Govett-Brewster winter exhibitions

Media Release

15 May 2009

Govett-Brewster winter exhibitions confront urgent issues of contemporary society

All five artists involved in the forthcoming suite of exhibitions at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery confront urgent issues of contemporary society. Jin Jiangbo from China; Mark Adams, Bruce Connew and John Miller from New Zealand; and Mieke Gerritzen from the Netherlands together harness photography and film to raise powerful questions. Topics range from an immediate response to the global financial crisis in China; to the cultural complexities and unresolved issues of Māoridom; and the invasion of our lives through globalisation and relentless ‘progress’.

Opening 4 July 2009, the vast and penetrating photographs of acclaimed Chinese artist Jin Jiangbo mark the beginning of the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery’s major series China in Four Seasons. This year long project, comprising four exhibitions, presents to New Zealand audiences the extraordinary power and scope of artists working in China today.

Exhibition curator and Govett-Brewster Director Rhana Devenport says now is a fascinating time to examine contemporary arts practice in China after two decades of massive change.

In 1989 a gunshot was fired by Xiao Lu into her own artwork at the National Gallery in Beijing, sensationally closing the exhibition and driving the avant-garde art community underground. For the next twenty years arts practice in China fermented below the radar. Since 2000 the (western) international spotlight on Chinese contemporary art has been unprecedented while the arts machine within China exploded. Today, the volatility of the current global financial crisis has seen a dramatic deflation of the Chinese art market.

It is against the backdrop of worldwide economic malaise that Jin Jiangbo presents his most recent series of photographic works.  Begun in late 2008 he offers an immediate response to the far reaching economic, political and cultural impacts of the ‘Great Economic Retreat’ taking place in China today.

As the Govett-Brewster’s 2009 International Artist in Residence Jin Jiangbo will also explore similar concerns within a New Zealand context through a month-long residency in Taranaki.

Opening 13 June 2009, Photo hiStories traces the documentary approaches of New Zealand photographers Mark Adams, Bruce Connew and John Miller. In the context of globalisation the representation of the real has assumed new relevance. World political and economic crises and the failure of mainstream media to deal with current events have prompted a renewed interest in social reality and its documentary mediation.

The photographers in this exhibition have chosen to narrate their own stories with distinctive methods of representation and through the conscious investigation of overlooked and precarious histories.

Employing strategies of political engagement, solidarity and activism, they offer different approaches: the research-based photo essays engaging with our Pacific postcolonial history by Mark Adams; the investigation of behaviour and control that surface in everyday life in a globalised world by Bruce Connew; and the street protests scenes tracing four decades of Māori political history by John Miller.

Curated by the Govett-Brewster’s Curator, Contemporary Art, Mercedes Vicente, this exhibition examines these documentary approaches in the context of globalised media and an expanding contemporary art practice.

Also showing is Mieke Gerritzen’s Beautiful World from 4 July to 6 September 2009. Described by its maker as a ‘Typo Film’, a film to read or typography to look at, Beautiful World takes apart text, language and music to become a visual machine for the manipulation of the word.

A digital, design and ideas innovator based in the Netherlands, Gerritzen says Beautiful World is; ”A film about a visual language of signs, codes and trends with the goal of deploying products, visions, statements, politics, subcultures and everything possible in the name of visible economic growth”.

With its pulsing bombardment of image, text and sound, Beautiful World confronts globalisation, economic prowess and the insidious aesthetics of consumer society.  Beautiful World is curated by Rhana Devenport.

The winter suite of exhibitions is presented with generous support from Asia New Zealand Foundation, Two Rooms, Radio Network Taranaki, and Te Kairanga Wines. The Govett-Brewster’s Artist in Residence programme is offered in partnership with Western Institute of Technology at Taranaki and with support from Creative New Zealand. 

China in Four Seasons: Jin Jiangbo

 4 July – 6 September 2009

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