From our Beautiful Square considers dualities of time and interiority by reflecting on a period of global lockdown with artworks that consider the nuances of time, change and movement. Featuring major new site-responsive commissions by leading Aotearoa New Zealand based artists and pivotal works by significant artists internationally, this exhibition foregrounds the importance of contemplative moments and responses through paint, sculpture, sound and moving image.
In different ways, all of the artist’s works in this exhibition address the collective experience of restricted movement, both physically and psychologically, offering an opportunity to rethink ideas of locality. It is by looking to their immediate surroundings, and choosing the quiet, slow and meditative, that these artists grapple with a sense of space as one that is both individual, shared and part of a wider global context.
With artworks that evolve throughout the exhibition’s duration, From our Beautiful Square explores the ability, or lack thereof, to move, shift and reconfigure the structures around us. As much of the world watches from within their own squares, the exhibition and its contents embrace a shifting visual territory where nodes of transition become routine.
This exhibition includes major new site-responsive commissions by Jeremy Leatinu’u, Salome Tanuvasa and Amy Jean Barnett.
Exhibition open Tuesday – Friday 10 - 5, Saturday 10 – 4
Credit photo: Lucy Gunning, Climbing Around My Room, 1993 (production still), video installation, 7:30 minutes. Courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York.
Credit photo: Salome Tanuvasa, Untitled, 2021, acrylic on unstretched canvas. Photography by Kallan MacLeod.
Credit photo: Hiraki Sawa, Dwelling, 2002 (video still). Hiraki Sawa. Courtesy James Cohan, New York.
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