Julian Dashper: Autumn 1989
Closing Event: Guest talk with visiting curator Robert Leonard
Please join us to hear guest speaker Robert Leonard discussing the work of Julian Dashper. All welcome, free.
Midday, Saturday 3 July
Sumer, Tauranga
Despite the quality of Dashper’s immaculate later work, for me his primary achievement lies in his work of the late 1980s and early 1990s, which explored art’s marginalia while taking liberties with New Zealand art history. Here, he opened up a huge territory not only for New Zealand’s artists but also for its critics, curators, and art historians. He made New Zealand art history seem rich and pertinent, but also available for revision and mistreatment. Offering himself as an unfolding case study of a provincial artist wanting to make his mark locally and offshore, Dashper was one of a kind.
– Robert Leonard
Robert Leonard says he 'co-evolved' with Julian Dashper's work. He has curated it into numerous shows and written on it extensively. In 2015, he assembled Julian Dashper & Friends for City Gallery Wellington, placing Dashper's works alongside works by predecessors, contemporaries, and followers, including Rita Angus, Billy Apple, Fiona Connor, Colin McCahon, John Reynolds, Marie Shannon, and Gordon Walters, plus Daniel Buren (France), John Nixon and Imants Tillers (Australia), and Jan and van der Ploeg (Netherlands).
Leonard is Chief Curator at City Gallery Wellington. He has also held curatorial posts at Auckland Art Gallery, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, New Plymouth’s Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, and Wellington's National Art Gallery, and directorships at Brisbane’s Institute of Modern Art and Auckland’s Artspace. His shows include Headlands: Thinking through New Zealand Art (Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 1992), Mixed-Up Childhood (Auckland Art Gallery, 2005), and Iconography of Revolt (City Gallery Wellington, 2018). He curated New Zealand representation for Brisbane’s Asia-Pacific Triennial in 1999, the Sao Paulo Biennale in 2002, and the Venice Biennale in 2003 and 2015.
A transcript for the talk can be accessed here