Media release
2 October 2013

City Gallery Wellington congratulates curator Robert Leonard

City Gallery Wellington is delighted that Robert Leonard has been announced as the curator for New Zealand’s presentation at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. Robert Leonard earlier this year was appointed Senior Curator at City Gallery Wellington, a position he will take up in January 2014.

City Gallery Wellington would also like to extend its congratulations to sculptor and installation artist Simon Denny, who has been announced as New Zealand’s artist for the 2015 Venice Biennale.

City Gallery Wellington Director Elizabeth Caldwell says:

“We are immensely proud and pleased to acknowledge that Robert Leonard and Simon Denny’s project, Five Eyes, will be the flag-bearing exhibition for Venice 2015. The curator-artist relationship is both dynamic and long-standing, and the project promises to be a timely, significant and highly compelling one. City Gallery Wellington is delighted to support its development.”

Currently Director of Brisbane’s Institute of Modern Art, Robert Leonard is one of New Zealand’s most experienced exhibition makers. Before moving to Brisbane in 2005 he was curator at New Plymouth's Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Auckland Art Gallery and from 1997 to 2002 he directed Auckland's Artspace.

Robert Leonard has a long association with Wellington. He began his career here in 1985 as the first curatorial intern at the National Art Gallery (later to become Te Papa), and worked there until 1991. In 2002 he returned to the capital for a year as J.W. Stout Fellow at Victoria University.

ends

© Scoop Media