Nick Austin Exhibition

[FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE]
6 September 2007

Nick Austin Exhibition

Ronald Clyne
Designer And Graphic Artist, Usa
Folkways Records Cover Design 1951-1981

Exhibition dates: 29 September – 27 October 2007
Opening reception: Friday 28 September 6pm

ARTSPACE is pleased to present the first major exhibition of new work by Auckland based artist Nick Austin. Known for his slight paintings on newspaper, in this exhibition Austin will present a collection of sculptures based on his experiences of concrete poetry.

Austin comments “I've been thinking about these works as arrangements of found material, of ingredients, that speak to the verbal qualities of looking. I’m interested in the works’ visual delivery, specifically the idea of a flatness of delivery, the sense of timing and mistiming within them.”

He continues, “I have also studied the compositions of sandwiches, jokes, and crossword puzzles, as a means of thinking about how the how can become the what. I am very interested in economical gestures and how the way something is made might be apparent in what it is.”

He intends the exhibition to inhabit many planes of the gallery architecture, and though object-based, to be “quietly immersive, in a way that sound art can be.”

Nick Austin graduated with a Master of Fine Arts, Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland in 2004. He is a member of artist-run project Gambia Castle in Auckland and is represented by Starkwhite, Auckland. Recent solo exhibitions include Strands, Clumps at The Physics Room, Christchurch, 2007 and Poor Memory, Gambia Castle, Auckland, 2007. In 2007, Nick Austin received a Creative New Zealand New Work Grant through which the works in this exhibition have been made.

In the small gallery we are pleased to present an exhibition of American Ronald Clyne’s design. Ronald Clyne (1925-2006) was a freelance designer and graphic artist who between 1951-1981 designed over 500 LP covers for independent record company Folkways Records. The three curators, John Nixon, Stephen Bram and Warren Taylor, have mined their own record collections to produce a remarkable exhibition of original record covers designed by Roland Clyne.

John Nixon says “The purpose of this exhibition of around fifty record covers is to open eyes to the significance of Ronald Clyne’s distinctive contribution through his work with Folkways Records to American modernist graphic design and cultural history.”

The exhibition was first shown at The Narrows, Melbourne, Australia.

[ENDS]

© Scoop Media