Destiny Descon: Walk & Don't Look Blak
Lisa Reihana: New Work
At Adam Art Gallery
Exhibition runs until 1 May 2005

Destiny Deacon: Walk & don't look blak is the first major survey of this leading indigenous Australian artist whose wicked humour and potent politics have engaged audiences internationally.

"By photographing friends and admired aquaintances Destiny Deacon experiments with finding ways around or through the camera's innate voyeurism. Deacon's photographs and videos are literally homemade, shot either in her living room or in her subject's houses. Getting the right shot, she says, is like "playing pokies"2, and her images are apparently incidental, uncaught or unaccounted for like the sidelong glance or the child's snapshot." - Hannah Fink 2004

Image: Where's Mickey - Destiny Deacon 2002
light jet print from PolaroidDestiny Descon: Walk & Don't Look Blak
Lisa Reihana: New Work
At Adam Art Gallery
Exhibition runs until 1 May 2005

Destiny Deacon: Walk & don't look blak is the first major survey of this leading indigenous Australian artist whose wicked humour and potent politics have engaged audiences internationally.

"By photographing friends and admired aquaintances Destiny Deacon experiments with finding ways around or through the camera's innate voyeurism. Deacon's photographs and videos are literally homemade, shot either in her living room or in her subject's houses. Getting the right shot, she says, is like "playing pokies"2, and her images are apparently incidental, uncaught or unaccounted for like the sidelong glance or the child's snapshot." - Hannah Fink 2004

Image: Where's Mickey - Destiny Deacon 2002
light jet print from PolaroidDeacon is a prominent Australian artist whose work has featured in a number of major international exhibitions including the Fifth Havana Biennial (1994); the First Johannesburg Biennale (1995); Second Asia Pacific Triennial (1996); and the Yokohama Triennial (2001). Significantly, Deacon was the only Australian artist invited to participate in Documenta 11 (2000) in Kassel, Germany.

Destiny Deacon: Walk & don't look blak highlights the versatility of Deacon's practice and focuses on the past fourteen years of her career. Curated by Natalie King, and organised and toured by the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in Sydney, this exhibition features some of Destiny Deacon's most important photographic, video, performance and installation works.

In her work, Deacon draws widely from urban culture and from her own personal experience, inventively using what she describes as 'low tech' and 'low budget' tools and techniques. Deacon often makes use of her extensive collection of kitsch souvenirs, such as velvet paintings and 'black dolly' ornaments that were popular in the 1950s and 1960s.
As part of Destiny Deacon: Walk & don't look blak and Lisa Reihana: New Work, the Adam Art Gallery has invited Deacon and Reihana to collaborate on the construction of an installation which includes elements drawn from Deacon's earlier work "My Living Room, Brunswick 3056". The Adam Art Gallery installation will mimic a suburban living room, replete with a lounge suite and many of Deacon's own knick-knacks and wall hangings.

This exhibition is a unique opportunity to view Deacon's work and to engage with the incisive, witty and intelligent exploration of important social and political issues that is characteristic of her practice. Both Destiny Deacon and Curator Natalie King will be in New Zealand to install the exhibition.

Read more about Destiny Deacon

LISA REIHANA: NEW WORK
Lisa Reihana, who received international acclaim in the exhibition Paradise Now? in New York in 2003, has created a new body of work for this exhibition. Reihana's work will engage with and present a New Zealand perspective on some of the issues explored in Destiny Deacon: Walk & don't look blak.

As two leading female indigenous artists who work in a variety of media, Reihana and Deacon have been exploring - from different cultural positions - similar issues relating to history, indigenity and gender, with a similarly strong emphasis on irony and wit.

Reihana is most well known for her dynamic multi-media installations, which examine the ways in which indigenous identity is constructed and represented in a bi-cultural context.

In past works such as 'Native Portraits' (1999), Reihana used artifice and role-play to discuss issues of identity and visual representation. For this exhibition, she extends these ideas through converting 1960s dome hairdryers into sound listening booths, suspending painted Ostrich eggs over a darkened void and presenting a video work featuring footage taken at the thermal pools at Ngawha Springs in Northland, a taonga of Reihana's iwi, Nga Puhi. This exhibition is a not to be missed investigation into contemporary, bi-cultural New Zealand.

Reihana is an important New Zealand artist who has gained a national and international reputation. Her work has been included in major exhibitions, in museums and galleries throughout the world, including the Asia Society Museum, New York, (2004); Contemporary Arts Centre, Lithuania (2003); Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia (2003); Singapore Art Museum, Singapore (2003); and at the Rooseum Centre for Contemporary Art, Malmo, Sweden (2003). Reihana has also been included in major exhibitions such as the 4th Asia Pacific Triennial, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane (2002); Sydney Biennale, Museum of Contemporary Art, (2000); Toi Toi Toi, Museum Fredericianum, Kassel, Germany & Auckland Art Gallery, (1998); Second Asia Pacific Triennial, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane (1996); and Headlands, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (1991).

Lisa Reihana will be in Wellington and will be present at the opening. Both Destiny Deacon: Walk & don't look blak and Lisa Reihana: New Work will be accompanied by a range of Public Programmes including floor talks, illustrated lectures and a film/video screening.

For more information about our Public Programmes or to arrange interviews - please contact: Emily Cormack, Exhibitions and Public Programmes Officer, Adam Art Gallery, Wellington. T: 04 4635229/ E: emily.cormack@vuw.ac.nz

For more information on exhibitions at the Adam Art Gallery please check our website www.vuw.ac.nz/adamartgal

Image credit:
Destiny Deacon
Hanging Out 2003
light jet print from Polaroid
Image courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
© 2004 Represented by Viscopy