Last weekend, Forever Tomorrow: Chinese Art Now opened at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. Curated by Hutch Wilco, the exhibition is the first major survey of Chinese contemporary art to be shown in Aotearoa.
Split into four connected themes, and showing 67 works by 42 artists and collectives, Forever Tomorrow traverses through four decades of accelerated major transformation in China, examining the experiences of artists from China’s Reform and opening up in 1978 to the present day.
The first theme, Stones From Other Mountains, explores artists' experiments with the body as action, the instability of language, and the capacity of photography, performance, and moving image to propose realities post-Reform. In the second, People Mountain People Sea, artists are seen turning their attention to the ground beneath their feet: connecting with the land amongst the changing landscapes around them and a period of mass migration to China’s cities. The third, Tender Revolutions, looks inward to private lives, attitudes towards intimacy and sexuality, and personal expression. And the fourth and final, In the Clouded Realms, sees artists addressing the architecture of the internet and the behaviours it elicits, navigating the rapidly developing digital era.
Merging China’s history and the lived experiences of these artists, the works in Forever Tomorrow seek to subvert the idea of China as exceptional, proposing, rather, a shared global experience, that of living in a state of forever tomorrow.
Sof caught up with curator of the show, Hutch Wilco, about Forever Tomorrow: Chinese Art Now and his curatorial process.
Today we had Olivia Reeves come in for Fancy New Band!
Olivia Reeves Is a young independent indie/rock artist from Tāmaki Makaurau who has worked her way through the competition sphere; Winning solo/duo for New Found Sound and being a two time finalist for Play It Strange!
Her set today was unlike anything else we've heard from her as she leans into are more heavy yet catchy guitar sound.
Antonia Barnett McIntosh is a Tāmaki-based Composer, performer, sound artist, editor and curator. Her multidisciplinary practice often seeks out various modes of connection through collaboration. Collaborating between the threshold spaces of speech/music, performance/rehearsal, composition/writing. Drawing connections between mediums, finding this mutual thread between artistic outputs to build upon. Often working with musicians, dancers, poets, visual artists, and Filmmakers.
In her current exhibition at RM, A Ponder of Transported Local DelicaciesBarnett McIntosh presents a beautiful sound installation which comprises captured moments of field recordings, and speech. Applying this musical thought to speech, that approaches speech as an instrument in istelf—tunning into its inherent musicality. Reflecting on this in-between state of the live and the documented dwelling in one's mind and body.
The sound work itself is dispersed across four channels, creating a dynamic sonic landscape that morphs and shifts, as one moves around the space. Alongside the sound installation Barnett McIntosh offers this secondary mode of documentation within the show text, through a piece of writing, by writer Lisa Samuels. Samuels will also be involved in a collaborative activation of the gallery space with Barnett McIntosh, through a series of performances. Emphasising the active liveliness of the gallery space and the circulative artistic discourse.
Maya caught up with Antonia about the show, as well as her overall practice.
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