curation

Curation

LAKE ARTS PRECINCT Awabakal Country / Lake Macquarie, East Coast of Australia

In 2021 I became the inaugural arts producer for the Lake Arts Precinct, launching a new venue for digital and performing art – MAP mima, and directing the Museum of Art and Culture yapang.

With the team, we deliver exhibitions of contemporary art and support artists develop their practice.

With support form Creative Australia’s Re-Imagine Initative and the NSW Government through Create NSW, we are currently revitalising the MAC yapang Sculpture Park. Phase One and Two will be complete in 2025. Designed around Connection to Country and creative community building, there will be seven new public artworks, accessible pathways and native gardens.

Shaping and Weaving the Lake Arts Precinct, International Symposium on Electronic Art, meanjin, 2024

LIGHT WINDOWS a worldwide exhibition of light art during May 2020
Artists in isolation created installations of light art during May 2020. The artworks were aimed at inspiring hyperlocal audiences and forging unity across closed boarders.

On the International Day of Light- May 16, 2020, artists from Seoul to California artists shared live streams over an 18hr evening. The 90+ installations across 18 countries can be explored here: http://holocenter.org/light-windows-map

Press: Artists Fill Their Windows with Light Displays for Isolation Exhibit, New York Post

Light-art windows send out message of hope to passers-by amid COVID-19 isolation, STIR Magazine

LIGHT WINDOWS was part of the UNESCO International Day of Light supported by SPIE, MakeSTEAM The New York Community Trust and New York State Council on the Arts.

SPACE:LIGHT
The Plaxall Gallery (LIC Culture Lab) Long Island City, NY

The SPACE:LIGHT program grew from working with artists in the HoloCenter studio residency program. In 2019 I curated the exhibition SPACE:LIGHT that featured artists working with light at The Plaxall Gallery. New works by nineteen artists were featured along with three artist performances.

Maximus Clarke ∙ Barak Chamo ∙ Wen-Han Chang ∙ Xiaowei Chen ∙ Valeria Divinorum ∙ Lori Horowitz ∙ Lara Knutson ∙ Raisa Nosova ∙ Steve Pavlovsky ∙ Jonathan Sims ∙ Julia Sinelnikova ∙ George Stadnik ∙ Joey Steigelman ∙ Tracy Abbott Szatan ∙ Kazue Taguchi ∙ Pierre-Luc Vaillancourt ∙ Bryan Whitney ∙ Sangjun Yoo ∙ Jason Yung

Press ‘Center for the Holographic Arts in New York presents an exhibition on light art‘ STIR Magazine

Building on the success of SPACE:LIGHT I engaged emerging curators to deliver the next two SPACE:LIGHT exhibitions EDGE OF LIGHT 2020 & ALTERNATE REALITY 2021

HOLOGRAPHIC EMBODIMENT
HoloCenter on Governors Island, 2019

The confluence of the physical and virtual body is explored by artists working with holographic media. The artworks create collective, emotive and fragmented visions of the self in states of coexistence. Light and information are shaped using various techniques to suggest the chimeral nature of consciousness and identity.

–Featuring–
Margaret Benyon, Micheal Bleyenberg, Lana Blum, Melissa Crenshaw & Sydney Dinsmore, Eva Davidova, Juergen Eichler, Gullliermo Federico Heinze, Juyong Lee, Sam Moree, August Muth, Ikuo Nakamura, Ana Maria Nicholson, Travis Paquin, Ioana Pioaru, Paul Roustan, Dan Schweitzer, Fred Unterseher and one of the L’enfer holograms produced by Richard Castelli from the unfinished movie by Henri-Georges Clouzot with Romy Schneider

IRIDESCENCE is the cumulative exhibition of artworks produced through The Holographic Art Grant, funded by the Hologram Foundation (Paris) in partnership with Center for the Holographic Arts (New York). Each artist selected through the international competition produces a major new holographic artwork.

