Compiler

Ali Bramwell

Lynne Lambert, Embosom, 2004, recycled brassieres (donated by supporters). In LIVLIF Project at Aigantighe Art Gallery, 49 Wai-iti Road, Timaru until 9 October and at two more venues in the South Island before heading to the North Island next year. Visit www.tamaru.govt.nz/gallery.

Festival in Nelson

22 October is a particularly busy day in Nelson too – it will be overrun with sculptors, visual artists and performers for the month of October with the programme of across-the-spectrum arts activity, culminating on the final day of the Annual Nelson Arts Festival proper (you guessed it – 22 October) with an antique boat regatta and fireworks in the harbour. The 22nd is also the last day of the annual Macs Sculpture Symposium exhibition held in Trafalgar Street. If all that weren’t enough, ten ships from the Royal Navies of NZ and Australia will be in Port, with sailors marching up Trafalgar Street and back again with much drumming.

Terminal zeitgeist

22 October is the open day of a public art exhibition being held on Haulashore Island in Nelson Harbour as part of Terminus Public Art Project. The Terminus project involves two cities and twenty-odd artists from Auckland, Wellington, Nelson, Dunedin, Britain, Australia, Germany and South Korea. The project has an emphasis on site and innovative public practices. The following week (most of) the same artists will install public works in Dunedin, also focussing on the port area. The Dunedin Terminus Public Art Project opens with performances and artist talks on 30 October at Customhouse Quay. The participant list includes John Lyall and Adrian Hall who both have had long and interesting conversations with site, performance and public practices during their careers. As well as the two major public exhibitions, the project also encompasses three satellite exhibitions one in Nelson and two in Dunedin. The whole project is curated and directed by Ali Bramwell.

In an uncanny zeitgeist, there is a public project with strikingly similar intent occurring during October in Sydney that is also called Terminus, directed by Sarah Rawlings. The two events are not connected; although, the respective curators have been having an email conversation since finding out about each other and met during September to compare notes. Visit www.terminus05.net.nz for details about the NZ Terminus and www.terminusprojects.org for details about the Australian event.

Bras ‘n things

Aigantighe (pronounced ‘egg and tie’) Gallery in Timaru hosts The LIVLIF project, until 9 October. Produced and toured by Christchurch-based artist Lynne Lambert, the installation deals with the sensitive subject of surviving breast cancer. The show was seen by Christchurch audiences in February at the Centre of Contemporary Art, and Lambert is actively seeking touring venues for the work. This work comes to the South Island on the heels of the successful Touching the unthinkable exhibition produced at the Suter Gallery in Nelson earlier this year that dealt with similar issues in a different way (mentioned in June Artnotes NZ SI). Although notably different in other ways, both projects are speaking from a survivor’s perspective and seek to focus on living rather than dying. Lambert is calling on the humble foundation garment to reference the personal stories of individual women, filling the gallery with secondhand lingerie that has been evocatively re-sewn. Lambert comments that the individual bras in the gallery, nearly 700 of which were previously owned and worn by breast cancer survivors, are a direct reminder that women come in all shapes and sizes and are a tactile way of representing personal experience. The show also includes soft sculptures created from the bras of project supporters. Visit Lambert’s inspirational website www.lynnelambert.net.