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Simon Denny: Secret Power. New Zealand Pavilion Venice Biennale
09February
Events

Simon Denny: Secret Power. New Zealand Pavilion Venice Biennale

Creative New Zealand, Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa is pleased to announce that Simon Denny will be New Zealand’s artist for the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015.

 

“Simon Denny is the most high-profile New Zealand artist in the international art world today. His work is rich, intelligent, and challenging. We are confident it will be compelling in the context of the Venice Biennale.”

 

Heather Galbraith, New Zealand Commissioner for the 2015 Venice Biennale

 

Simon Denny’s project Secret Power will address the intersection of knowledge and geography in the post-Snowden world. It will investigate new and obsolete languages for describing geo-political space, focusing on the roles played by technology and design. The project takes its title from investigative journalist Nicky Hager’s 1996 book Secret Power, which introduced details about New Zealand’s role in international intelligence work to a wider public. Robert Leonard, one of New Zealand’s most experienced contemporary art curators, will be the curator.

 

“The Venice Biennale represents an incomparable opportunity for New Zealand artists to show their work on the world stage. It is the world’s largest and most prestigious international contemporary art exhibition, attended by key curators, writers, and collectors, attracting enormous public interest.”

 

Dr Dick Grant, Chairman, Creative New Zealand Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa

Initiated in 1895, the Venice Biennale is the largest and most prestigious world-art biennial—it has been called “the mother of all biennales”. This huge event has a three-part structure. There’s an exhibition curated by the Biennale’s director, a raft of shows organised by more than eighty invited countries and other collateral shows and events. The Biennale takes over Venice, with contemporary art infiltrating the city’s historic buildings.

 

In 2013, the three-day opening vernissage drew over 30,000 artists, gallerists, critics, curators, and press from all over the world. More than 475,000 visitors attended the Biennale in total and eighty-eight countries participated—including ten for the first time.

 

The Biennale’s national representation operates through a government-to-government invitation. Its presentation is managed by Creative New Zealand, Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa, whose financial commitment to Secret Power will be $700,000 over two financial years.

 

The Biennale is extremely influential—it’s the place for art to be seen. The next Biennale, the fifty-sixth, will run from 9 May to 22 November 2015. Titled All the World’s Futures, it will be directed by the Nigerian-born curator and critic Okwui Enwezor. He has curated many large and important exhibitions, including the 1997 Johannesburg Biennale and 2002’s Documenta 11.

 

Project team

 

Commissioner: Heather Galbraith

Heather Galbraith is Head of Whiti o Rehua School of Art, in the College of Creative Arts at Massey University, Wellington. Before that, she was a Senior Curator at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, and at City Gallery Wellington. She was the inaugural Director/Curator of St. Paul St Gallery, AUT University, Auckland. Galbraith co-curated Francis Upritchard’s exhibition for the 2009 Venice Biennale and was New Zealand’s Deputy Commissioner in 2009 and 2013.

 

Curator: Robert Leonard

Robert Leonard is Chief Curator at City Gallery Wellington. He previously held curatorial positions at Wellington’s National Art Gallery, New Plymouth’s Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, and Auckland Art Gallery and directed Auckland’s Artspace and Brisbane’s Institute of Modern Art. He co-curated Michael Stevenson’s exhibition for the 2003 Venice Biennale.

 

Project Manager: Jude Chambers

Jude Chambers joined Creative New Zealand, Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa in 2005. As Manager International Special Projects and Cultural Exchange, she delivers international projects and initiatives. This includes New Zealand’s participation in the Venice Biennale and NZ at Edinburgh 2014, the WW100 Co-Commissioning Fund, and Te Manu Ka Tau (the international visitors’ programme). In her previous role as Senior Programme Adviser, she managed the Visual Arts portfolio and worked on New Zealand’s 2009 and 2011 Venice Biennale projects, project managing Bill Culbert’s Front Door Out Back in 2013.

