Auckland City Galleries weekend (24th August, 2013)

Visiting majority of the Auckland City Art galleries was a great, inspiring, long day and tired experience. Plan for the weekend was supposed to be documenting my family in Glen Innes but I took to opportunity take a day trip to downtown Auckland city because It could benefit myself for the standards of presentation @ the End of year show. I also wanted to know what exciting exhibitions have been shown in Auckland at the moment and some work that could help with my project.

The long day started @ the Gus Fisher Gallery. I knew briefly of the current exhibition that was on because my lecturer mentioned about the show for the class to attend as a group in the near weeks. A Different View: Art and social change exhibition about the views of pornography by New Zealand artist of various medium forms. They were various artist of different background in the show.

Korean New Zealand based artist, Hye Rim Lee graduated from Auckland University in 2001 with a Bachelors in Fine Art degree Pink Lucid Dream was one of my favorite artwork from the show because of the limitless imaginative and culturally significance her image represents. I stared upon the large piece of a digitally created 3D fantasy world that reminded me of Otaku society, a Manga and Anime sub-culture that exist within Asian society really has taken mainstream with cosplay expo's and competitions. Lee huge image is very cartoonish and dreamy. The female character who reminded of a lot of female Manga characteristics such as big eyes and small tilted lips. I did some research and found out that Pink Lucid Dream is part of Cyborg project Lee started in 2001 using 3D animation as her medium, created a cyber-feminist character that has evolved and redevelop throughout her work. Lee creation was deja vu, reminded me of Takashi Murakami whom share similar principles but with different outcomes. Though finding sources of their work from the Manga and Anime society they interpret in different ways because of genders, whom see the otaku society in different perspective but familiar grounds.

 I went unto Shigeyuki Kihara 'Undressing the Pacific' that I heard about earlier in the year from lecturer Rebecca Hobbs. Kihara work elevates the stereotypes of identity and sexuality of pacific women through her photography work is very uncommon and seem taboo in my culture but Kihara exposes those flaws with very powerful images that re-examine pacific history.

One thing I took notice was the Installation, the space and layout of her works made me think about my End of Year Exhibition because I never thought about it that much until I saw Kihara work. I really like the glass cupboard that Kihara various images were presented and thought it could be great idea for my various finals in scattered, memories, documenting approach to my final submission. Kihara installation reminded me of the last criteria of the Learning Outcomes, presentation, seems to have alluded me till now. I learned an important lesson in visiting the various galleries on the weekend, I don't have to always look for photography shows/artist, I can benefit from other practitioners ideals in other mediums just from their ideals or presnetation.