Main Gallery/2010

In this exhibition, designed primarily for children, Bronwyn Lloyd and Karl Chitham treat the humble brown box as a plain structure with unlimited imaginative potential while at the same time bringing together two of their primary enthusiasms: making up stories and making objects from paper and cardboard. One Brown Box is made up of adaptations of five classic children's stories including The Princess and the Pea, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, and Hansel and Gretel, each told from the perspective of overlooked, minor and absent characters from the original tales, illustrated with large and small models made entirely from boxes and paper.

The domains of makers and designers Vita Cochran, Andrea Daly, Warwick Freeman, Simon Gamble, Genevieve Packer, Emily Siddell and Richard Stratton are the locations of diverse accumulations of collected objects in addition to works from their own practices. The collections of these designers and makers are in some cases diverse, but despite the expansiveness of some of the collections there is a focus to them. Each of these collections in some way inform and resource the production of their owners. 'Talking to Me' has discovered that makers' collecting and collections are closely inter-related to their making practice, providing a new and revealing lens for better understanding that practice and, in some cases, the conception and development of individual works.

Sing - recite - repeat - inform - reiterate - impart - provoke - react - respond. All of these kupu (words) illuminate the concept of chants or waiata and express the ways in which oral traditions can communicate deeper insight and meaning to events, people and relationships. Whether motivated by political struggle or individual desire and ambition, the narrative message found within chants has the power to elevate and emancipate agendas and positions. This practice is applied here to describe the pairing of contemporary Maori weavers Ngaahina Hohaia and Karl Rangikawhiti Leonard.

"Metadecorative', the word Curtis solders together to title this exhibition, points to her work as decoration about decoration, as decoration that investigates the intricacies of decoration's histories, languages and forms to produce new forms of decoration. For Curtis, these investigations have her exploring European museum collections, trawling library shelves, reading historical and contemporary writings on decorative arts and practices and sifting through the contents of second hand stores. While the research activities are diverse and the garnered treasures eclectic, the work at the bench is precise. It seeks to produce jewellery pieces that have the feel of the present through the quotation of remembered shapes, textures and patterns.

This exhibition posits that the quotidian (def: everyday, commonplace) is a useful lens for understanding aspects of contemporary design practice ranging from fashion, furniture, graphic, product to spatial design. Specifically it demonstrates how the quotidian is a resource for contemporary designers and the participating designers in particular; Alt Group, Nat Cheshire, Formway Design, Adrian Hailwood, Peter Haythornthwaite, Guy Hohmann, Jamie McLellan, Jonty Valentine, Matthew von Sturmer, Katy Wallace, and Cybele Wiren.

Now in its sixth year, Objectspace's annual graduate exhibition continues to present outstanding graduates from New Zealand tertiary institutions in the fields of Applied Arts and Design. Providing a valuable snapshot of the trends and issues in contemporary creative practice, Best in Show 2010 showcases seventeen newly emerged voices in contemporary Jewellery, Fashion, Textile, Object, Furniture, Ceramics, and Graphic Design.

The Fletcher Challenge Ceramics Award (1977-1998) was for many years, New Zealand's most enduring art award, certainly the most internationalist award operating in the visual arts and one of the most generously sponsored. This exhibition displays, for the first time the winning pots as a group. This project, curated by Grant Thompson, considers the core cultural co-ordinates of this event; the position of ceramics in the culture and in the mind of the public, the value and nature of collections, internationalism, sponsorship and the relationship between flagship events and contemporary practice. All of these themes are still highly relevant issues within the contemporary visual arts.