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    Osang Gwon, Back Slider, 2008. C-print and mixed media armature 132 x 85 x 95 cm. Private collection. Image courtesy of roundabout.

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    Titus Kaphar, George, George, George, 2008. Oil on canvas with exposed wooden frame, 244 x 173 cm. Private collection. Image courtesy of roundabout.

  • 2008NortseReleasefromSuffe.jpg

    Nortse, Release from Suffering, 2008. Mixed media on canvas, 205 x 151 cm. Private collection. Image courtesy of roundabout

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    roundabout, installation view City Gallery Wellington, 2010. Photo: Andrew Beck.

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    roundabout, installation view City Gallery Wellington, 2010. Photo: Andrew Beck.

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    roundabout, installation view City Gallery Wellington, 2010. Photo: Andrew Beck.

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    roundabout, installation view City Gallery Wellington 2010. Photo: Andrew Beck.

roundabout°

25 September 2010 - 16 January 2011 in the Entire Gallery

roundabout° began with a conversation between collectors David Teplitzky and Peggy Scott, and a handful of New Zealand artists and curators. The primary idea was to enable major new works in the local context, and then to set these up in dialogue with key Australian and Pacific works. Over time the scale of this original foundation has evolved, to become an ongoing global project involving commissioning relationships with seminal and emerging artists from Asia, Australia, the Pacific, the US, the Middle East, Russia and Europe.

A project spawned from within the complex of New Zealand culture, it is fitting that roundabout°’s first venue as a touring exhibition is here at City Gallery Wellington. The City Gallery exhibition is shaped according to our Gallery’s spaces, each of which represents a loose thematic grouping. Lines may be drawn between works in all these spaces, however, it is an exhibition to be approached ‘roundabout’; there is no strict single way to navigate it.

This exhibition represents a core selection from the larger collection which is roundabout°. It offers a place for a vivid cross-section of contemporary art to be brought together, a place where it might be seen, not in the light of a specific curatorial premise (nor was it collected in this way), but as one of the writers for the roundabout° catalogue puts it, with ‘supernormal awareness and compassion’. Audiences to this exhibition share and discuss some of the most extraordinary and lucid visual works of our time, and in doing so join a conversation with global reach.

roundabout° defines contemporary art as being ‘art which is made now’; this also is art which is made for now, about now. The pressure is not to make sense of the whole exhibition, or to consume every nuance from each work. Rather, to borrow words from Tony Albert, one of the Australian artists in the collection, it is to PAY ATTENTION: to the detail, and to the moment which is now.

Public Programmes

Artists’ Talk—Titus Kaphar, Gonkar Gyatso, Feng Bin and Zadok Ben David
Saturday 25 September, 1pm

Artists in Conversation—David Teplitzky, Tavares Strachan and Shane Cotton, chaired by Martin Patrick
Saturday 25 September, 2.30pm

Film Screening with Artist’s Introduction—Vernon Ah Kee and Lisa Reihana
Sunday 26 September, 2pm

Open City
Thursday 14 October, 6–10pm

Watch This Space—Footnote Dance
Saturday 16 October, 12.30pm

Curator’s Tour
Friday, 22 October, 12.30pm

Artist Talk—Lonnie Hutchinson
Friday 5 November, 12.30pm

Flying Nun on Film: Classic Videos and Documentary
Thursday, 11 November, 7pm. New Zealand Film Archive, Ghuznee St

Media Releases

roundabout° - Unique Expressions of Shared Experience

roundabout° - New Zealand Artists Confirmed

roundabout° - International Artists Touch Down in Wellington

Principal Sponsor: