Easy Listening: Laura Preston and Wystan Curnow – After documenta, the exhibition review

Last year while based in Athens for documenta 14, Laura Preston began a conversation with Wystan Curnow about the relationship of art and place.

In Auckland, they continue this discussion by reviewing a number of recent exhibitions, both in Europe and in Aotearoa New Zealand, to consider the importance of art criticism and the issues of writing about art.

About the speakers

A widely published art critic and poet, Wystan Curnow is based in Auckland where he is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Auckland. In 2014, his selected art writings, The Critic's Part, was published by the Adam Art Gallery, Wellington and the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane. Last year he co-curated with Robert Leonard, Colin McCahon. On Going Out with the Tide at the Wellington City Gallery. He co-edited The Long Dream of Waking, a collection of new writings on Len Lye which also appeared last year, published by the University of Canterbury Press.  His conversation with Allan Smith, Days of Reading was in Reading Room 5, 2012, and with Nick Austin in his Personal Address, 2017. He chaired and co-edited the Jar roundtable discussion on Simon Ingram's Radio Painting Station, recently printed at the Elam Press.

Laura Preston is a curator and editor of contemporary art books. She also writes on contemporary art. Recently she served as an associate editor for documenta 14.   She has also edited for Sternberg Press, Berlin and May magazine, Paris, and is the editor of Next Spring: An Occasional Series of Reviews. Her role as the inaugural curator-at-large for the Adam Art Gallery, Victoria University of Wellington from 2013–15 followed on from her time as in-house curator from 2008–12. In 2012, she was a guest curator at Portikus, Frankfurt am Main. Currently, she is researching towards her PhD with Sabeth Buchmann at the Institute of Art Theory and Critical Studies, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, from her home in Berlin.

Easy Listening Talks in Contemporary Art and Culture is a collaborative project by ARTSPACE, Elam School of Fine Arts and Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.