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Tao Wells’ has created performances and temporary work in a variety of media in galleries and spaces nationally and internationally. For Letting Space he will take on a more public residency by opening The Beneficiary’s Office in the business district to present his performance ‘Inuit Time’, an examination of language: “When the rich rip off the system it’s called business.” - Tao Wells
https://thebigidea.nz/stories/artists-to-revalue-vacant-space
Artists to Revalue Vacant Space
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Four new projects have been commissioned in the Letting Space public art series run in vacant commercial sites in Wellington.
Four new projects have been commissioned in the Letting Space public art series run in vacant commercial sites in Wellington.
Following on from the attention grabbing Free Store by Kim Paton in the city’s Ghuznee Street in May, which saw food distributed for free, curators Mark Amery and Sophie Jerram say the next round of artworks, supported by Creative New Zealand, include an unemployment office, and a real estate showroom for apartments on Mars.
“The projects all revalue things which have been regarded as worthless,” say Jerram and Amery.
“The usefulness of unemployment, the beauty of throwaway packaging, the past history of commercial real estate and the potential for occupation of Mars, all these projects cunningly analyse what is typically considered unuseful and is lying fallow.”
The next two projects to run will be The Beneficiary’s Office by Tao Wells in October and Taking Stock by Eve Armstrong in November. They will be followed by projects by Bronwyn Holloway-Smith and Colin Hodson in 2011.
Tao Wells’ has created performances and temporary work in a variety of media in galleries and spaces nationally and internationally. For Letting Space he will take on a more public residency by opening The Beneficiary’s Office in the business district to present his performance ‘Inuit Time’, an examination of language: “When the rich rip off the system it’s called business.”
Arts Foundation New Generation award-winning artist Eve Armstrong’s Taking Stock sees the collection and transportation in the Wellington CBD of clear and milky white product packaging to then construct an enormous sculpture in a Wellington showroom.
“Creating a sublime retail display landscape with all the seductive qualities of the shop display,” say Jerram and Amery, “the work will provide a creative stocktake of the materials that surround goods – the sort that you usually have to rip apart to get to the goodies.”
The next two projects will look to both the future and the past. Bronwyn Holloway-Smith plans to construct a real estate showroom for an apartment complex on Mars, while filmmaker Colin Hodson will create a light based work to explore the value of commercial realty as empty malleable space, but as also concealing property’s rich histories.
These four projects follow on from two projects in the Letting Space series earlier in 2010, Dugal McKinnon’s Popular Archaeology (141 Willis St) and Kim Paton’s Free Store (38 Ghuznee St). Letting Space also staged the sell-out Urban Dream Brokerage at City Gallery, a spirited discussion and series of pitches between artists and property managers on creative uses for vacant commercial property.
Letting Space is a public art programme that seeks to transform the relationship between artists, property developers and their city. It commissions temporary art works from leading New Zealand contemporary artists for commercial CBD spaces. Letting Space is being run under the auspices of the Wellington Independent Arts Trust, established in 2009 to support experienced Wellington arts managers by providing an umbrella for significant independent arts projects across film, theatre, visual art, dance and literature.
Further information on upcoming projects and other Letting Space events and information can be found at www.lettingspace.org.nz, where there is also currently running as a blog ‘Realty Pitch’ a series of short pitches for the creative use of vacant space by artists.
Really old white towels, on the line. Photographs, Tao Wells.
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