AUT University's Art Involvement
There are very few exhibition projects that cover such a vast variety of projects – including cows, milk, earthquakes, water, tea, horses, temporary offices, mud, photography, objects and more.
But AUT University’s Transforming Topographies, on now as part of the 5th Auckland Triennial, can.
The exhibition
The Lab space in the Auckland Art Gallery will, for the next two weeks, be continuously dismantled, repositioned and energised by groups and individuals from AUT’s Visual Arts and Spatial Design Departments.
There are 85 participants involved in the three-week project, with 32 different projects being shown.
Some will remain for the full three weeks, others will come and go.
Monique Redmond, an AUT Visual Arts lecturer and Project Leader says Transforming Topographies draws on the designers’ understandings of ‘what it means to live here’ looking at what defines the topography of city, rural and urban in relation to social situation and exchange.
The projects
Some of these projects include Waitemata ‘Obsidian Waters’ Public Project, which invites the public to send in photos of the waters in the Waitemata Harbour. Those photos are then downloaded, printed and installed in The Lab.
Another is the #46 Best Before project. This project involves “A newly formed ‘dairy co-operative’ that collects raw milk from their collective cow, Kowhai every day, and makes a daily delivery to The Lab, for conversation and potential consumption (if you join the Co-op!).
One that depends entirely on New Zealand’s environment is #62 Here For Now. The project involves 321 coloured vinyl dots installed on The Lab floor that collectively represent the amount of earthquakes New Zealand had last week, using data from Geonet.
How it came about
Curator of the Triennial Hou Hanru invited artists and designers to respond to the diverse cultural, social, architectural and urban characteristics of Auckland and Elvon Young, Head of the Spatial Design Department at AUT says this is their response.
“We thought, let’s put a ridiculous amount of students doing a ridiculous amount of projects in a space. And make it incredibly active, not passive like so many exhibitions are.”
The group completing the projects is comprised of AUT Visual Arts and Spatial Design staff, postgraduate students, undergraduate students and alumni.
Transforming Topographies is on at the Auckland Art Gallery as part of the 5th Auckland Triennial.
It runs until Sunday July 21.
For more on the projects
For media interviews or more information please contact Caitlin Madden, Caitlin.madden@aut.ac.nz or 0212414705.