Talk About Billy Apple at Adam Art Gallery

Two events this week will highlight the work of New Zealand artist Billy Apple, including a talk from the artist himself on Friday at the Adam Art Gallery.

What: Discussion - ‘Is less more? Debating Apple on Moore’. One Day Sculpture discussion.
When: Thursday 23 April 2009 5.30-7pm
Where: von Kohorn Room, Museum of Wellington, Queens Wharf. Free entry, all welcome.

About the discussion

Following on from Billy Apple’s One Day Sculpture, this discussion will pick up on Apple’s project, to assess the validity of his proposition “Less is Moore” and canvass the history of Moore’s sculpture and its place in his oeuvre. In association with the Museum of Wellington, this public forum will provide an opportunity for a range of key stakeholders to share their points of view and involve the public in debating the issues raised.

Panel speakers will include: Christina Barton (Director of the Adam Art Gallery and curator of the exhibition Billy Apple New York 1969-1973), Vikki Muxlow (Parks and Gardens, Wellington City Council); Jack Fry (Freelance conservator); Neil Plimmer (Wellington Sculpture Trust); Jeanne Macaskill (artist), Carolina Izzo (art conservator) chaired by David Cross (Litmus Research Initiative Director, Massey University).

One Day Sculpture is led by the Litmus Research Initiative, Massey University with UK curator Claire Doherty and realised in partnership with arts organisations across New Zealand.
Billy Apple’s One Day Sculpture project Less is Moore was commissioned by the Adam Art Gallery, Victoria University of Wellington.

What: Artist’s Talk - Billy Apple on New York.
When: Friday 24 April 12-1pm
Where: Adam Art Gallery

About the talk
Billy Apple is a conceptual artist who is known for his rigorous investigation of the sites, systems and social relations that structure the art world. After studying graphic design in London and contributing to early pop art in Britain he left for New York in 1964. Apple lived there until 1990 before returning to New Zealand, where he continues to work and exhibit widely. Over a career spanning 50 years he has produced objects, text pieces, photographs, installations and undertaken actions that test definitions of art, challenge the structuring suppositions of artistic identity, expose the workings of the art system and demonstrate art’s permeability to larger social, political and economic forces.

Join artist Billy Apple and exhibition curator and Director of the Adam Art Gallery, Christina Barton, for a tour of the exhibition Billy Apple New York 1969-1973, which focuses on the short but intense period in which Apple ran a small not-for-profit gallery at 161 West 23rd Street as a venue for his own work and for others who shared his ambition to test the definitions of art making and find new models that would serve as an alternative to the commercial gallery system. This will be a rare opportunity to hear first-hand what it was like to be in New York at this time and to gain insights into the alternative art scene that fostered the radical practices that were galvanising the art scene in New York in the early 1970s.

ENDS

© Scoop Media