Main Gallery/2011

Objectspace is delighted to present "Nimamea'a: The fine arts of Tongan embroidery and crochet" - our first major project focused on making from the Pacific.

"Listen to them. Children of the night! What music they make!"

The relationship between photography and art is now a committed one; in fact, it is arguable whether art can exist without it. Like European Old Masters artworks some jewels are only ever seen by a handful of people. And so the photographic representation itself becomes a known and sometimes desired object and eventually part of jewellery's discourse. Eye Catch is Objectspace's first photographic exhibition. The categories in which the photographs are grouped are porous, their borders open: jewellery in portraiture; as prop; as product line; as self portrait; as emblem; in fiction; as artefact; in the news; and in time and place. Eye Catch is not a definitive collection of jewellery in New Zealand photographs; it "contains what Cook and Freeman caught after trawling, albeit with the gimlet eyes of jewellery practitioners" says writer Frances Walsh who interviewed the curators about their selection.

Why Milan? New Zealand designers reflect is a collaborative exhibition project and magazine feature presented by Objectspace and Urbis magazine. The exhibition showcases seven outstanding contemporary New Zealand designers; Phil Cuttance, David Trubridge, Well-Groomed-Fox, Rod Fry, Simon James, Designtree, and Punga and Smith. These designers based both locally and overseas, have utilised the prestigious Milan design week - arguably the biggest design fair in the world - to showcase their work to an international audience.

This exhibition surveys the career and practice of Richard Parker, a defining figure within NZ ceramics, whose singular vision has sustained his career for over 30 years and produced works that are uniquely recognisable. The exhibition and 120 page book features works loaned from leading public and private collections around New Zealand. The curator, Richard Fahey, says "Parker had his own picture of what a pot should look like", and that although Parker's practice is grounded within the traditions of studio ceramics, "as an artist, his innovative approach seeks to redefine for us new ways we may understand the decorative object."

The Best in Show exhibition series is an annual fixture in the Objectspace calendar. Inaugurated in 2005, the aim is to showcase Objectspace's selection of talented emerging applied arts graduates from tertiary institutions around New Zealand. Areas of practice covered in 2011 by these 'diamonds in the rough' include graphic design, digital design, textiles, ceramics, contemporary jewellery and furniture.