Cardboard city to rise at Auckland Art Gallery – Project Another Country opens next weekend

Wednesday 11 April 2018

A collaborative art installation opening at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki on Saturday 21 April will see a city emerge from cardboard as artists and husband-and-wife team Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan present From Pillars to Posts: Project Another Country, 2018.

From Pillars to Posts: Project Another Country is a participatory artwork commissioned for the Gallery’s Todd Foundation Creative Learning Centre. It explores community, family, relocation and homemaking, and is part of an ongoing series of site-specific projects that use art-making to prompt conversations about what makes a home.

Using recycled cardboard boxes to create a model city, the artists invite collaboration by providing work space and materials for Gallery visitors to produce their own small cardboard houses which will be amassed into the installation. 

Auckland Art Gallery Director Rhana Devenport says, ‘The themes the Aquilizans explore and the discussions that their work evokes – surrounding migration, displacement and settlement – are so vitally relevant for Aucklanders today and for the city’s future. With 39 per cent of people living in the Auckland region having been born overseas, these are conversations that truly matter in today’s world.’

‘The Aquilizans have dedicated a large part of their careers to travelling and exploring the concept of “home” and “belonging” around the world. The Gallery is honoured to be the site of this newly commissioned project for Auckland.’

The very first cardboard houses to contribute to the installation will be made by Gallery visitors in a series of drop-in workshops being held in the upcoming school holidays. From Saturday 14 April, the Gallery invites the public to participate in daily art-making workshops. Participants will imagine their dream home and create it using recycled cardboard.

Public programme:

Project Another Country Art-making Workshops
Saturday 14 April to Sunday 29 April, 10.30am – 3.30pm daily

Gallery visitors are invited to take part in a community-based project led by the internationally acclaimed artists Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan. Participants are invited to drop in to art-making workshops where they will create their own home from recycled boxes, cardboard, tape and glue. These cardboard homes will then form part of the installation, From Pillars to Posts: Project Another Country, in the Gallery’s Creative Learning Centre and, later, Pillars: Project Another Country, 2018, a large-scale, suspended artwork to be installed in the Gallery’s North Atrium.

In Conversation: Artists Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan with Gallery Director Rhana Devenport
Sunday 22 April, 3pm

On Sunday 22 April, visitors to the Gallery will have the opportunity to hear artist couple Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan in conversation with Auckland Art Gallery Director Rhana Devenport, who has worked with the artists since 2009, as they discuss the collaborative artwork, Project Another Country.

For images and interviews contact:                            
Samantha McKegg, Communications Officer, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
M +64 21 548 480
E samantha.mckegg@aucklandartgallery.com

Exhibition details:

From Pillars to Posts: Project Another Country
When: Saturday 21 April to Sunday 16 September 2018 
            10am – 5pm daily

Admission:

New Zealand residents FREE
Members and Members Guests FREE (with valid Members card)
Children 12 & under FREE
International adults $20
International students $17 (with ID)

About the artists:

Alfredo Juan (born in Ballesteros, Cagayan Philippines in 1962) and Isabel Aquilizan (born in Manila, the Philippines in 1965) are currently based in Brisbane with their five children. The artist couple’s collaborative activities evolved within the spheres of family and community, including personal relationships and those they share with other artists. For the past ten years they have continuously collected fragments of their protracted Project Be-longing (1997–2007), an artistic collaboration spanning ten years. They are currently working on a new project entitled Another Country that talks about migration, dislocation, diaspora, adopting/adapting, settlement/resettlement, and identity.

The artists have participated in a number of international biennales and exhibitions including Art Basel Hong Kong, China (2018), Honolulu Biennial, Hawaii (2017), Audain Distinguished Artist Residency at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Vancouver (2017), Sundaram Tagore Gallery, New York (2016), ART MIX Ichihara Triennial, Japan (2014), Sharjah Biennial, UAE (2013), Asia Pacific Triennial, Australia (2009), Singapore Biennale (2008), Adelaide Biennial, Australia (2008), Biennale of Sydney (2006), the Third Echigo-Tsumari Triennale, Japan (2006), Gwangju Biennale, Korea (2004), La Biennale de Venezia, Italy (2003) and many others.

About the Todd Foundation Creative Learning Centre:

Explore, experiment, create and share in the Todd Foundation Creative Learning Centre. Located on the mezzanine level, the hands-on, family-friendly space is open daily 10am–5pm. The Creative Learning Centre is a favourite of many families with its interactive and exciting installations designed especially for kids, to help them discover art and how engaging it can be.

Each year, we commission artists to create a new installation for the space. Previous exhibitions have included Reuben Paterson (2011/12), Tiffany Singh (2012/13), Sean Kerr (2013/14), Wavelength (2014/15), created by Auckland Art Gallery in collaboration with AUT Colab, and Hole of Yellow Archipelago (2015/16), another collaboration by artist Judy Darragh, students at Balmoral Primary School and TurnSpace Collective from AUT University's Spatial Design department. The 2016/17 iteration Once Upon a Time in ART, explored historical paintings from the Gallery’s Mackelvie Collection. The latest installation was The obliteration room by one of the world’s most popular, well-loved artists, Yayoi Kusama.

Programmes in the Todd Foundation Creative Learning Centre are supported by Joyce Fisher Charitable Trust.