Tasha Aulls/ Adam Burton/ Simon Bedwell / Sebastian Camilleri / Matthew Croft / Maurice Doherty / Melvin Galapon / Verity Keefe / Trevor Kiernander / Michael Lawton / Neil Mcnally / Pat and Trevor / Jonathon Munro / Sarah Roesink Sofia Stevi / Laurie Storey / Gethin Wyn Jones

CITY ART ROOMS - PRESS RELEASE

Crash, sizzle, and burn; is the end nigh? Don’t Worry It’s Only Money features an international group of artists who respond to the current spectacle of swinging economics wrought upon the globe.

As galleries and artists struggle to stay afloat amidst dwindling endowments and spending, comes a timely exhibition addressing the global financial crisis, wealth, the value of art, and subversive means of capital transaction.

New Zealand was particularly barbed in the recession of 1987, and in response, established artist Paul Hartigan created limited edition prints with the words, 'Don't Worry It's Only Money' Xeroxed against a backdrop of devalued Kiwi currency.

Discovered by chance in the artist's studio, curator Young Sun Han was struck by the motto's succinct humour, criticality, and relevance nearly 19 years later.

Hartigan's prints served as a point of inspiration, and the exhibition has grown to include 6 other emerging and senior New Zealand artists alongside contributions from Australian, German, Romanian, Russian, Slovakian, and American artists.

Artists were encouraged to submit works that challenged influences of the art market, and the works delivered in several ways: Maurice Doherty presents a 1,000GBP cheque to bribe the curator, Justin Jade Morgan offers to rent a portion of the gallery wall to other artists, and Berlin-based duo Anetta Mona Chisa and Lucia Tkacova provide tips for Eastern European women on how to find a job and survive in a foreign city.

City Art Rooms is also pleased to announce the inclusion of critically acclaimed writer, activist, and cult photographer Slava Mogutin, author of 2 hardcover monographs of photography, 'Lost Boys' and 'NYC Go-Go.' Mogutin is the co-founder of SUPERM, a multimedia art collaboration that has held exhibitions in gallery and museum shows throughout New York, Los Angeles, Moscow, Berlin, London, and Oslo.

'Don't Worry It's Only Money' presents possibilities of how art is made, presented and consumed during trying economic times.

'Don't Worry It's Only Money' opens 7 July, 5.30pm at City Art Rooms, Level 1, 28 Lorne St, Auckland

Featured Artists : Anetta Mona Chisa, Brit Bunkley, Geoff Newton, Jason Akira Somma, Jason Lingard, Justin Jade Morgan, Lane Cormick, Lucia Tkacova, Maurice Doherty, Natalie Thomas, Nell May, Paul Hartigan, Scott Eady, Simon Glaister, Slava Mogutin, Tom Turner

SCHALTER - PRESS RELEASE

Schalter is pleased to announce D E S T R O Y M o d e r n A r t, an exhibition by Glasgow/Berlin based artist Maurice Doherty.

In his exhibition at Schalter, Doherty employs a variety of techniques – lens based, sculptural and two dimensional – to find urgency in the established methods and conventions of 20th Century Art. Treating seminal artworks as an available vocabulary to raise questions of fragmentation, misappropriation, vandalization, theft and otherwise transgression, Doherty brings a conceptual approach – such as applying Piet Mondrian’s Neo-Plasticism to the streets of Belfast or lifting fetishized images from the internet – to bear on the interplay of conflicts like morality and culture or beauty and the banal.

The theme of destruction has often featured in Doherty’s art. Having received the New Work Scotland Award in Edinburgh in 2003, Doherty’s exhibition at the Collective Gallery titled ‘Mass Destruction’ consisted of a gas cooker, canister and burning candle. The installation gave visitors to the exhibition the opportunity to turn on the gas and obliterate the gallery. In a more recent artwork, ‘Searching for My Soul’, Doherty is documenting the destruction and regeneration of the cells in his body over a sixteen-year period, at which point he will be physically made up of new matter.

Born in Ireland in 1972, Doherty graduated from the University of Ulster, Belfast, in 1997 and completed a Masters in Fine Art at the Glasgow School of Art, in 2001. Recent solo exhibitions of his work have been presented at the Futures Gallery, Glasgow Science Centre, as part of the Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Art (2008), Catalyst Arts, Belfast (2006), The Floating Series, Berlin (2006) and Tramway, Glasgow (2006). Recent group shows include ‘Last Chance Salon’ at the Glasgow Project Room (2009), 'Wanted Duchamps' at D’Ailleurs-Volapük/Ici&Là, Berlin (2008) and 'Ghost Riders' at Kunsthaus Erfurt (2008).

Schalter is a non-commercial platform for the conception of art and exhibition making. The space was founded on a belief that the exhibition can also exist as an artwork, and seeks to question traditional divisions between artist and curator, exhibition and discrete individual artwork, and how we understand context, meaning and author. The space was founded in October 2006.

