PRESS RELEASE

City Gallery Wellington’s Flagship Exhibition
Telecom Prospect 2007: New Art New Zealand

City Gallery Wellington launches its flagship Telecom Prospect 2007: New Art New Zealand in February 2007. Showcasing the new and the familiar, the exhibition surveys the work by over 30 New Zealand artists from the last three years.

“The Telecom Prospect series has become the country’s largest and most exciting contemporary New Zealand art event,” says Gallery director Paula Savage. “Critics and Gallery visitors alike have high expectations of this much-anticipated and debated, often provocative exhibition.”

“The thematic clusters shaping the exhibition have arisen out of my observations of and queries about current developments in New Zealand art” says exhibition curator Heather Galbraith. “Viewing works, meeting artists and discussing the project with folk all over New Zealand during the last sixteen months has been incredibly stimulating. Reaching the final selection of artists and projects has been challenging, as the climate of making is so lively. The exhibition does not attempt to be an exhaustive national survey – an impossibility when artists and their work are constantly evolving, but rather it aims to be a considered proposition; this is work that acutely interests me, what about you?”

The exhibition will also be accompanied by a substantial publication to be released a short way into the exhibition. There will be a selection of artist’ publications and limited edition art works for sale in the Artists’ Multiple Cabinets.

A highlight and dynamic new dimension of Telecom Prospect is the expanded events programme including artists’ performances, artists’ talks, panel discussions, curatorial tours, Late-night Sessions, hands-on workshops, lecture series on collecting art and New Zealand art history and a one-day symposium.

A full list of the exhibiting artists in Telecom Prospect 2007 will be released early December.

Heather Galbraith is City Gallery Wellington’s Senior Curator and Manager of Curatorial Programmes. She arrived back in New Zealand in 2004 after twelve years based in London, where she completed an MA in Contemporary Curating and worked as a freelance curator and as Exhibition Organiser at Camden Arts Centre, one of London’s leading public contemporary galleries.

This is City Gallery Wellington’s third Telecom Prospect: New Art New Zealand, the previous exhibitions took place in 2001 (curated by Lara Strongman) and 2004 (curated by Emma Bugden).

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