Around Town and Abroad - DIGITAL EDITION
Manuel Rossner, Surprisingly This Rather Works, exhibition view, König Galerie, 2020. Courtesy of Manuel Rossner.
While galleries may be closed IRL, there is so much art to experience online. Dare we say there is almost too much for one person to wade through? We've done your art homework for you and filtered through the results in this Around Town and Abroad segment, virtually of course.
Museum Programming
There's a battle of online content taking place between Australia's major public art institutions. NGV was first off the #artathome bat with their promotion of the Instagram hashtag #ngveveryday. Their Channel page features virtual versions of their current exhibitions and videos of Collection highlights presented by Director Tony Ellwood. We’ve particularly enjoyed receiving personal email updates from Tony with new content on Sundays, when our eyes and minds are eager to go for a wonder.
Other large Australian institutions have since followed suit. We're particularly impressed with the Art Gallery of New South Wales' Together in Art series because it takes a cross-generational approach to its content. Usually, museum public programming tends to divide its content between kids and general audience content. In one of the videos made for the series, artist Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran and a young friend show viewers how to make DIY clay stick figures. Such hands-on creative activities are wonderfully therapeutic exercises, not just for the young, but also for the young at heart.
Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art viewing room at Auckland Virtual Art Fair 2020. Courtesy of https://kallirolfecontemporaryart.com.
Online Art Fairs and Viewing Rooms
Although online viewing rooms are not new, they have certainly become a common mode of viewing art available for purchase during the lockdown. The experience of these rooms is still somewhat hit and miss. The better ‘rooms’ tend to be those that were in technical development long before galleries shuttered their physical spaces.
Are you a first-time online viewing room peruser? If so, we recommend taking a look at international mega-gallery David Zwirner's Viewing Room. Not only does it include images of available works that you can click on to see different views and prices, but these are interspersed with easy to read statements about the artist's work and videos. To top it off, David Zwirner has now created a 'rent-a-space' on their Viewing Room page, called Platform, where smaller (but still influential) galleries are also able to exhibit their artists.
We’ve also enjoyed exploring digital exhibition-artworks on König Galerie’s purpose-built app. It currently features the exhibition ‘Surprisingly This Rather Works’, curated by Anika Meier and Johann König and featuring virtual sculptures by artist Manuel Rossner. The exhibition can be navigated by viewers in a basic gaming style. You can walk forwards, look up, down and around, and even jump - a refreshing move to add to your viewing repertoire.
Meanwhile, numerous contemporary art fairs have been taking the online plunge. For example, you can now check out the virtual Auckland Art Fair until the 17 May, all for the price of your name and email address. It's great to see so many of our Australian clients and friends showing here, including Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art, Fine Arts, Sydney, Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert, STATION and Sarah Scout Presents.
Image courtesy TRANSMISSIONS and Adam Sinclair.
Digital Projects
If some good can be drawn from the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the art industry, it's that we're seeing a welcoming increase in the number of creative projects which are specifically designed to be viewed online.
Chicane.space is one such project, started by Sydney-based artists Jonny Niesche and Andy Boot and arts writer Mariam Arcilla. Each week a guest curator is invited to organise a presentation of works on their website that are available for purchase. Refreshingly, their first featured artist Angelika Loderer is not Australian. This goes to show that online projects bring greater opportunities for different art communities from all parts of the world to come together and exchange ideas.
For those ready to take a peek into the edgier side of new creative projects, we recommend checking out TRANSMISSIONS. Programmed by London-based curators Hana Noorali, Anne Duffau and artist Tai Shani (aka Turner Prize co-winner 2019), this is an online platform that commissions artists to share their work using a classic DIY TV show format. Episode 3 with Paris-based artist Tarek Lakhrissi (also showing in the 22nd Biennale of Sydney) broadcasts live this week. Episodes are broadcast weekly on Thursdays, 9 PM BST and replay at 9 AM BST the next day, until 29 May 2020.
Another experimental digital project to emerge is Prototype’s Care Packages, curated and produced by Lauren Carroll Harris. Subscribers receive a weekly care package comprised of new, re-edited and rarely seen video art, experimental film and other digital content by Australian artists and filmmakers. Not only does this provide audiences with a creative encounter, but it also pays participating artists for their contributions - a significant feat in today’s economic climate.
Angelika Loderer, Pretend to be fine, 2020. Eggs, concrete. Image courtesy of Chicane.space.
Art Podcasts
We couldn't end the virtual version of Around Town and Abroad without listing some of our favourite art podcasts. Again, this is a format which the art industry has been fairly slow to embrace, but it's slowly changing. For the latest news and interviews with artists, curators and the like, we suggest The Art Newspaper Podcast, Sotheby's/Art Agency, Partners' In Other Words and Artnet's The Art Angle Podcast. Warning, all of these tend to focus on the goings-on in the US/EU.
Closer to home, we have Art Guide Australia, Namila Benson's The Art Show for ABC, Inside the Gallery and Talking with Painters, all of which pre-date the COVID-19 crisis but have been providing welcome updates on all things art in these times of isolation.
We've also been keeping an eye out on art podcasts that focus specifically on collecting and the work of commercial galleries. Internationally, Collect Wisely by Sean Kelly and Dialogues: The David Zwirner Podcast. Locally, Sullivan+Strumpf has recently taken the podcast plunge. We look forward to seeing more content in this space.