Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery

Designs For Living

Mladen Bizumic

Lisa Crowley

Louise Menzies

Long Live the Modern

22 October 2010 – 06 March 2011

Designs for Living was a suite of four exhibitions that revisited twentieth-century modernism as it took shape in New Zealand. Drawing on visual and archival material and our built heritage, these projects sought to document certain features of this important artistic, architectural, social, technological and material legacy.

Long Live the Modern: New Zealand’s New Architecture 1904–1984
Curated by Julia Gatley and Bill McKay
Organised and toured by the Gus Fisher Gallery, University of Auckland

This exhibition brought attention to key buildings that have been identified as crucial to our modernist history. Organised under the aegis of DOCOMOMO, a world-wide organisation dedicated to documenting the achievements of the modern movement in architecture, the show drew attention to the particular contribution of New Zealand architecture to this project.

Mladen Bizumic: From Cube to Ball (Chapter 2)
Lisa Crowley: National Projects
Louise Menzies: Letters to Students of the Radiant Life
Brought together by Christina Barton

To complement the exhibition Long Live the Modern, Adam Art Gallery invited three New Zealand artists to present chapters from their ongoing research into New Zealand’s modern history. Deploying different mediums and forms, and addressing strikingly different aspects of this legacy, artists Mladen Bizumic, Lisa Crowley and Louise Menzies offered richly various responses to modernism’s social and artistic ideals.

In realising these projects the Adam Art Gallery gratefully acknowledges the support of the J. C Beaglehole Room, Victoria University of Wellington Special Collections, Creative New Zealand and Weleda New Zealand Ltd, Gus Fisher Gallery, National Institute of Creative Arts and Industries, The University of Auckland and Coopers Creek.