DESIGNS FOR LIVING

Long Live the Modern New Zealand’s New Architecture, 1904-1984

Mladen Bizumic From Cube To Ball (Chapter 2)

Lisa Crowley National Projects

Louise Menzies Letters to Students of the Radiant Life

Adam Art Gallery

Victoria University of Wellington

23 October—17 December 2010 / 25 January—6 March 2011

Opening this Friday 22 October 2010, 6pm

Jonathan Mane-Wheoki, Professor of Fine Arts and Head of School Elam School of Fine Arts, National Institute of Creative Arts and Industries, The University of Auckland will open the exhibitions.
The winner of the 2010 Chartwell Trust Student Art Writing Prize will also be announced.

Designs for Living is a suite of four exhibitions that revisit twentieth-century modernism as it took shape in New Zealand. Drawing on visual and archival material and our built heritage, these projects seek to document certain features of this important artistic, architectural, social, technological and material legacy.

Designs for Living has been developed around Long Live the Modern: New Zealand’s New Architecture, 1904-1984, the exhibition curated by Julia Gatley and Bill McKay and toured by the Gus Fisher Gallery, The University of Auckland, brings to attention key buildings that have been identified as crucial to our modernist history. Organised under the aegis of DOCOMOMO, a world-wide organisation dedicated to documenting the achievements of the modern movement in architecture, the show draws attention to the particular contribution of New Zealand architecture to this project.

To complement this exhibition, the Adam Art Gallery has invited three New Zealand artists to present chapters from their ongoing research into New Zealand’s modern history. Deploying different mediums and forms, and addressing strikingly different aspects of this legacy, artists Mladen Bizumic, Lisa Crowley and Louise Menzies offer richly various responses to modernism’s social and artistic ideals.

This exhibition is accompanied by a public programme of symposia, artist talks, and tours designed to provide a platform for critical discussion and enhance engagement with the exhibition http://www.adamartgallery.org.nz/calendar/

Artist Talk Mladen Bizumic and Robin Skinner in conversation

Adam Art Gallery

Saturday 23 October 2010, 11.30am

New Zealand artist Mladen Bizumic, currently based in Vienna and in Wellington to discuss his latest project, From Ball to Cube (Chapter 2), pays tribute to the modernist designs of Ernst Plischke, an Viennese architect who made a significant impact on Wellington’s built environment. In conversation with Robin Skinner, architectural historian at Victoria University of Wellington’s School of Architecture and Design, they pose questions about the relocation of European modernist principles to New Zealand as first undertaken by Plischke in the mid-20th century and as now performed by Bizumic in the second decade of the 21st.

If you require further information please contact Laura Preston.

Email: laura.preston@vuw.ac.nz Phone: +64 4 463 5229

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Adam Art Gallery

Victoria University of Wellington

Gate 3, Kelburn Parade

PO Box 600

Wellington 6140

New Zealand

ph +64 4 4635229

fax +64 4 4635024

OPEN Tuesday – Sunday, 11am – 5pm (closed only on Monday)

FREE ENTRY

www.adamartgallery.org.nz