PAINTING: AUCKLAND
John Pule: The Great World
Exploring his roots has proven to be a fruitful project for Niuea-born, Auckland-based artist, novelist and poet John Pule. His exhibition The Great World is now showing at the Lorne Street Gow Langsford Gallery and delves into the archaeological significance and folklore of the South Pacific country of his native Niue. Through a concentrated colour palette the figures of the two young gods – Huanaki and Fao – are featured prominently on the ancestrally inspired works.
Gow Langsford Gallery, 26 Lorne Street. Open Monday to Friday 10.00-18.00 and Saturday 10.00-16.00. Until 6 January.
gowlangsfordgallery.co.nz
INSTALLATION: PARIS
Olafur Eliasson: Contact
Danish-Icelandic light-based artist Olafur Eliasson explores the role of humans in the cosmos in Contact, now on at Paris’s Fondation Louis Vuitton. Visitors to the light installations can explore specially constructed passageways that envelope the viewer in a choreography of moving light and shadows. The work includes a unique sound composition designed by Eliasson and his collaborator Samuli Kosminen (a Finnish musician), part of the artist’s ongoing investigation into the mechanisms of perception and the construction of space.
Fondation Louis Vuitton, 8 Avenue du Mahatma Gandhi. Open Monday, Wednesday, Thursday 12.00-19.00; Friday 12.00-23.00; Saturday and Sunday 11.00–20.00. Christmas opening: closed 25 December and 1 January (reopens 2 January). Hours during school holidays: 10.00-20.00; Fridays 10.00-23.00. Until 16 February.
fondationlouisvuitton.fr
PHOTOGRAPHY: LONDON
The Royal Photographic Society Collection: Drawn by Light
The Science Museum in London has collaborated with Germany’s Reiss-Engelhorn Museen to put together a show of over 200 visual masterpieces from The Royal Photographic Society (RPS) Collection to celebrate the best in photography. Featured are some of the earliest-known photographs from the 1820s alongside images from UK photography pioneers including Roger Fenton, William Henry Fox Talbot and Julia Margaret Cameron. Contemporary works by the likes of Magnum photographer Martin Parr will also be on show, as will the actual tools, such as Talbot’s experimental cameras.
Science Museum, London, Exhibition Road, South Kensington. Open Monday to Sunday 10.00-18.00. Christmas opening: closed 24-26 December (reopens 27 December). School holiday opening hours until 19.00. Until 1 March.
sciencemuseum.org.uk
SCULPTURE: NEW YORK
Juan Muñoz
New York’s Marian Goodman gallery hosts a selection of the late Spanish sculptor Juan Muñoz’s bronze and steel effigies. Muñoz was famed for his uncanny ability to tell stories through sculptures of human beings set during the postwar period. The exhibition will feature the key sculptural installations “Thirteen Laughing at Each Other” (2001), “Many Times” (1999), and “Figure Hanging from One Foot” (2001), accompanied by works on paper and early wall sculptures. His characters are suspended in a state of mutual interaction, inviting the viewer into personal, intimate and often funny moments captured during what was a bleak period of history.
Marian Goodman Gallery, 24 West 57th Street. Open Monday to Saturday, 10.00-18.00. Christmas opening: closed from 24 December to 1 January. Until 29 January.
mariangoodman.com
PHOTOGRAPHY: SINGAPORE
Realism & Fiction
ShanghArt’s first overseas gallery in Singapore hosts photography exhibition Realism & Fiction, which draws inspiration from the morbid notion of memento mori: remember you shall die. Featuring a selection of photography and videography from Chinese photographers Chen Xiaoyun, Geng Jianyi, Jiang Pengyi, Yang Fudong and Zhu Jia, these wistful and elegant images remind us that the very reason why we point and shoot is to preserve the past before it fades into oblivion.
ShanghArt gallery, 9 Lock Road. Open Tuesday to Sunday 11.00-19.00. Until 4 January.
shanghartgallery.com
