New York Artist Tony Oursler’s Work On Show

New York Artist Tony Oursler’s Work On Show As Part of Populate!

Tony Oursler Sang 2008. Fibreglass and gesso, audio/video projection. Courtesy of the artist, Jensen Sydney and Fox/Jensen Auckland

World-renowned American video artist Tony Oursler’s fantastically strange, but inescapably human, works are on show in the city as part of Christchurch Art Gallery’s Populate! programme.

This is the first time that the New York-based Oursler has had work exhibited in Christchurch. Bright Burn Want is one of 20 exhibitions and presentations that have been popping up around the central city as part of the Populate! programme, held to celebrate the Gallery’s tenth birthday this weekend.

Oursler’s art encompasses a range of media, including video, sculpture, installation and performance. He has been credited with liberating video art from the screen and imbuing it with ‘the fluidity of water’.

Gallery director Jenny Harper is thrilled Christchurch residents and visitors to the city will be able to see work from an artist of Oursler’s calibre. He has exhibited in prestigious institutions around the world including New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum of American Art, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and Tate Liverpool.

“From neurotic talking heads to monstrous outdoor projections, Bright Burn Want offers an unforgettable insight into Oursler’s parallel universe. His grotesque, morphing faces and accompanying tragicomic dialogues invite both our discomfort and our empathy.”

Four works are located at 212 Madras Street, with two more projections on the east wall of Christchurch Art Gallery and the corner of Oxford Terrace and Gloucester Street.

Curator Felicity Milburn encourages people to explore all of the works in the exhibition.

“Out front at 212 Madras Street is Incandescence, an oddly dysfunctional light bulb that stutters along to a classic Oursler monologue. Upstairs, the Gallery’s exhibition space is inhabited by three of his most unsettling biomorphic works – Spectar, Sang and Tracey Vision Doll.

“When darkness falls, Fist and Head (Knocking) make compelling additions to the city’s nocturnal landscape, and will be running seven days a week between 6pm and 10pm.”

Bright Burn Want will run from 11 May until 30 June.

For more information about the Gallery’s Populate! programme, including the community events being held this weekend (11 and 12 May), visit www.christchurchartgallery.org.nz

ENDS

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