Posted on 23-8-2002

High Art

NIGHTVISION: A series of four open-air, after-dark video art installations.
Freyberg Place, off High Street, Auckland, New Zealand.

THE DATES:
Aug 27, 7pm Opening and Preview Screening at Metropolis Terrace above
Freyberg Place.

Aug 28 – Sep 7 Mark Harvey “Downtown Frown”

Sep 11 – Sep 21 Linda Cook “Freyberg’s Space”

Sep 25 – Oct 5 Hye Rim Lee “Music Box”

Oct 9 – Oct 19 Andrew Clifford “Top of the World”

The bustle of inner-city nightlife is about to get brighter. Bringing the
dark winter months to a premature end, a series of outdoor video
installations will culturally illuminate the inner city skyline with an
eight-week season of video art, presented at architectural scale. Beamed
seven stories above Freyberg Place, NIGHTVISON will allow artwork out of
its usual gallery seclusion to venture into the street for some fresh air
and public consumption.

Each fortnight a different artist will offer nocturnal outdoor
entertainment, enlightening the High Street skyline. Four artists of
different age, experience and disciplinary background will present short
video works that explore their own practice in light of NIGHTVISION’s
technical requirements, its location, and its associated cultural
implications. Hye Rim Lee, Mark Harvey, Linda Cook, and Andrew Clifford
will present intriguing images, whimsical narratives and sly subversiveness
to infiltrate an often-commercial forum, currently being used to present
advertising. Billboard company RMG/Beam have kindly donated the facilities
needed to make this happen.

Works are screened in portrait (vertical) format, four stories high, and
are silent, offering artists an opportunity to question the standard
conventions that most video works are made with. Each work will be 30-60
seconds long and will play several times within the existing 10-minute reel
of cycling advertisement stills. Each work will play for two weeks on
Weds-Sat evenings throughout the hours of darkness.

THE ARTISTS

MARK HARVEY Mark Harvey’s NIGHTVISION work, “Downtown Frown”, examines
Freyberg Place (and its surroundings) as a location of consumer
iconography. He toys with the ‘good guys and the bad guys’ as defined
through money and power in a phallocentric urban landscape. Mark Harvey is
an Auckland-based artist who featured in ASA Gallery’s Out of the Dark
exhibition last July and recently had a solo exhibition at Christchurch’s
Physics Room gallery. He has submitted works into as well as curated the
multimedia performance events White Chocolate at Lopdell House Gallery in
Titirangi in March and last year’s Rotisserie at the Moving Image Centre.
He has performed at other multimedia events such as Soliton. He teaches in
Art and Performance and has completed a Masters focussing on performance art.

LINDA COOK Linda Cook is an artist currently working with paint, video and
installation. Cook resides in Waitakere City, teaches art to both children
and adults at the Auckland City Art School, and has worked in theatre in
both Botswana and Zambia. She was recently the recipient of the $3500 Royal
Easter Show Professional Oils Award. In describing her NIGHTVISION
work,“Freyberg’s Space”, Cook notes that: “It appears odd to me that in the
midst of ornamental grasses and trickling water stands an unknown figure.
We pass by; peruse the style clinics, coffee houses and art galleries,
oblivious to the staunch figure that this square bears the name of. Day in
day out he stands over the lunchtime conversations and skateboarding antics.

HYE RIM LEE Auckland-based Korean artist Hye Rim Lee is a former opera
singer now working in the field of visual arts. Although she is still
studying at Elam School of Fine Arts she has already staged an ambitious
solo exhibition, the delightful “Hello Toki ;)”, at the Moving Image
Centre, and is currently featured in “Small Time” at the George Fraser
Gallery. “Music Box”, her contribution to NIGHTVISION is an exploration of
the doll/starlet/fashion model interface and a trip through childhood
nostalgia. Her work explores themes of fantasy, madness, emerging sexuality
and sexual innuendo. "For me art should be fun,” she says. “Art doesn't
>have to be some confusing abstract in-joke, but can be accessible to
everyone. I want to explore aspects of fun, dream and fantasy, and popular
culture.”

ANDREW CLIFFORD Andrew Clifford is a freelance curator, broadcaster and
writer. He was Director of the 2002 Royal Easter Show Art Awards and is
currently curating Artspace’s Airspace programme. His main interests are in
sound and exploring the grey areas between popular culture and fine art.
“Top of the World” continues his ongoing investigation of familiarity and
hierarchies in art and society. He exploits commonality to explore viewer
relationships with sounds, objects, and experiences. He primarily employs
common, every-day objects that toy with familiarity and nostalgia, as well
as eroding the cultural class systems of society and the gallery.

NIGHTVISION gratefully acknowledges the support of Auckland City Creative
Communities. www.nightvision.net.nz (active from Aug 22)