"Life, Death And The Meaning Of The Universe - An alchemist would take something base and hope to change it into a higher value. Doherty selects something accessible and badly addictive, and transforms it into something adorable and unreachable and beautiful....His distinctive switching of the scene from light to dark, from burning cigarettes to a night sky, posits the work into a matrix of conflicts and paradoxes of art, knowledge and existence...The role of time changes according to the subject's 'appropriate paradox': the Self is governed by natural law, the athlete's time is artificially prolonged, and the universe's eternity is cut short by the dying out of burning cigarettes ends."

Circa Art Magazine 'Maurice Doherty' - Slavka Sverakova

TRAMWAY - PRESS RELEASE

Maurice Doherty's art employs a variety of techniques - lens based, sculptural and two dimensional - to articulate an exploration of themes prevalent throughout the history of art - the transience of experience, the interplay of morality and culture, and the conflict between the beauty and banality of being alive.

In this commission for new work for Tramway's Project Room, Doherty has created a contemporary vanitas, using an everyday occurrence to throw into relief the absurdity of existence. Manipulating the viewer's experience to lie somewhere between fear and seduction, indulgence and accountability, boredom and intrigue, the work contains and objectifies the subject to create something poignant without being sentimental.

Like other works of Doherty's, Eternal Rotation is characterized by a visual minimalism, using the commonplace and the prosaic to explore the most profound and complex of universal experiences, that of life itself.

Maurice Doherty (1972) was born in Northern Ireland and has been based in Glasgow since 1999. He graduated from the University of Ulster, Belfast, in 1997 and completed a Masters in Fine Art at Glasgow School of Art, in 2001. Since 1997, Doherty has exhibited widely, in Britain, Ireland, Europe and the US. In 2005 Doherty exhibited in shows at Flaca Gallery, London and ak28, Stockholm. In 2004 exhibitions included the Three Walls Gallery, Chicago and Künstlerhaus Bethanien, during the Berlin Biennale .
Artist talk: Maurice Doherty in conversation with Ross Birrell

Wed 18 Jan @ 6.30pm free on first come first served basis

Exhibition supported by the Scottish Arts Council and Glasgow City Council

ONLINE REVIEWS - ETERNAL ROTATION
Artists Newsletter.co.uk / Ross Birrell > >
The Skinny / Jasper Hamill > >

"As the machine builds relentlessly towards its inevitable final spin with the pre-ordained result that bowl, water and fish will fall to the floor, we come close to Heidegger's claim in 'Being and Time' that the fundamental existential experience of Dasein is 'anticipation', or more precisely, the anticipation of death. Is Eternal Rotation an image of a Heideggerian being-towards-death? Needless to say, the fish falls as machine completes its orgasmic spin, indifferent to the uncertain fate of its victim. As Eternal Rotation demonstrates, when Doherty is on target he is infinitely rewarding."

Artist's Newsletter, - Tramway, Glasgow - Ross Birrell

CATALYST ARTS - PRESS RELEASE

Born in 1972 in Omagh, N.Ireland, Maurice Doherty studied Fine Art at the University of Ulster, Belfast and at Glasgow School of Art. He currently lives and works in Glasgow.

Doherty uses a powerful minimalist aesthetic and a subtle simplicity to transform banality in life, into something poetic and indeterminate. His works involve a sincere search for meaningful artistic intervention.

For his exhibition at Catalyst Arts, Doherty will be presenting three video installations shown together for the first time.   Exhibiting the artist's characteristic concern for experiment, waiting, and time, 'Waiting to Fall' (2001) shows footage of the artist standing upright, in an empty studio space for as long as possible. After depriving himself of sleep, Doherty is donned in a crash helmet in preparation for what's going to happen.

'Loop' (2004) is a video installation that shows a female figure spinning a hula-hoop around her waist. The piece is presented with front and back shots of the scene, the viewer is invited to walk around the work, mirroring the on-screen action. As the title suggests, the film too is looped and could in theory, continue to spin until the projection equipment breaks.

'Life, Death And The Meaning Of The Universe' (2001/06) is a video work that uses footage of burning cigarettes in a blacked out room, to simulate the retinal effect of stars in a mini-universe. It's an issue of infinite concern, being reduced into a new and contained context, itself carrying connotations for public health.

Since 1997, Doherty has exhibited widely, in Britain, Ireland, Europe and the US. This year, Doherty has had solo exhibitions at Tramway, Glasgow 'Eternal Rotation' and at Kochhannstraße 14b, Berlin, 'Maurice Doherty - The Floating Series'. In 2005 Doherty exhibited in shows at AK28, Stockholm, Flaca Gallery, London and the Collective Gallery, Edinburgh. In 2004 exhibitions included the Three Walls Gallery, Chicago and Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin.