Stella Brennan: The Middle Landscape
7 September - 3 October 09

Starkwhite is pleased to present The Middle Landscape, a new installation by Auckland artist, Stella Brennan from 7 September to 3 October 2009.

The Middle Landscape's aesthetic is theatrical, incorporating both landscape gardening and the brightly-coloured functionality of a sporting-goods store. Entering the space, sounds and flickering light emanate from three tents pitched on the gallery floor, while drifts of pine bark heaped up around the space soften the acoustics and give off an earthy smell. Bright yellow extension cables snake across the floor and into the tents, feeding electronics inside.

The tents create enclosed viewing spaces, the large-scaled monitors are out of scale and context within the small, enclosed interiors, sound leaks through their thin nylon walls. The pine bark - essentially an industrial by-product of the timber and pulp industries - evokes playground surfaces or a mulched bed of awkward onamental flaxes. The bark piles up in corners and against the gallery's street window, paths are worn through it to the concrete floor below.

Brennan Says: "The work addresses our desire to come into contact with wild nature, but our inability to survive it without physical and cultural framing. Videos inside the tents draw on the aesthetics of nature documentaries: the lingering macro shot and linking voice-over. The core ideas of the project are an investigation of our notion of the natural, of biosecurity and ecological utopianism. I have been inspired and informed by the writing of ecologist Geoff Park, particularly his discussion of the picturesque and the importance of the Romantic tradition to our understanding of the New Zealand landscape. In his book Theatre Country Park describes Pakeha as having: 'no framework for living with the indigenous, in any other form than visiting and admiring it.' I am investigating the idea of native landscape and what an intimacy with those spaces might possibly mean."

Stella Brennan is an artist, curator and writer. Recent solo exhibitions include: South Pacific, Two Rooms, Auckland (2008); Second Child, Starkwhite (2008); No More Gaps, Starkwhite (2007); Envoy from Mirror City and No Stairway, Starkwhite (2006); Wet Social Sculpture, St Paul's St Gallery, Auckland (2005); Tomorrow Never Knows, Starkwhite and the Physics Room in Christchurch (2004); and Another Green World, Artspace, Sydney (2002).

She has also been represented in Feedforward, LaBoral, Gijon, Spain (2008); Video Ground: Recent moving image works from Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand A MAAP touring programme curated by Rachel O'Reilly (2008); Made Up: The 2008 Liverpool Biennale, Exhibition at the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology curated by Mike Stubbs; Past-Present-Place, Videos from New Zealand at the Heidelberger Kunstverein curated by Leonhard Emmerling (2008); Lo<=>No Tech Curated by Vanessa McRae, Videotage Hong Kong (2007); 2006 Biennale of Sydney Zones of Conflict, curated by Dr Charles Merewether; Islanded, curated by Lee Weng Choy, Sophie McIntyre and Eugene Tan and exhibited at the Adam Art Gallery, Wellington and the ICA, Singapore (2006); the 2006 Walters Prize exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery; and Everyday Minimal, curated by Robert Leonard, Auckland Art Gallery (2004).

Brennan's curatorial project, Dirty Pixels toured galleries in Auckland, Wellington, Dunedin and Hamilton during 2002/3. She was Waikato University's first Digital Artist in Residence and also artist in residence at Apex Arts in New York. She is the co-founder of Aotearoa Digital Arts, an organisation dedicated to New Zealand New Media practitioners, and along with Su Ballard she edited the Aotearoa Digital Arts Reader.

The artist wishes to acknowledge the generous support of Creative New Zealand for this exhibition.

Located in New Zealand on Auckland's Karangahape Road, Starkwhite presents a programme of artists' projects, solo exhibitions, independently curated exhibitions and occasional forays into new music and other interdisciplinary practices. Starkwhite represents artists from New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific Rim.

For further information or images please contact the gallery.

 

Starkwhite
510 Karangahape Road, Auckland, New Zealand
Monday to Friday 11.00am to 6.00pm
Saturday 11.00am to 5.00pm
Tel. +64 9 3070703
starkwhite@starkwhite.co.nz
www.starkwhite.blogspot.com
www.starkwhite.co.nz