance between now and the moment that specific work was first made. Posing a challenge to try and re-inhabit thoughts and objects through the distance imposed by time, this process suggests a way of understanding more clearly what has changed and what has remains the same. The works selected and solicited are in many ways inadequate place holders for a recovered or reconstituted history, sitting in the space between memory and actuality, the past and the resent, and at odds with aspirations for completeness and coherency.

PUBLICATION
The publication Old, New, Borrowed, Blue: 10 Years at the Blue Oyster dabbles with this problem of memory and remembering and role that storytelling/myth making has in how we filter and value those memories. Here the collection of events and personalities that constitute the history of the Blue Oyster have been sifted through a selection of personal accounts and collective narratives, then strained through the gaps in archival records. Wry examinations of the evolution of the space from artist run and grass-roots to something more professional and reliable, intermingle with divergent recollections and ideals for the future. The publication provides accounts of significant defining moments and events in the lifespan of the project space and more sweeping historical perspectives, both attempting to define, but never quite isolating, the zest of the Blue Oyster.

ENDS

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