Artists: Michael Bleyenberg, Lana Blum, Philippe Boissonnet, Patrick Boyd, Betsy Connors, Pascal Gauchet, Setsuko Ishii, Sam Moree, August Muth, Ray Park, Fred Unterseher

IRIDESCENCE Catalogue PDF

–Exhibition Tour –

2023 – HoloCenter Kingston NYC

2019 – HoloCenter | ON CANAL

2018 – Galerie im Alten Rathaus, Prien, Germany

2017 – ESPACE 24B, Paris; HoloCenter on Governors Island, New York; CENTRAL BOOKING, New York

ARTIST PHOTONICS
HoloCenter on Governors Island, 2018

Holographic memories and explorations of optical dynamics come to the HoloCenter for ‘Artist Photonics’. Shaping, twisting, and splitting light, artists create work where the photons are the medium. Imagery is carved by luminance, color and space hold form.

Elisa Balmaceda · Lorraine Beaulieu · Iñaki Berguiristan · Michael Bleyenberg · Patrick Boyd · Max Clarke · Dafydd Dale-Jones · Rose DeSiano · Guillermo Federico Heinze · Juyong Lee · Kacie Lees · Gerald Marks · Waldemar Mattis-Teutsch · Sam Moree · August Muth · Ana Maria Nicholson · Ray Park · John Perry · Pete Rogina · Kathleen Ruiz · Kat Ryals · Julius Schmiedel · Dan Schweitzer · Mathew Schreiber with Daniel Newman · Steve Weinstock · curated by Martina Mrongovius

Create your own light drawings in the Interactive Glow Space

RIPPLE EFFECT, HoloCenter on Governors Island, 2017

The sensation of a ripple brings our awareness to change. The rhythm of energy, force, time and space shape our consciousness and shift reality into new configurations. Change is woven into perception and unwoven into narratives. Detecting ripples we feel the unseen, we reconstruct the past from the impact of events. Our bodies use ripples to probe reality, and create ripples to change it.
The holographic image is created from rippled patterns of interference within the print. Light is shaped by the captured structure as it travels through the hologram. The holographic scene perpetually reconstructed.

Patrick Boyd • Betsy Connors • Guillermo Federico Heinze • Linda Law • Waldemar Mattis-Teutsch • Sam Moree • August Muth • Ana Maria Nicholson • Julius Schmiedel • Dan Schweitzer • Ray Park • Doris Vila • Steve Weinstock • Tobias Wolter with high speed video by Phred Petersen and Dr. Matthew Taylor

UNCERTAIN WORLDS by Philippe Boissonnet
HoloCenter, Long Island City Clock Tower, 2014

Philippe Boissonnet creates holographic image installations that bring the viewer into a cartography, suggesting a related system of perspective. Objects and images are combined into installations that carry concepts about the relationship between the personal and the global. These installations were designed to destabilize the viewers’ certainties with respect to their concept of the real and its supposed stability.

Ten of Philippe Boissonnet’s installations were brought together for the exhibition UNCERTAIN WORLDS at the Holocenter’s Clock Tower Gallery in the Spring of 2014. Each installation posed a relational perspective for viewers as they moved around the physical structure, the printed images and the holographic images. The sculptural presence of the works was activated, while also destabilized because the holographic image appears only from certain angles or conditions.

Entrance to Long Island City Clock Tower — gallery entrance

Eva Davidova 'Feeding Alice' (2004-2007) in Interference:Coexsitance, HoloCenter at the Long Island City Clock Tower, 2014 — Eva Davidova 'Feeding Alice' (2004-2007)

INTERFERENCE:COEXISTENCE
HoloCenter at the Long Island City Clock Tower, 2013

‘Holographic art is on the cusp of a digital revolution. This has also revived an interest in analogue techniques. The artwork brought together for this exhibition spans almost the entire duration of the field, from Dan Schweitzer’s elaborately constructed analogue holograms of the late 1970s to Paul Daswon’s digital hologram Hyperobject:Homeland where she used a robotic drawing arm to capture the 3-dimensional information. Moving through the gallery however, none of these works feel dated. Even Rebecca Deem’s Rotating Holo-Relief from 1981, which spins on a vintage turntable, points to the emerging technology of holographic data storage. These sculpted optical scenes seem to sit outside of time, to draw time through them, constantly renewing a virtual space in their illumination.’ (excerpt from my curator’s note in the exhibition catalogue)

