Intervention:
Colloquium series at the Contemporary Art Annex
10 November - 10 December 2000
A comprehensive survey exhibition of the most experimental and subversive period in New
Zealand art history. Intervention will represent Post-Object and Performance Art in
New Zealand from 1970 to 1985 with a selection of photo-panels, slide sequences,
artefacts, ephemera and video programmes. Building on the initiatives of the exhibition
'Action Replay' held by the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth and Artspace,
Auckland in 1988, Intervention will scope the significant themes of this movement
and re-contextualise the work within a critical discourse.
The exhibition will aim to express the sense of dynamism, energy and social
consciousness of the times and contribute to the research and documentation of this little
known field of practice. Original and secondary visual material will be displayed, some
for the first time, from the performance work of Jim Allen, Colleen Anstey, Bruce Barber,
Linda Buis, John Cousins, Phil Dadson, Andrew Drummond, Di ffrench, Adrian Hall, Gray
Nicoll, Peter Roche and Nick Spill. Many of these artists, including local artist and
lecturer Andrew Drummond and performance artist and photographer the late Di ffrench,
focused on environmental and political concerns in their work, investigating the
relationship between the body and the land whilst challenging traditional gender
constructs.
Intervention will be supported by a comprehensive, colour catalogue with
contributions by Bruce Barber, Blair French, Professor Tony Green, Jennifer Hay and Nick
Spill; a video programme situated in the Arts Centre and an experimental project by
internationally renowned inter-media artist Bruce Barber. Barber's Squatlin is an
interactive site comprised of a sparsely furnished room with a computer. The room will be
declared a squat during the exhibition and visitors will be encouraged to occupy the space
to collaborate on the production of a novel to be subsequently published on the web and
linked to other Squat sites throughout the world. The video programme will document
certain pivotal, ground-breaking performances of the period including work by Jim Allen,
Phil Dadson and 'From Scratch', Andrew Drummond, Gray Nicoll and Clare Fergusson.
Belinda Jones
This exhibition was held at the Robert McDougall Contemporary Art Annex in the Arts Centre.
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