Exhibition Opening | Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts

Opening: Saturday 13th February, 2pm

Unpacking My Library
Dan Arps, Xin Cheng, Bill Culbert, The Estate of L. Budd, Peter Madden, Daniel Malone, Elizabeth McAlpine, Neil Pardington, Ann Shelton. Curated by Stephen Cleland
13 February - 11 April, 2010

Unpacking My Library considers the act of collecting. Utilising twentieth century media theorist Walter Benjamin's text of the same title as a point of departure, Unpacking My Library seeks out expanded approaches to collecting. Like Benjamin's text, the exhibition takes interest in the process of collecting, as much as the content of a collection. Reflecting on his own library, Benjamin draws upon his obsession with collecting books in order to unpack the psychological drives of the collector. He argues that in a detailed collection certain traits of the collector will be revealed. His invitation into his unpacked library is an invitation to enter a collector's mind - to dwell upon what the order and disorder of collections reveals about their gatherers.

The exhibition presents both artists who actively explore collecting as a daily practice and artists who reflect on pre-existing systems of collating and organising objects. Firmly rooted in this former investigation is London based artist Elizabeth McAlpine who's ongoing project Found Time: Big Ben attempts to represent every minute of a twelve hour period through existing postcards of Big Ben. Works that analyse pre-existing collections include Ann Shelton's studies of the Fredrick Butler Archive, Neil Pardington's analysis of public art gallery collections and The Estate of L. Budd as a self-reflective archive, which appropriates the language and the rhetoric of institutional models. For the first time the entire contents of The Estate of L. Budd will be housed in a single gallery which will become a storeroom for a collection still approaching completion.

Jeremy Leatinu'u
Iris Fisher Scholar 2009
13 February - 11 April, 2010

Otara based artist Jeremy Leatinu'u works between video and performance art. His work explores the concept of ownership and the human occupation of property. Recently Leatinu'u has turned his attention to everyday encounters within the cityscape. Recording opportunistic windscreen washers at traffic lights and street side buskers throughout Auckland, he focuses on figures that, through working either on the borders of or outside legally sanctioned employment, intervene in public codes of social behavior. For Leatinu'u such figures highlight unconscious community protocols. He states: 'in the public realm we are an audience to each other. We are fully aware of our own presence, movements and actions in relation to each other. We manufacture conscious decisions by adjusting our behaviour when needed or required, thus helping define our physical situation at a given time.'

Leatinu'u is the third recipient of the Iris Fisher Scholarship, which rewards outstanding visual art students enrolled in an Auckland tertiary institution. Te Tuhi will announce the next recipient of the award at the opening preview.

Get to the opening for free with the art bus!
Departing from K'rd outside Artspace at 1.30pm and returning to town from Te Tuhi at 3.30pm