Past Exhibitions - 2005/6
A Brief History of Time
Amy Howden-Chapman, Shay Launder, and Tao Wells
Curated by Kim Paton
18 October - 3 November 2006
Opening Tuesday 17 October 5.30 PM
The Engine Room is proud to present A Brief History of Time featuring Amy Howden-Chapman, Shay Launder, and Tao Wells. This exhibition brings together three Wellington artists exploring strategies for art making in a climate of increasing political environmentalism. Whether as skeptic or believer, the artists put forth personalised accounts, affronts, or asides to modern living. In a search for new responses to the way we experience the world, the artists in A Brief History of Time share an interest in new modes of material use, employing a resourcefulness and enterprise that expresses a local positioning in the context of the current global milieu. A Brief History of Time is curated by Engine Room gallery manager Kim Paton and is the final show in the Engine Room 2006 programme.
The Tour is Here
Photographs from the 1981 Springbok Tour
23 September - 13 October 2006
Opening September 22nd 5.30 PM. Introductory speech by Chris Laidlaw
The Engine Room in association with the 6th Biennial Expanding Documentary Conference is proud to present The Tour is Here, an exhibition of photographs from the 1981 Springbok Tour.
The Tour is Here was originally intended for exhibition at CHOGM in Melbourne in 1981. Intercepted in customs supposedly for fear of causing embarrassment to the New Zealand government, The Tour is Here missed the meeting but went on to tour the world with the United Nations for several years before returning to Aotearoa.
Featuring works from New Zealand’s leading photographers including Patrick Reynolds, Ans Westra, John Miller, Kapil Arn, Jim Bache, Steven Penny, and Mark Hantler. The Tour is Here provides an exciting opportunity for New Zealanders to view largely unseen works documenting one of the most significant events in New Zealand history.
More info HERE
Expanding Documentary programme HERE
Image: John Miller, “Marching to the Hamilton Game”
Famous Artwork
Curated by Paula Booker and J A Wallace
A Canary Gallery Exhibition
6 - 21 September 2006
Opening 5 September 5 PM
Featuring Andrew Barber, Paula Booker, Ben Buchanan, Kah Bee Chow, Tim Coster, Finn Ferrier, William Hsu, Gaelen Macdonald, Dane Mitchell, Ben Tankard, Erica van Zon, and J A Wallace
The exhibition features a small sample of notable, independent art makers in Auckland, New Zealand. The point of convergence for these artists is an artist-run space: the small, community driven Canary Gallery. Existent from March 2004 to August 2006, Canary’s short, vital life was characterized by a sense of community and criticality alongside looseness, open opinions and willingness to participate. Uniquely, Canary was run by a small team of directors, successfully avoiding a bureaucratic board structure.
Read more about the exhibition HERE
The Drawing Show
16 August - 1 September 2006
Opening 15 August 5.30 PM
CALL FOR DRAWINGS … The Engine Room wants your drawing… The Drawing Show opens on August 15 showcasing current Drawing Practices in the College of Creative Arts — inclusive and unjuried! All are welcome … Staff and Students. From underground to undergrad, from postgrad to posthumous…The Drawing Show hopes to provide a rich overview of DRAWING NOW, an opportunity for the various disciplines to meet, and to reappraise the variety and primacy of drawing in visual culture!
Uses for an Empty Room
Kaleb Bennett
In Uses for an Empty Room, Wellington artist Kaleb Bennett proposed to offer the Engine Room Gallery as a temporary space for those in need of night shelter during the weeks July 25-August 11. In reference to this proposal, a short series of public talks will take place at Massey University between August 1 - 11. Featuring the artist and guest speakers, these talks are intended as a forum in which the complex issues of space, homelessness, urban environments and institutional structures can be discussed. The Gallery itself will remain closed and empty from July 25 to August 11. During the period that the gallery is closed Kaleb Bennett and The Engine Room will develop a small publication for Uses for an Empty Room. This will be The Engine Room’s first publishing project. Information on the public talks organised for Uses for an Empty Room will follow.
Space Invaders
Group Exhibition
7 - 30 June 2006
Opening 6 June 5.30 PM
Featuring Arie Hellendoorn, Fran Denton, Tero Rajala, Leena Stowell, Nicky Sievert, and Justine Walker
Space Invaders invites six students from Massey University School of Fine Arts to participate in a residency-style occupation of The Engine Room. Based around notions of process and transformation, Space Invaders opens with a presentation of new works by each of the artists. During the course of the exhibition the artists will each alter, amend, and experiment with their individual works creating an exhibition that will evolve during the course of its four week duration. With an awareness of time-based elements, Space Invaders carries an emphasis less on the resolution of the work and more on the developments, processes, and transformation that will occur throughout the duration of the show.
