Thursday 4 May 2017
Shout Whisper Wail! The 2017 Chartwell Show opens on Saturday 20 May at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki with free entry.
The exhibition features 11 contemporary artists who use space, performance, sound, music and voice to emphasise the encounter between art and its audience.
The Chartwell Show is a three-yearly exhibition presented by Auckland Art Gallery which is dedicated to the Chartwell Collection and the work of the Chartwell Trust.
Auckland Art Gallery Director Rhana Devenport says Shout Whisper Wail! demonstrates the strength of the Chartwell Collection as well as the generous and spirited engagement the Trust has with artists and their support towards the making of new artworks.
‘To reflect these strengths, this year, curator Natasha Conland has balanced the exhibition of existing Chartwell Collection works with a range of fresh works by emerging and established artists,’ she says.
Shout Whisper Wail! considers the role voice plays in the work of each artist featured, and simultaneously asks visitors to reflect on how an artist might develop a particular way of calling to attention an issue or experience. To help express this, the exhibition showcases artists who use noise in their art – quite literally.
Conland, Auckland Art Gallery’s Curator of Contemporary Art, says while the idea of audience is often explored by cultural institutions and organisations, it’s more uncommon to explore how visual artists actively investigate and articulate the concept of ‘talking’ to an audience.
‘An artist’s conception of audience has the potential to be much more poetic, political and directly compelling, and this will be woven throughout this exhibition,’ she says.
The exhibition features new commissions by emerging New Zealand artists Juliet Carpenter and Biljana Popovic; a new installation by Auckland-based Janet Lilo; the first new work shown at the Gallery in 12 years by Jacqueline Fraser; and a new work by Australian artist Stuart Ringholt.
There are recent acquisitions not previously shown at the Gallery by New Zealand artists Luke Willis Thompson, Julian Dashper, et al. in collaboration with composer Samuel Holloway, Alicia Frankovich, and Australian artist Marco Fusinato. Marco Fusinato will also present his renowned Spectral Arrows performance at Auckland Art Gallery on Saturday 22 July.
In association with the exhibition a short experimental documentary has been commissioned which includes interviews with the artists to examine the themes of the exhibition.
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