The Aotea Centre Wrap lit up and brought to life the exterior of the Aotea Centre during the building’s recent major refurbishment.
The Centre’s fly tower, temporarily wrapped for protection from the elements while the works took place, made the ideal canvas for the night time projection of digital artworks by New Zealand and international artists, and was visible from Aotea Square in the heart of the Aotea Arts Quarter.
Current
Gareth Blackler
Gareth Blackler has created an endless flow of colours and shapes to examine the feeling of being in a current, whether that’s water, electricity, or the endless push of current affairs.
Pride 2021
Taking inspiration from the rainbow flag, Auckland graphic designer Gareth Blackler’s animation celebrates the Auckland Pride Festival, from 3 – 28 February 2021.
Elf Toy Shop
Serval Fandango
Take a peek inside an Elf Toy Shop, and follow a conveyer belt of different types of fun and quirky toys as they go on to be packed and sent off to children around the world for Christmas!
The Line King
Gareth Blackler
Gareth Blackler, of Auckland Live’s design team, has created striking, kinetic and alive geometric shapes that play with and distort the existing form of the Aotea Centre’s structure.
Te Maiea, 2020
by Reuben Paterson
Reuben Paterson’s animation premiered on the Aotea Centre Wrap earlier this year in February. It observes the whakapapa of Hine Maheri, the personification of sparkling fine grained sandstone, through the union and incarnations of our cliffs, rocks, stones and springs produced from Tāne Mahuta, the god of the forest and his (particular) union with Hine-tū-pari-maunga, the personification of mountains and cliffs.
As an artist whose practise is inspired by enriching our connection and experiencing of coruscation and of glitter as a man made material, those sudden shimmers and flashes of light are sourced back to nature, and in this instance to the sandstone and iron rich sands of Aotearoa where as a young boy, Reuben Paterson was raised on the sparkling black basalt sand on Piha Beach.
We depend on these natural resources and we influence them directly through a reciprocal relationship of manaaki whenua (caring for the land) and manaaki tangata (caring for people). Through a Māori lens the term ecosystem explains the interwoven concepts of whakapapa, mana and kaitiakitanga and possession of the spiritual qualities of tapu, mauri, and wairua as a dynamic interaction of a community with their environment – where the world is a vast family, and humans are children of the earth and sky, and cousins to all living things, inclusive of all people.
To fully experience this artwork, we invite you to listen to your own music while viewing this animation. Magic correlations between sight and sound might occur and transport you into the depth of Paterson’s vision.
We Celebrate Now
Pon Huey Min (Min)
Created in response to Zodiac, playing on the Auckland Live Digital Stage and key cultural celebrations in Aotea Square during October, Min’s abstract shapes and colourful patterns animate the Aotea Centre, making it sing and dance.
The Space Maze
DOTDOT
Aotea Square’s latest activation, The Space Maze, has been created by creative duo The Open Fort to transform the much-loved Aotea Square into a playground for all ages. While many can enjoy playing in the activation during the day, it takes on a new dimension in the evenings in the glow of DotDot’s animated projections onto the Aotea Centre Wrap.
Let yourself be spellbound this winter after dark with the colourful, hexagonal spectacle that is The Space Maze at night.
The Line King
Gareth Blackler
Gareth Blackler, of Auckland Live’s design team, has created striking, kinetic and alive geometric shapes that play with and distort the existing form of the Aotea Centre’s structure.
Chromointerference
Venezuelan-French artist Carlos Cruz-Diez (1923–2019) was a major protagonist in the field of kinetic and optical art. His body of work explores how the movement of our bodies, objects and light determines our perception of colour. For him, colour was an evolving experience in space and time, and by means of various technologies he produced ingenious devices of perception. If looking at a painting is comparable to gazing out of a window, his works propose a leap into a void made of mutating colour.For the first time in New Zealand, Te Tuhi and Auckland Live present the artist’s magnificent Chromointerference (1960–2019), where colour is made of projected moving patterns and light creating spellbinding ‘events’ in a monumental scale. This epic visual extravaganza will be projected onto the exterior surface of the Aotea Centre for the duration of the Festival.
Presented by Te Tuhi and Auckland Live | Supported by the Embassy of France
Te Maiea, 2020,
Digital animation, 4:30 loop
Reuben Paterson’s new animation observes the whakapapa of Hine Maheri, the personification of sparkling fine grained sandstone, through the union and incarnations of our cliffs, rocks, stones and springs produced from Tāne Mahuta, the god of the forest and his (particular) union with Hine-tū-pari-maunga, the personification of mountains and cliffs.
As an artist whose practise is inspired by enriching our connection and experiencing of coruscation and of glitter as a man made material, those sudden shimmers and flashes of light are sourced back to nature, and in this instance to the sandstone and iron rich sands of Aotearoa where as a young boy, Reuben Paterson was raised on the sparkling black basalt sand on Piha Beach.
We depend on these natural resources and we influence them directly through a reciprocal relationship of manaaki whenua (caring for the land) and manaaki tangata (caring for people). Through a Māori lens the term ecosystem explains the interwoven concepts of whakapapa, mana and kaitiakitanga and possession of the spiritual qualities of tapu, mauri, and wairua as a dynamic interaction of a community with their environment – where the world is a vast family, and humans are children of the earth and sky, and cousins to all living things, inclusive of all people.
To fully experience this artwork, we invite you to listen to your own music while viewing this animation. Magic correlations between sight and sound might occur and transport you into the depth of Paterson’s vision.
We Who Live In Darkness
Inspired by Hone Tuwhare's poem We who live in darkness, Johnson Witehira has developed kōwhaiwhai forms as a space of potential and becoming. These motifs relate to the concept of whakapapa connecting ancestors and newcomers. They also speak abstractly about the condensed space between Rangi and Papa, in which their children struggled to bring Te Ao Māori (the world of light) into being. In this liminal space, between becoming and being, life and death are intertwined as two parts of the same process.
Elf Toy Shop
Take a peek inside an Elf Toy Shop, and follow a conveyer belt of different types of fun and quirky toys as they go on to be packed and sent off to children around the world for Christmas!
Hill End
Hill End is one of a series of stop animations New Zealand artist Smuts-Kennedy shot between 2008 and 2009 on road trips around the NSW coal coast, historical mining towns and old growth forests in Australia, which explore ideas of obsolescence and extinction.
All shot on a Nikon FM2, known as the most reliable SLR camera ever made and no longer in production, these animations reveal the quality of expired analogue film stock purchased from local stores by Smuts-Kennedy while on the road.
Hill End was shot on the edge of NSW's oldest gold mining town, made famous by the 1850 gold rush. Once boasting a population of 8000 and served by two newspapers, five banks, eight churches and twenty-eight pubs, Hill End is now home to a community of just 80 residents.
The 35ml negatives were each hand scanned over a three-month period allowing the studio ecosystem to imprint itself into the work.
We Celebrate Now
Created in response to Zodiac, playing on the Auckland Live Digital Stage and key cultural celebrations in Aotea Square during October, Min’s abstract shapes and colourful patterns animate the Aotea Centre, making it sing and dance.
The Line
Gareth Blackler
Gareth Blackler, of Auckland Live’s design team, has created striking, kinetic and alive geometric shapes that play with and distort the existing form of the Aotea Centre’s structure.
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