Jim Allen, ‘Parangole Capes’, from Contact, 1974

Join us on the final weekend of Groundswell: Avant-Garde Auckland 1971-79 for a series of performances, talks and discussion.

Three of the earliest works of New Zealand performance art will be restaged in the exhibition and surrounding spaces. These historic works by Phil Dadson, Jim Allen and Kieran Lyons were first performed in 1974 for the exhibition Four Men in a Boat at Auckland Art Gallery and, as such, were some of the first public encounters with this new art form.

Artist and educator Jim Allen contributed vital energy in the development of experimental performance practices in Auckland in the 1970s, establishing strong visibility for sculpture. ‘Parangole Capes’, the second cycle of Allen’s 1974 work Contact, is re-staged by a contemporary generation of students. This re-staging of a single part of Contact creates an opportunity to tease out the meanings within this seminal work.