4th Auckland Triennial curator announced

Media Release - 8 June 2009

Natasha Conland, Photo by Geoffrey Heath

Auckland Art Gallery is delighted to announce Natasha Conland as curator of the 4th Auckland Triennial, from 12 March to 20 June next year.

The Auckland Triennial is New Zealand’s leading international contemporary art exhibition.

Over 30 international artists feature in this multi-venue exhibition held once every three years.

A full programme of new art works, performances, international speakers and forums generates a lively space to experience art in the urban Auckland environment. The South Pacific location provides a unique context for viewing global art practice.

Founded in 2000, the Auckland Triennial has a strong history of artistic and critical engagement.

Conland firmly established her international reputation at the 2005 Venice Biennale where she curated New Zealand’s exhibit - et al’s the fundamental practice - with commissioner Gregory Burke.

Her diverse biennial experience includes co-curating the Cafe 2 project for South Korea’s 2006 Busan Biennale and co-curating the 2006 SCAPE Biennial of Art and Public Space in Christchurch, New Zealand.

She was one of 12 international ‘curatorial comrades’ appointed to the 2008 Sydney Biennale by artistic director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev. Since 2006, Conland has been curator of contemporary art at Auckland Art Gallery, where she curated the international group show Mystic Truths in 2007. This was followed by an invitation to join a forum of 10 young international curators in Paris.

Conland writes for a number of contemporary arts journals and catalogues in the Asia Pacific region and co-edits Reading Room, a contemporary arts journal published annually by the gallery’s E.H. McCormick Library.

Auckland Art Gallery director Chris Saines says, “Natasha is a curator with a unique understanding of the local and international contexts and an ability to address the form as well as the content of the Auckland Triennial with fresh thinking. Conland says “I feel very fortunate to be working on the 4th Auckland Triennial. It’s still a young event in an incredibly diverse art scene. Auckland is a city in which change is manifest and the Triennial provides a responsive platform for art within this environment.”

In developing the exhibition’s concept, preliminary research has taken her to Asia, the Middle East and Scandanvia. Full details of the concept will be released next month.

Conland will invite a group of international curatorial associates to participate in core aspects of the Triennial’s programme.

A comprehensive catalogue will be released during opening week, with full colour images, critical writing on the exhibition’s themes and profiles of artists and performances.

The 4th Auckland Triennial is proudly presented by Auckland Art Gallery in association

with major partner AUT University, AUT St Paul St Gallery and Artspace.

ENDS