Contemporary Pacific art showcased in Germany

Media Release

31 August 2007

Contemporary Pacific art showcased in Germany

Date Line – Contemporary art from the Pacific
7 September – 21 October 2007
Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (NBK) Berlin

Contemporary Pacific art will be showcased in an exhibition opening at the leading Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (NBK) Gallery in Berlin in September.

Working in partnership with New Plymouth’s Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, NBK presents Date Line – Contemporary art from the Pacific which features works by 14 leading New Zealand artists.

This exhibition tracks along the ‘International Date Line’ to investigate how contemporary artists in the region respond to the complex interplays amongst customary practice, globalisation and the poetics of the everyday.

Date Line articulates a range of narratives concerning spirituality, colonial rupture and change, migration and displacement, diasporic and ‘travelling communities’, environmental pressures, the challenges of representation and the complex dynamics of multiple, evolving identities. It also examines how the larger Pacific impacts within the context of New Zealand art.

Curated by NBK Director Dr Alexander Tolnay and Govett-Brewster Director Rhana Devenport, the featured artists are Edith Amituanai, Shane Cotton, Lonnie Hutchinson, Andy Leleisi’uao, Ani O´Neill, Fiona Pardington, Michael Parekowhai, Reuben Patterson, John Pule, Rachael Rakena, Lisa Reihana, Peter Robinson, Filipe Tohi and Michel Tuffery.

Spanning a full range of media, the artists experiment with sculpture, cut paper, crochet, photography, video and painting to examine ideas about how locality and location are interpreted in Aotearoa / New Zealand today.

Date Line is the first large-scale group exhibition of New Zealand art to be presented in Berlin and only the third in Germany in the past two decades.

Devenport says the presentation of Date Line at NBK is significant.

“NBK recognised as a leading institution in Berlin’s cultural landscape, renowned for its programme of both local and international exhibitions,” she says.

Among the works presented in Date Line are works by Lisa Reihana from the series Digital marae, which will simultaneously feature within an expanded presentation of this ongoing series at the Govett-Brewster in October 2007. Reihana’s compelling photographs offer a contemporary handling of traditional pouwhenua, the wooden carvings found lining Maori marae.

Date Line will be accompanied by a programme profiling recent video works by a number of artists including Shigeyuki Kihara, Vea Mafileo, Nathan Pohio, Janet Lilo and Natalie Robertson. The exhibition will also be accompanied by a full colour bi-lingual publication.

In addition to the presentation at NBK, Date Line will tour a further two venues in Germany in 2008, City Gallery Kiel and City Gallery Sindelfingen. The partnership between NBK and the Govett-Brewster will see a return exhibition mounted in New Plymouth mid next year.

In the presentation of Date Line the support of Creative New Zealand has been instrumental.

ends

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