WW..D? Is an interview segment where we get to know awesome people that are a part of the creative community in New Zealand. This week we spoke to Zara Stanhope. Zara is the Principal Curator at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki as well as Adjunct Professor at AUT University. Before coming to Toi o Tāmaki Zara was the Deputy Director and Senior Curator at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, Director at Adam Art Gallery Wellington and Assitant Director at Monash University Museum of Art, Melboure. Read more for what would Zara do? What kind of art gets you excited? Art that I don’t understand There are a lot of moving parts in a big institution like the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. For the everyday Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki visitor where can they find your own curatorial influences? My influences are often not evident as they are varied and might only become clear in retrospect. Like most people I am inspired by the world, both the natural world and the civilisations we …

WW..D? Is an interview segment where we get to know awesome people that are a part of the creative community in New Zealand. This week we spoke to Fresh Milk Art Platform Inc. Fresh Milk Art Platform Inc. or Fresh Milk for short is an artist run, nonprofit organisation based in Barbados in the Caribbean. Fresh Milk was founded in 2011 and is based on a working farm, they offer a diverse multi-disciplinary programme including international residencies. Read more for what would Fresh Milk do? Some artist run initiatives start as a way of showing their own work or showing artists that they feel aren’t getting a lot of attention. Does Fresh Milk have a similar story? Fresh Milk originally manifested as a space to address the nearly 100% attrition rate of BFA students at Barbados Community College (BCC), the only institution on the island offering a BFA programme. In 2011, it launched as a project/research space for the visual arts, and by late 2012 it had developed a micro-residency programme for local, regional and international artists. It has continued to grow …

WW..D? Is an interview segment where we get to know awesome people that are a part of the creative community in New Zealand. This week we spoke to Anna and Antonie. Anna and Antonie are the founders of the independent I: project space located in down town Beijing, China. As well as a diverse exhibition programme with accompanying public programming I: project space also runs an annual residency for New Zealand artists funded by The Asia New Zealand Foundation. Read more for what would I: project space do? What is I: project space? I: project space is an independent and non-profit art space based the Hutongs, in the heart of Beijing. The space was founded by Antonie Angerer and Anna-Viktoria Eschbach in August 2014. It consists of three main elements: An exhibition programme, residencies for artists, curators and researches supplemented by a public programme in the form of art salons, artist talks, screenings, conferences, workshops etc. For those of our readers who might not know too much about I: project space what are the curatorial drivers going on and …

WW..D? Is an interview segment where we get to know awesome people that are a part of the creative community in New Zealand. This week we spoke to Emma Ng. Emma is the Curator/Manager at Enjoy Public Art Gallery in central Wellington. She moved to Enjoy not long after completing the Blumhardt Curatorial Internship at The Dowse and last year was a part of the Asia New Zealand Curators tour to Asia. Read more for what would Emma do? What kind of art gets you excited? I’m a sucker for anything speculative, semi-fictional, or stranger than fiction. I went to design school rather than art school, and design schools are stuffed full of optimism. While some naivety has worn away, I like speculative projects because they inherently express a desire for experimentation and change, underscored by a stubborn belief that alternatives to present conditions are possible. Enjoy Public Art Gallery occupies a fairly unique space within Wellington’s art community and you’ve been the curator/manager there for roughly 2 years now, how have you found it? What …

WW..D? Is an interview segment where we get to know awesome people that are a part of the creative community in New Zealand. This week we spoke to Uniform. Uniform is an art collective based in Auckland, New Zealand working across all creative mediums. The female only collective recently finished a residency at Auckland’s Artspace and are about to move on to a project at Blue Oyster Art Project Space in Dunedin. Read more for what would Uniform do? For those of who may not know who is Uniform and what do you do? Uniform is the name a group of friends use when we work on projects collaboratively. Uniform could be two of us working on a sound piece or twenty of us participating in an event. We are mostly Auckland based women working in art, film, sound, writing, print and archiving. Do think there are any gaps within our country’s arts landscape? Hope so! Gaps are the out of bound spaces we like to dwell in. That’s where the change happens Uniform makes art …

WW..D? Is an interview segment where we get to know awesome people that are a part of the creative community in New Zealand. This we spoke with Yang Fudong who is one of the worlds preeminent moving image artists working out of Shanghai, China. Filmscapes currently on exhibition at The Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki includes three works and is Yang’s first survey exhibition in New Zealand. Read more for what would Yang do? People often put the words ‘important’, ‘influential’ and ‘pre-eminent’ before your name, but how would you describe your own work? I don’t have much concern about how people view my work, or how they look at me. To experience the life as an artist through creating genuine and original work is the main focus of mine.  In the Pacific the idea of the ocean and oceania is very important. Theorists like Epeli Hau’ofa believe that the Pacific Ocean is a moving mass connecting hundreds of islands rather than a sea separating them. I know in the past you have also spoken about a metaphor of …

THE REAL CHANGE HAS JUST STARTED* | an interview with the Zimbabwean gallerist Jimmy Saruchera by the independent curator Inês Valle October is without doubt one of the most vibrant months in London, from food and film festivals to outstanding art exhibitions and international art fairs that keep drawing the world’s most influential art buyers to the UK. This year and once more coinciding with Frieze, we have the third edition of 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair, that proclaims its focus on the Afrikan Continent, offering in both London and New York a profitable and a discursive platform to Afrika and its art players. Apart from the exponential increase of Afrikan based art galleries at 1:54 [more than 40% in 2015] and the remarkable visibility that it has been giving to Afrika’s art in the Western world, we should have an open discussion about the legitimacy of this fair since it is yet to itinerate on the Afrikan continent itself. Whether we like it or not, the enormous curiosity about Afrika is still drawn by …