'Nature Reserves', group exhibition at GV Art, London

Two works themed around erasure, the audible trace, extinction, colonial-era collecting, and silence, Huia Transcriptions and Collected Silences for Lord Rothschild were aptly included in a group exhibition, titled Nature Reserves, which ran at London art/science gallery space GV Art from the 26th july - 13th september.

"dear friends who have died are all talking to me tonight / all at once..." : a late-night transmission at rice & beans

continuing the series of programmes which spatially sonifies gallery spaces via small-scale transmission, radio cegeste set up a radio show after midnight in the empty room of artist run space rice & beans, located in inner city dunedin and run throughout 2011 by a small collective, on the final day of the space's lease by its current occupiers, a few days after the final show (dan bell's 'alluvial atomiser') had closed.

narrowcasting back a sound library of 5 minute recordings i had collected during a single day (the 18th march 2009) spent wandering around galleries in central christchurch, "dear friends who have died are all talking to me tonight / all at once..." became a meta-reflection on the afterlife of small-scale, independent art spaces and groups, with the re-spatialisation and layering of a series of spaces which now literally do not exist, after the february 2011 eathquake decimated the gallery sector of inner city christchurch.

Radio d'Oiseaux : EVP recordings among the extinct bird collections at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

This morning I talked about Media Povera, a group exhibition i'm curating at the Blue Oyster Gallery, Dunedin (July 13 - August 7), in an interview with Lynn Freeman for Radio New Zealand programme The Arts on Sunday. The conversation also included artists Kim Pieters and Nigel Bunn, speaking via distance from RNZ's Dunedin studio. This interview will air Sunday week, while we are in the midst of installing the show for its Tuesday opening.

Media Povera includes a work by Radio Cegeste. This will be an iteration of the Radio d'Oiseaux project with its focus on birdsong, museology, and NZ broadcast space. A first foray into the collection of bird silences for this work, in the form of EVP investigations into extinct New Zealand avian species at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, was conducted between 10:30am - 12:30pm on Monday 28th June.

Many thanks extended to Gillian Stone, Collection Manager of Birds at Te Papa, for access to the collections, and also to James Gilberd for technical assistance and use of equipment.