4 June–10 July 2011
g. bridle
The Inimical: A Selection from the Retreat

g. bridle collects objects and images and then brings them together in new configurations using the gallery as a ‘sanctuary’ where different connections can be made. By such means the artist proposes a model of practice whereby the lines between making, collecting and arranging are blurred and questions are raised about how things acquire or are imbued with aura and thus granted meaning.

16 July – 21 August
(A Film Called) Ellipsis Richard Frater, Chris Prosser, Anna Sanderson
Curated by Laura Preston

In Continuous Project Altered Daily (October Books, 1993) American artist Robert Morris proposes how sculpture can accommodate time and the environment. Inspired by this collection of writing, three different practitioners took up residence in the gallery to produce an accumulative environment—akin to a film in the making—to reflect on the act of collecting as a process in time. Musician and composer Chris Prosser sampled material from his personal archive of musical scores; artist Richard Frater presented a compilation of New Zealand moving image on the natural environment; and writer Anna Sanderson responded to the ceramic collections held at Victoria University of Wellington.

27 August – 2 October
Leonid Tishkov and Boris Bendikov
Private Moon
Organised by Marcus Williams

Utilising humour, satire and poetic tenderness, Moscow-based artists Leonid Tishkov and Boris Bendikov provide poignant insights into the human condition, particularly the relationship between personal will and state control as experienced in Soviet Russia. This exhibition presented their most recent series of large-scale colour photographs. Each depicts an intimate and evolving relationship between a man and his Private Moon. This exhibition was organised by Marcus Williams and first staged at Snowwhite, Unitec, Auckland.

8 October – 13 November
The Victorian Album, the Feminine and the Personal
Curated by Dr Sandy Callister

During the Victorian era, photography became remarkably popular and accessible, stimulated in part by the technological innovation of the carte-devisite process. This exhibition examined the way in which New Zealand women utilised this new medium, presenting work that has rarely—and in many cases never—been displayed or reproduced, to provide a fascinating window into Pakeha and Maori women’s experience of modernity and the complex cultural interweavings of late colonial society. Dr Sandy Callister prepared this exhibition whilst resident scholar at the Stout Research Centre, Victoria University of Wellington.

19 November – 18 December
Shadowgraphs: Photographic Portraits by Len Lye
Curated by Professor Geoffrey Batchen and his Art History Honours students.

Drawn primarily from the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery collection, this exhibition presented almost all the photogram portraits made by Len Lye in 1947, a body of work that until recently was neither well known nor fully understood. Here Lye’s works will be contextualised in relation to the tradition of the silhouette portrait and the camera-less photograph. This is the Adam Art Gallery’s biennial student-led project which enables students to research, write about and present an exhibition on a unique body of work.