Artists: Margaret Benyon, Rudie Berkhout, Betsy Connors, Melissa Crenshaw & Sidney Dinsmore, Eva Davidova, Paula Dawson, Rebecca Deem, Cho Duckhee, Tristan Duke, Mary Harman, Guillermo Federico Heinze, Setsuko Ishii, Adrienne Klein, Juyong Lee, Ana MacArthur, Gerald Marks, Sam Moree, Ikuo Nakamura, Ana Maria Nicholson, Ray Park, Andrew Pepper, Julius Schmiedel, Dan Schweitzer, Fred Unterseher and Sally Weber

With new works by emerging Korean Artists in the Holocenter Vault Gallery: Boyang Ahn, Haena Bae, Bokyung Jung, Jungwon Park and Eunjo Yang

MiniusEins im Exil
Sommerloch Festival at the Elba Villa, Wuppertal, Germany, 2010

With students from the Academy of Media Arts and through the Urban Stage seminar with Mischa Kuball we developed an exhibition in response to the Elba Villa in Wuppertal.

My role was to connect the various installations together which I did by creating an exhibition map and an installation of holograms in stairwell.

I worked with the Sommerloch festival team to develop a waiver to enable the public to visit this historic site. We playful incorporated the wavier signing into a participatory origami installation. I also hosted a barista artist talk event where visitors could order coffee with a question about the art and were directed to one of the artists tables to continue the discussion.

HOLOGRAPHIC COLLABORATIONS
HoloCenter Court Square Gallery 2008, the series was then acquired by and exhibited at the Jonathan Ross Collection – Gallery 286, London, 2014.

Planes of light are traced across the two artists faces. Slithers of visual touch allowing the two figures to exist in the same space. The incomplete shells remind us that we only ever see the surface.

Ana Maria Nicholson and Rudie Berkhout are both prolific holographic artists who each shaped different genres of the artform. Nicholson primarily works with portraiture, having created holograms of celebrities, spiritual leaders and diverse people. Her series ‘into the night’ captures the plight and power of women. Created in single and multiple pulse laser exposures, the women hold a space. Berkhout crafted with laser light, creating spatially animated landscapes from simple objects and optics. His work stood out in the field of holography, exploring the the concept of holo-kenectis through the optical spatial dynamics.

BEYOND THE WINDOW
Bus gallery, Melbourne, 2008

Dreaming out the window thoughts unfold into the scene, anchoring and shifting the emotive landscape.

Five project created through artist collaborations between Lise Couchet, Clare Hassett, Martina Mrongovius, Erin OʼCallaghan, Philippe Pasquier, Yandell Walton

The artists in this exhibition explore relationships within imagery – the connections, resonance and disjunctions of perception. The emotive forces within each installation are unfolded by the viewer. Whilst not designed to be immersive, these installations play on the individual viewer’s embodied palette of sense to express something beyond the image.

Through questioning the nature of the image a dimension of between is established. There is a tension in merging the physical and projected – in Walton and Hassett’s collaboration this heightens the characters severed connection. In contrast, the We’re all looking holograms blend multiple perspectives, compressing the between to create a collective impression and abstraction of the environment through relational symmetries.

The installations manipulate but also emphasise the agency of experience by creating restricted encounters. The expansive space, captured and created in Couchet’s video loops, allows the imagination to escape the confines of the passenger – an experience shared by both artist and audience. The participant is also confined when peering into one of Ender’s stereo-viewers, while simultaneously being invited through the image and into an infinite visual space.

The symmetries and disjunctions between the imagery and installation enable a reading of the artists’ work. The holographic images and soundscape of The Crossing play off each other and with the viewer’s movement, encouraging participants to create their own path and build an impression of the scene.

Working with technology and technique these artists create optical and sonic imagery that oscillates between the physical and virtual to explore the relational dimensions of experience.

Martina Mrongovius

holographic art & design

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