Kieran Lyons, Superimpression, 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.

Kieran Lyons’ work Superimpression invites gallery visitors to join E-Z-Gro, a fictional corporate entity fabricated by the artist. Performed over one working day, in the original staging the artist and two attendants offered participants the opportunity to take on a temporary brand ‘stamp’ impression, while producing new company logos using an industrial metal workshop process. Lyons’ interest in sculpture as a form to think through corporate persona, industrial vs manual production processes, and the social role of technology is reflected in this contemporary re-staging.