List of works HERE
The opening celebration is generously supported by Bennetts Beer.
Persevertron
Peter Trevelyan
10 - 28 May 2006
The Engine Room is proud to present Persevertron, a new work by Peter Trevelyan.
Consisting of a large 'monitor' with thousands of LED lights, Persevertron occupies a virtual space that reacts to data input from an undecipherable keyboard. Encouraging visitors to interact with this keyboard, Persevertron mimics the language, aesthetics and culture of computers while being extremely low tech in an aim to shift the rituals and cultures of technology use just far enough from the commonplace to create questions and dialogue around them. The title Persevertron is derived from the word ‘perseveration’ - a physical form of Freudian slip. Here Trevelyan is interested in the repeated subconscious actions which give clues to a consciously denied subtext. Persevertron belongs to a series of work focusing on ideas surrounding the virtual, and human response to technology - ideas that have informed Trevelyan's work for the past two years. Persevertron is Trevelyan's third exhibition from this body of work, with two previous shows featuring large-scale works operated by motionnsensors. Trevelyan views this work as being "less paranoiac and concerned with surveillance, and more [concerned] with the consulting and semi divine aspects of our relationship with technology."
Peter Trevelyan completed his BFA in Sculpture at University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts in 2000, and is currently teaching Art at Wellington East Girls College.
The opening celebration is generously supported by Bennetts Beer.
Read a review by Thomasin Sleigh HERE
Public Dialogue Joseph Beuys
No. 10* Tao Wells
12 - 29 April 2006
Opening 11 April 2006 5.30 PM
The Engine Room in association with the New Zealand Film Archive presents a free public screening and discussion of Joseph Beuys’ 1974 video Public Dialogue Saturday 8 April at 2 PM. Joseph Beuys’ Public Dialogue is comprised of Beuys’ first public appearance in the USA and his difficult attempt to explain his ideas to the gathered public. In conjunction with this screening, Tao Wells, American academic and Conceptual artist, will be holding a public discussion to explore possible meanings behind Beuys' famous assertion that "Everyone is an artist."
This event will be followed by Tao Wells’ exhibition No. 10* at The Engine Room, which will include the re-screening of the original Beuys video as well as new findings generated from the public discussion.
Joseph Beuys (May 12, 1921 - January 23, 1986) was a German Conceptual artist who produced work in a number of forms including sculpture, performance art, video art and installations. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential European artists of the second half of the Twentieth Century and was a founding member of the first Green political party.
Tao Wells (b. 1972) is a Senior Tutor at Massey University College of Creative Arts and is the author of Learn Art: The Avant-Garde and Education and The New Avant-Garde: Issues From Art of the Seventies (2003) available at Massey University Library.
Read a review of the exhibition HERE
V.A.L.I.S.
Connie Samaras
Curated by John Di Stefano
14 - 31 March 2006
For more on this project, see the artist’s WEBSITE
Image: Connie Samaras, V.A.L.I.S. (vast active living intelligence system), 2005-07, “Day/Night Divide Polar Plateau”, archival inkjet print from film, 29 x 40", edition of 5
Engine Room Launched!
Tuesday 19 July 2005, 5-7 PM
PRESS RELEASE: THE ENGINE ROOM GALLERY LAUNCHED AT MASSEY UNIVERSITY, WELLINGTON
Massey University School of Fine Arts is pleased to announce the opening of The Engine Room gallery. Situated on campus above the now defunct engineering department mechanic pit, The Engine Room will be operating a full year program and will be open to the public Wednesday to Saturday 12pm - 4pm.
The Engine Room will be focused on developing as an important site within Wellington for the exhibition of diverse and interesting contemporary art practice from Aotearoa New Zealand and internationally.
The Engine Room celebrated its launch on July 19th with BYO Music, an interactive installation by Wellington-based artist Richard Reddaway. The show invited visitors to bring their own records and CDs and play them through a selection of Tetris-like speakers that were laid out in the gallery. Exhibited alongside a series of computer generated drawings and a scale model of the speakers explaining the packing instructions for the work, BYO Music carried a sensitivity to the overlap between art and design, echoing the Modernist concern of form over function.
The Engine Room is currently showing To There and Back Again: Paintings from Toowoomba. This exhibition completes an exchange between 4th year painting students from the Massey University School of Fine Arts and students of the University of Southern Queensland. To There and Back Again closes on August 26.
Opening on Wednesday 31st of August at 5.30pm is a solo show from Wellington-based artist, Kim Paton.
More on BYO Music HERE