Invited Artists, Theorists & Curators - Aotearoa New Zealand

Lisa Reihana

Lisa Reihana weaves together contemporary urban culture with Maori concepts and art practices to invent new frameworks and original forms. Variously described as a Maori multimedia artist, experimental film maker, animator, video artist, installation artist, textile artist and storyteller, Lisa Reihana defies easy definition. A common thread throughout her work is the use of the sensory forms – image, pattern, textile and sound – to move across confines and to create artworks that are touchstones of a deeper cultural dynamic. She has an impressive exhibition record both locally and internationally, representing New Zealand in the 2000 Sydney Biennale, the Noumea Biennale in 2002, and the Asia Pacific Triennial in 1996 and 2003.

http://www.lisareihana.com/

Stella Brennan

Stella Brennan is an Auckland-based artist, writer and curator. She is co-founder of Aotearoa Digital Arts (www.aotearoadigitalarts.org.nz), New Zealand’s only discussion list dedicated to New Media Art. 

Her work examines technology, obsolescence and utopianism. Recent projects include White Wall/Black Hole, shown at the 2006 Sydney Biennale, a video exploring the 1979 Erebus Disaster (when an Air New Zealand plane crashed into the Antarctic mountain) and Wet Social Sculpture, an installation featuring whale song, psychedelic film and a fully operational spa pool, which was nominated for the 2006 Walters Prize, New Zealand’s most prestigious art award.  Her work South Pacific premiered at the 2007 Auckland International Film Festival, and is included in this year’s Liverpool Biennale.

She is represented by Starkwhite, Auckland (www.starkwhite.co.nz). Stella lectures at AUT University.  Her website is at: http://www.stella.net.nz

Rachael Rakena

(Ngāi Tahu, Ngā Puhi, Ngāti Pākehā) Born in Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand, 1969. Rakena works with a range of media from digital stills and video, to installation, sound and performance in order to explore ideas about iwi (clan-based) identity, and the subjects dis/embodiment in both digital and water spaces. She works primarily with video and often in collaboration. Currently lecturing in the Bachelor of M?ori Visual Arts at Massey University in Palmerston North, Aotearoa New Zealand, her work has been included in: Aniwaniwa, Collateral Events, Venice Biennale, Italy, 2007 and International Festival of Arts, City Gallery Wellington, 2008; Dateline, NBK, Berlin, Germany, 2007; Telecom Prospect: New Art New Zealand, City Gallery Wellington, 2007; Mo Tatou; Ngai Tahu Whanui. Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand, 2006-8; Zones of Contact; 2006 Biennale of Sydney at Museum of Contemporary Art; Container Culture in ZeroOne: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge, San Jose, California, 2006; HIGH TIDE: currents in contemporary Australasian art, Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland, and Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, Lithuania, 2006; Pasifika Styles, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge, UK, 2006-8; PLAY: Portraiture and Performance in Recent Video Art from Australia and NZ at Adam Art Gallery, Wellington and PICA, Perth,  Australia, 2005-6; L’art urbain du Pacifique (Urban art from the Pacific) Saint Auvent, and San Tropez, France, 2005; Taonga Whanau, SOFA Gallery, Christchurch, NZ , 2005; Face Value: video portraiture from the Pacific at Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney, and Museum of Brisbane, 2005; The Greenhouse: multimedia art from New Zealand at Medienwechsel 3, Frankfurt, Germany, 2004; Lightscape inSCAPE 04, Cathedral Square, Christchurch, 2004; Travelling Light: collaborative projects by Pacific artists, Performance Space, Sydney, 2004; Te Puāwai o Ngāi Tahu at Christchurch Art Gallery, 2003; Whare in SCAPE 02, Christchurch, 2002, and Adelaide Festival, 2004; Traffic: crossing currents in indigenous photomedia at the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney, 2003; Techno Māori: Māori Art in the Digital Age at City Gallery Wellington, 2001.

Danny Butt

Danny Butt <http://www.dannybutt.net> is currently a lecturer at ELAM School of Fine Arts at Auckland University and a partner at Suma Media Consulting, who provide consulting, facilitation and research services to organisations adapting to new media and convergent environments in the Asia Pacific.

Previously, he was founding Director of the Creative Industries Research Centre at the Waikato Institute of Technology, Hamilton, New Zealand where he also lectured in digital media and established the Digital Media Design programme. His publications cover the information society, new media arts, and cross-cultural research, and he has delivered a number of invited presentations at international conferences in these fields.

