Unpacking My Library

Collecting by definition is to gather together, to assemble and to accumulate. It’s that activity where collectors indulge in their personal obsessions. This month at Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts, those curious private fixations are being exposed.

The title of the exhibition Unpacking My Library comes from twentieth century cultural theorist Walter Benjamin’s essay of the same title. In this text Benjamin reflects on the peculiar traits of the collector. Like Benjamin, Curator Stephen Cleland says, ‘the exhibitions interest is the process of collecting rather than simply the content of a collection. The thought processes of the collector are exposed, revealing to the public the often subjective methods of collating and organising objects’.

The exhibition fills every inch of the gallery space and represents a mix of emerging, mid-career and senior artists. The works included actively explore collecting as a daily practice. In her ambitious ongoing project Found Time: Big Ben, London based artist Elizabeth McAlpine attempts to represent every minute in a twelve hour period (720 minutes total) through existing postcards of Big Ben. The work is exhibited in hourly grids with gaps for the missing minutes.

"What becomes important in this work is the daily practice of itemising and organising the postcards, constantly keeping a look out for new acquisitions to her collection," explains Cleland.

The exhibition also presents artists who reflect on and appropriate pre-existing systems of collecting. New Zealand artist Neil Pardington’s photographs of public art gallery store rooms reflect on these mysterious spaces dedicated to preserving and ordering cultural heritage. While filling an entire gallery room, Te Tuhi will present for the first time the life’s work of Lillian Budd, an artist who during her lifetime reflected on the rhetoric of institutional archives.

The exhibition takes a more is more approach, so visitors will need to allow a generous amount of time to view this major exhibition.

Unpacking My Library
13 February – 11 April, 2010

Opening: Saturday 13th February, 2pm

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