Two Exciting New Exhibitions at the Physics Room

Two Exciting New Exhibitions at the Physics Room

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Upping the Anti

Rob McKenzie and Kain Picken with Claire Fontaine + Food Not Bombs

14 June – 8 July 2006

Opening preview: Tuesday 13 June 2006, 5.30pm

Showing for the first time in New Zealand, Melbourne-based artists Rob McKenzie and Kain Picken’s exhibition Upping the Anti at The Physics Room explores the realms of real and symbolic action. For this exhibition, McKenzie and Picken will show new work developed specifically for The Physics Room, including a video and photograph documenting the artist receiving a tattoo.

Alongside their work, the artists have invited New York/Paris-based artist duo Claire Fontaine to contribute, and they will show a work constructed from cut down saw blades to form a key-ring style lock picking device that hangs from the wall with instructions on how to use it. In addition to the exhibition, the artists have invited Food Not Bombs to serve food at the opening preview.

McKenzie and Picken write: What we want is a promotion of activity that maximises effect. It is about subjectivity and it is about standing up for people. It is about adding our energies to the world and believing in the possibility of change. In a neon work, Janet Burchill and Jennifer McCamley promoted the idea: ALL THAT RISES MUST CONVERGE. We agree.

McKenzie and Picken have previously worked together under the project title Slave, collaborating with artists and designers across the globe to produce art publications and exhibitions.

MEDIA RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Showing in the series:

Dirt Work

Daniel du Bern

14 June – 8 July 2006

Opening preview: Tuesday 13 June 2006, 5.30pm

The first in the okokok series of artist projects, Wellington artist Daniel du Bern describes his new installation as ‘Activism meets Abstraction’. Du Bern's wry humour and slick aesthetic brings together wall paintings, documentation, and dirt, in an exploration of avant-garde practices and peripheral political movements. The artist negotiates the similarities in ideology and the impossibility for such agendas to stand outside of mainstream orthodox.

Daniel du Bern was born in Sydney. He completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) at Massey University Wellington in 2003, served as a trustee of Enjoy Public Art Gallery in Wellington from 2002 to 2003, and was Guest Editor for the Autumn 2006 issue of New Zealand Journal of Photography.

The Physics Room receives major funding from Creative New Zealand/Toi Aotearoa.

ENDS

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