Talking 'bout the next art-star generation

By ANDREW CLIFFORD

For anyone interested in art, as with any area, it pays to keep abreast of trends and ideas. It is one thing to read international magazines and visit shows such as the Sydney or Venice Biennale - but to really see where things are headed, the action is happening in the art schools, where the next generation of art-stars are incubating.

However, no matter how intently an eager collector or dealer might seek out emerging talent, no diary can cope with the congestion of graduate shows that vie for your attention as the academic year draws to a close.

It has become popular for some pro-active galleries to do the leg-work for you, sending their curators around the country to catch the pulse of the year's emerging talent and present it in a convenient one-stop exhibition.

But times are changing. Whereas the luckier graduates would once hope for a show at one of the increasing number of small, artist-run galleries, many are now being picked up by dealer galleries directly from art school.

And with larger institutions such as New Plymouth's Govett Brewster and Wellington City Gallery getting in on the act with state-of-the-nation what's-hot survey shows such as Break and Prospect, it is becoming difficult to keep up.

Artspace's annual new-artist exhibition has become a tradition, and this year the job of selecting New Zealand's most interesting emerging talent was given to young curator Tessa Giblin.

The changing environment for new artists played an important role in the direction she took: "It is a strange thing, and a lot of the dealer galleries are working with a lot of new artists ... Anna Miles, Michael Lett ... That's one of the reasons I wanted to curate this show around a concept, because a lot of the artist-run spaces do the new-artist show really well."

Giblin, as a relatively recent art-school graduate, found herself at an advantage in assessing her own peer group.

"I think it is quite a nice thing to be of the same generation and curating it because you're not standing aloft and saying, 'Ooh, look at what they're doing'. You can get in among them and do it with them.

"If the artists are into the idea, I really enjoy being able to collaborate with them and push the ideas and create a discussion, as you would with a peer in the studio, and for them to be able to come to the most solid conclusion for their work.

"That's how I like to work and I think being the same age and having gone through the same experiences sometimes makes it easier for them to let me as well."

Opening the same week as Artspace's exhibition was Objectspace's Left at the Members Lounge, from emerging curators Rachel Gibbons, Lucy Hammonds and Sean Duxfield, who found surveying their own generation particularly interesting.

"The whole process has felt like we're working within our peer group, which is an unusual situation to be in as a curator, writer or a cultural commentator," Hammonds says.

Gibbons says: "You didn't feel like you were asking a favour. If you were talking to an established artist, being an emerging curator you do feel like you're asking a favour."

For new gallery Objectspace, not only was this a survey of new object-making, it was also their first official show, so it provided an important launching point.

"We were thinking that our own first curated show should be quite directional," gallery director Philip Clarke says.

"It was us putting our mark on the ground. We wanted to say something about what Objectspace is about, which is around new directions and particularly the discourse around making. In a broad sense, we were interested in new approaches to object-making, so it wasn't exactly emerging artists. But that was a sort of sub-theme because new directions probably would be coming from younger people."

What Objectspace's appointed curators discovered in their search was that a lot of artists had a strong awareness of the traditions of different craft arts and a healthy respect for their established predecessors (The Members Lounge) but were taking those traditions in new directions.

Most notably, they found a lot of craft was informed by the conceptual approaches more typical of fine arts, and artists more associated with the fine arts who had borrowed from craft traditions.

Hammonds: "We felt like we didn't want to buy too much into that distinction between applied and fine arts or visual arts and sculpture and craft.

"I get the feeling that among our peer group of artists it's less of an issue than the preceding group."

Giblin also found artists with a strong self-awareness of the conditions within which their work exists, questioning institutional confines and the social structures that underpin the art world.

This is not necessarily typical of today's generation - Giblin cites Marcel Duchamp, Billy Apple, et al and Dane Mitchell (showing at Starkwhite) as key precedents - but it is a timely discussion as many student artists around the country contemplate the industry they are about to enter.

Auckland artist Kah-Bee Chow is one of the first in whom Giblin took an interest. "Kah-Bee's work involved sending out proposals to artist-run spaces - marriage proposals. It is really honest about her situation in the art world at this time."

Giblin toured New Zealand's galleries and art departments and found a savvy group emerging, whose work focused on the conditions they would have to negotiate.

"When I was going into universities I got so excited when I saw people who had that in their practice - that they were already aware of those powers, that they were already finding their own way to negotiate within it. To be aware of that is such an empowering thing.

"Then I went to Wellington and it was, like, 'Man, that Beehive has a lot to answer for. All of these people are really strongly politicised.'

"To group all these people together is very powerful for their future because they can then look back at it and say, 'Here's a show which illustrates what I'm on about in my practice and here are some other people who can flesh that out for me.

"But also, if a viewer comes in and sees these people questioning the art world around them, maybe they will as well."

Visual art

*What: The Bed You Lie In

*Where and when: Artspace, 300 Karangahape Rd

*What: Left at the Members Lounge

*Where and when: Objectspace, 8 Ponsonby Rd