He also acted as a consultant to the United Nations Development Program’s Asia Pacific Development Information Program (UNDP-APDIP) on Internet governance; and is editor of the book Internet Governance: Asia Pacific Perspectives (Elsevier 2006). He is on the Working Editorial Committee for Digital Review of Asia Pacific, the definitive reference for information technologies for socio-economic development in the region, and the only New Zealand member of the ORBICOM International Network of UNESCO Chairs in Communications. He recently served as Chair of the Place, Ground and Practice Working Group for the Pacific Rim New Media Summit, International Symposium on Electronic Art in San Jose, 2006 (ISEA2006). He also serves on the advisory board for a number of international festivals and publications.

Before working in the academy, Danny held a range of positions in the music, publishing, new media, contemporary arts, and advertising industries, including consulting and strategy work for leading Australasian media companies such as The Radio Network, Saatchi and Saatchi New Zealand, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. For a number of years he was on the facilitation board for Fibreculture, the Australian network for Internet research and theory. His research interests centre on the social impact of new media technologies; colonisation and settler culture; and the development of the creative industries sector in the Asia-Pacific region.

Herman Pi’ikea Clarke

Currently lecturing at Massey University (Palmerston North campus) Hawaiian born Pi’ikea Clarke’s doctoral dissertation was titled "Kukulu Kauhale o Limaloa: A Kanaka Maoli Culture Based Approach to Education through Visual Studies" and prioritised indigenous Hawaiian knowledge, epistemology and visual culture while developing an indigenous Hawaiian approach to teaching and knowledge construction using visual art. Clarke is an exhibiting artist working predominantly with print media, and is performing at WOMAD in 2008 as member of the Wellington International Ukele Orchestra.

Sean Kerr

Sean Kerr is a Lecturer in Intermedia and Time Based Arts at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and practices as a Professional Visual Artist and Freelance Curator. Sean has strong interests in sound and its relationship to image, pop culture and visual art. He explores these themes in various mediums from installation to live performance to painting to web.

His installation work has been included in numerous national and international shows such as the trans-Tasman touring exhibition Close Quarters; the minimalist massacre part 2, Physics Room, Christchurch; abstractor II, Southern Exposure Art Gallery, San Francisco; STACKER Artspace, Sydney; and Telecom Prospect 2001, City Gallery Wellington.

Sean Kerr was the curator of Rapid, an exhibition of speed art at Artspace, Auckland and the Dunedin Public Art Gallery; and re_WORKED, a show of industrial films from the New Zealand Film Archives manipulated and re-constructed by seven new media artists. His web work has been published on various gallery sites and publication / new media sites. His project site http://seankerr.net presents current projects as well as an archive of previous works.

Sean is active within the New Zealand and Australian arts community; he was one of the main instigators in setting up the Physics Room and establishing it’s annual funding. Kerr also acts as a new media / visual art consultant and generously helps other artists, artist run spaces and institutions working with new technology.

Natalie Robertson

Natalie Robertson(Ngati Porou, Clan Donnachaidh) was born at the foot of Putauaki Maunga and raised in Kawerau, Bay of Plenty. Established as an exhibiting photographic artist and experienced educator, Natalie is currently Post-graduate Co-ordinator Maori and Pasifika at AUT University. Over the past decade Natalie has been making photographic and moving image works that contest colonial  survey mapping practices and explore impacts on the oral mapping,  cultural landscape and knowledge practices of Maori. Natalie has recently been creating moving image works that explore oral  storytelling through moteatea [traditional chant], waiata [song] and  korero [talk] about topical political issues, with a particular focus  on environmental and cultural injustice.

Natalie has exhibited extensively in public institutions throughout  the Pacific and internationally, most recently in Geomatics and  Ecomatics: Three Stories at the Third Shanghai International Science  and Art Exposition, Pudong Expo, Shanghai and Our People, Our Land,  Our Images – International Indigenous Photography at the Burke  Museum, Seattle and a solo show at the Whakatane Museum. Her work is held in many significant public collections including the Museum of  New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and the Auckland City Art Gallery.

New Zealand artists invited from the open call include: Alex Monteith; Naomi Lamb; Caro McCaw; and Jon Bywater.