Visual Arts SmartsFest

Temporary installations in public spaces invite new encounters between audiences, art ,and landscapes while galleries across the city deliver exhibitions representing indigenous perspectives, ecological concerns, revolutionary empowerment and material innovation.

We can help you plan a VisArts Day out to visit several exhibitions in one day with a picnic under the Fale Ula.
For more information please contact schools@aaf.co.nz.

PLUS SmartsTalk on Monday 16th March
A unique opportunity for senior secondary and tertiary students to engage with five outstanding and diverse visual artists exhibiting in Auckland Arts Festival 2015: Lisa Reihana (NZ), Niki Hastings-McFall (NZ), Lonnie Hutchinson (NZ), Martin Awa Clarke Langdon (NZ) and Jonathan Jones (Australia).

These artists work in a context that incorporates aspects of globalisation, speaking of cultural interactions, including between Maori, Pacific and Pakeha traditions. Artists will share images of their work, drawing on themes of identity, representation and narrative, and discuss meanings of art, media and culture with an opportunity for Q&A at the end.

When: Monday 16^th March, 10.30 am – 12.30pm
Where: Auckland Art Gallery : Toi o Tamaki.
TO BOOK : e mail education@aucklandartgallery.govt.nz

FALE ULA
NIKI HASTINGS-MCFALL
AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND

Her work is provocative, beautiful and playful. - Helen Kedgley, Director - Pataka Art + Museum

Transforming Aotea Square using synthetic lei, one of her signature materials, Hastings-McFall 'polynises' the green space of Aotea Square into a vibrant, living artwork creating a site of contemplation, relaxation, gathering and sharing.

Fale Ula interprets traditional stories about the origins of the Samoan fale (house) as a gift formed in the heavens. The Samoan word ula represents the garland form commonly referred to as lei, encircling, adorning and celebrating.

The trees which encircle the green space of Aotea Square will have their trunks wrapped with synthetic lei, becoming living representations of the pou of a fale, supporting the sky as the roof.

Fale Ula is conceived as a shared space where people can gather, relax, share skills and conversation.

Check out an interview with Niki here.

Venue: TimeOut Festival Garden, Aotea Square
When: Daily 
FREE

TAI WHETUKI / HOUSE OF DEATH
LISA REIHANA
AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND

guidance recommended -  themes of mortality

Her art practice is a living expression of her faith in the legacy and power of kinship. Tanya Eccleston, New Zealand artist

Visually striking and emotionally provocative, Tai Whetuki is a powerful new video work by leading multi-media artist Lisa Reihana (Ngapuhi, Ngati Hine and Ngai Tu) which delves into Māori and Pacific cultural practices pertaining to death and mourning. Haunting and evocative images, accompanied by an elemental soundscape take us on a journey through the intensity and spectacle of communal mourning, in a reflection on grief and the transition of the spirit.
Groundbreaking and courageous, Lisa Reihana is internationally renowned as an artist working across both digital and physical platforms. 

Venue: TimeOut Festival Garden, Aotea Square
When: Daily
FREE

FIELD
ANGUS MUIR & ALEXANDRA HEANEY
AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND

Field is an ever-changing outdoor installation formed by a grid of mirrored towers.  Inescapably perspective-shifting, Field takes in the world around it, including the audience, and reflects it all back in visually stunning and provocative ways.
Playful, confounding and beautiful, Field makes you a key element in the art that you see, creating the perfect place for reflection on your relationship to the world around you.
Incorporating a surreal night-time light display Field never sleeps, working 24/7 throughout the Festival.   

Venue: Daldy Street, Waterfront
When: Daily
FREE

BILLY APPLE ®: THE ARTIST HAS TO LIVE LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE
NEW ZEALAND

" ...original, challenging and controversial? Billy Apple was part of a generation that pushed the boundaries of what it meant to be an artist."  Leanne Pooley, Documentary film director

Billy Apple was in London when British art went Pop in the 60s, in New York in the 70s when artists rejected the museum, and since the 80s has been right here, testing how far art can infiltrate life. Featuring everything from early pop and conceptual works to his latest investigations into branding and biomedicine, this is the largest and most comprehensive exhibition of his career and proves the extent to which Billy Apple has made art his life and life his art.

Venue: Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki
When: Saturday 14 March - Sunday 21 June, 10am to 5pm daily
FREE

EMORY DOUGLAS
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The work of Emory Douglas embodies revolutionary empowerment.  As Minister of Culture for The Black Panther Party, Douglas harnessed the power of images to create an artistic legacy of rebellion and hope. Alongside a selection of these iconic images Douglas collaborates with innovative arts organisation, Nga Rangatahi Toa, to create a new work from the streets of Mangere.

Venue: Mangere Arts Centre  Nga Tohu o Uenuku
When: Saturday 7 March Sunday 19 April  -Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm
FREE

JUDY MILLAR: MODEL WORLD
NEW ZEALAND/AOTEAROA

Building from her ground-breaking 2009 Venice Biennale installation, Judy Millar's recent works seek to defy gravity as they twist and contort in space, activating the surrounding architecture. Working on both exaggerated scale to build an overblown gesture, and scaled down works that pop up from walls and floor, Model World works with the slippages between painting, printing and three-dimensionality to provoke new experiences of looking and being in space.

Venue: TE URU WAITAKERE CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY
When: Thursday 12 February - Sunday 5 April
FREE

 A DELICATE BALANCE
THE KAURI PROJECT
AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND 

Inhabiting the space where concepts of art, science and cultural knowledge intersect, The Kauri Project examines the relationship between people and landscape, focusing on our unique and threatened indigenous kauri forest ecology.  Exploring how we listen and speak back to this environment, A Delicate Balance brings together artists from across the kauri region of Waikato, Auckland and Northland.

Venue: TE URU WAITAKERE CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY
When: Thursday 12 February - Sunday 5 April
FREE

 IOIOIOIOIO
TRACEY TAWHIAO, GEORGE NUKU, FRED HARRISON
AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND

Fresh from collaborations in Paris and Taipei, sculptor George Nuku (Ngati Kahungunu) and painter Tracey Tawhiao (Ngai te Rangi, Tuwharetoa, Whakatohea) are joined by musician Fred Harrison (Aitanga-a-Mate, Nga Puhi, Ngati Porou-Ki-Haretauenga). Interpreting concepts of sacred geometry through mātauranga Māori (knowledge originating from the ancestors) and incorporating the languages of sound and binary code, they depict the Creator, known in Te Ao Māori as IO.

Venue: TE URU WAITAKERE CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY
When: Thursday 12 February - Sunday 5 April
FREE

PAH: THE EXHIBITION
AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND

PAH is a remarkable multi-dimensional project weaving art, live music and dance at the Pah Homestead and Monte Cecilia Park. It is a unique collaboration between leading and emerging New Zealand artists, the Pā Collective.

PAH is a specially curated installation of artworks by painter Star Gossage, commissioned photographs and video by Solomon Mortimer, music/sound design by Gillian Whitehead with Russell Scoones and works from the Wallace Arts Trust Collection designed by Sean Coyle and Grant Hall to complement the live performance.

Venue: TSB Wallace Arts Centre, Pah Homestead, Hillsborough
When: Wednesday 11 March - Sunday 19 April
FREE

Workshops:
The Pah Homestead, TSB Bank Wallace Arts Centre will be offering special workshop sessions as part of this exhibition, including mixed media, photography and sound activities
Workshops will be available from 16 March – 2 April
Email: zoe.hoeberigs@wallaceartstrust.org.nz for more information.