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When the Auckland Festival opens in March, Damien Hirst's celebrated shark in the tank will glide into town. But it will be a dinkier kind of species - a Lego shark in a Lego tank, created by The Little Artists, John Cake and Darren Neave, two British artists
who satirise the works of big art brands like Hirst, Andy Warhol, Tracey Emin and Salvador Dali.
The Little Artists' show, Art Crazy Nation, uses material such as Smurfs, Pictionary and toilet rolls to giggle at and subvert the dubious relationship between artists and celebrity, so often exploited by ad agencies. Art Crazy Nation, a combination of photography and sculpture, runs at the Seed Gallery in Newmarket from March 11-22.
The inclusion of British installation artist and film-maker Isaac Julien in the festival is a coup. Julien, whose work is held in major collections like the Tate Modern and the Guggenheim Collections, will create a photographic series, Te Tonga Tuturu/True South, in response to a journey through the Ureweras during a recent residency at Two Rooms in Newton. The exhibition will run at Two Rooms, March 5 to April 11.
Another strong element of the festival's visual arts programme is The Sacred Hart by Terry Urbahn, a video-sculpture installation at St Matthew-in-the-City. The Sacred Hart, exhibited this year at the Govett-Brewster Gallery in New Plymouth, Urbahn's hometown, is a 2 hour looped video recorded in the public bar of the city's iconic White Hart Hotel. It's described as "an immersive artwork ... like stumbling through a crowded pub". It can be seen at the church from March 9-12.
F For Fake is a group show at Te Tuhi (March 7 to April 26), curated by Emma Bugden, using Orson Welles' film of the same title as the starting point for a scrutiny of tricks, fakes and illusions. British artist Ray Lee's Siren, at Motat (March 14-22), is a sound-art installation expected to be one of the festival's big drawcards, having sold out at last year's Edinburgh Festival. Twenty-nine metal tripods with a loudspeaker at the end of each arm, lit up with small LEDs, create a 40-minute "choir of rotating sirens". The experience is, apparently, hypnotic.
Even Auckland's bus service will look different. Creative NZ Visual Arts Berlin Resident Sara Hughes is using her time there to turn the exterior of a bus into an artwork which will roam the streets during the festival, and stay on the roads for a few months afterwards. Artlink, on Saturday, March 21, also involves our bus service, with two Metrolink buses transporting passengers to 13 galleries.
Italian artist Paola Pivi gained international prominence at the 2003 Venice Biennale with her puzzling image of a donkey in a boat. Pivi, who says her "religion is kindness", uses animals regularly in her installations, to indicate benevolence. She will create a 24-hour, one-day installation for Auckland Art Gallery. The One-Day Sculpture Project is part of an ongoing series initiated by Massey University College of Creative Arts.
Mash Up, at Artspace from March 7-21, is an international group show curated by Brazilian Julia Rodrigues, as one of two exhibitions (the other is in Sao Paulo) looking at "how much of one culture can be communicated by words originally from another".
Also joining the visual arts programme will be Elam Art UpFront, showcasing a new generation of young artists in business premises along Shortland St; Ice Terrane, jewellery created by Kirsten Haydon in response to her 2005 Antarctic Arts Fellowship, at Objectspace; Trans-Form: The Abstract Art of Milan Mrkusich, a major survey at the Gus Fisher Gallery; Presentation/Representation, a touring survey of German photography at Bath St Gallery; and Factory of Found Clothing, a neo avant-garde collective from Russia dedicated to "social transformation through art".
This is a terrific lineup for next year's festival and the added bonus is that, aside from Siren, ticketed at a modest $20-30, and the Artbus and Artlink bus fares, all of these events are free. See aucklandfestival.co.nz.