 

Other team members

  • Artist’s Representatives: Michael Lett and Andrew Thomas
  • Assistant Curator: Alex Davidson (This role is generously supported by Dame Jenny Gibbs)
  • Audience and Market Development Adviser: Rose Campbell
  • Book Contributor: Metahaven
  • Book Editors: Robert Leonard and Mary Barr
  • Book Essayist: Chris Kraus
  • Communications (Creative New Zealand, Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa): Helen Isbister, Matt Allen, and Sarah Pomeroy
  • Content Adviser: Nicky Hager
  • Designer: David Bennewith
  • Exhibition Co-ordinator: Francesca Astesani
  • Exhibition Manager: Diego Carpentiero
  • Project Administrator: Cassandra Wilson
  • Senior Manager, Arts Policy, Capability, and International (Creative New Zealand, Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa): Cath Cardiff
  • Website Developer: Christoph Knoth
  • With additional support provided by Creative New Zealand’s Business Service team.

 

Exhibition Attendants

Attendants will be based in Venice for six weeks at a time to assist the supervision and promotion of Secret Power.

 

Simon Denny was born in Auckland in 1982 and is based in Berlin. His work has explored technological obsolescence, the rhetorics of Silicon Valley and tech start-ups, and technology’s role in shaping global culture and constructions of national identity. He is interested in the role of design in communication, particularly in user-interfaces. His exhibitions combine sculptures, graphics, and moving images.

 

Denny studied at the Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland and at Frankfurt’s Städelschule, graduating in 2009. His work is regularly exhibited in New Zealand and is held in its major public and private collections, including the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o T?maki, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu, and Dunedin Public Art Gallery. His work is also held in major international collections, including MUMOK in Vienna, the Astrup Fearnley Museum in Oslo, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

 

Denny’s solo exhibitions include All You Need Is Data: The DLD 2012 Conference Redux  (Kunstverein Munich; Petzel Gallery, New York; and Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, 2013); and The Personal Effects of Kim Dotcom (MUMOK, Vienna, 2013; and Firstsite, Colchester, 2014). These exhibitions were positively reviewed in the The New York Times, Focus, Frieze, and Süddeutsche Zeitung. In 2014, Denny presented New Management at the Portikus, Frankfurt, and showed a new version of The Personal Effects of Kim Dotcom at the Adam Art Gallery, Wellington. Denny’s work has also been included in group shows at the ICA, London; Kunsthaus Bregenz; KW Center for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Fridericianum, Kassel; and Centre Pompidou, Paris. He was the only New Zealand artist invited to exhibit in the curated show at the 2013 Venice Biennale. In 2012, Simon Denny won the Baloise Art Prize at Art Basel. A solo survey exhibition at MOMA PS1, New York, is planned for early 2015.

 

Secret Power was unanimously selected from eighteen high-calibre proposals. Chaired by Arts Council Chairman, Dr Dick Grant, the selection panel included Heather Galbraith, Commissioner; Alastair Carruthers, patron; Anne Rush, Arts Council member; Blair French, Assistant Director, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney; Brett Graham, artist; Caterina Riva, Director, Artspace, Auckland; Dayle Mace, patron; Helen Kedgley, Arts Council member; and Judy Millar, artist.

 

Venues

The New Zealand pavilion will be split across two sites: one modern, at the edge of Venice and one historical, at its heart.

 

Simon Denny will be the first Biennale artist to use the terminal at Marco Polo Airport, designed by architect Gian Paolo Mar. Here, people converge from all over the world. For most visitors, it is their first point of contact with Venice. Extending through the arrivals lounge, Denny’s installation will operate between national borders, mixing the languages of commercial display, contemporary airport interior design, and historical representations of the value of knowledge.

 

The other half of the pavilion will be the Marciana Library in Piazza San Marco, designed by Jacopo Sansovino during the Renaissance. Decorated with paintings by artists including Titian and Tintoretto, depicting philosophy and wisdom, the Library is an allegory for the benefits of acquiring knowledge. It also houses historical maps and globes, including Fra Mauro’s early world map, containing information obtained by travellers, merchants and navigators including Marco Polo. It is one of the first European maps to depict Japan, for example. Here, Denny’s installation will draw analogies between this spectacular but obsolete map and the way the world is mapped and managed today.

 

 

9 May - 22 November, 2015