Art Basel and BMW have announced that Zac Langdon-Pole will present the next BMW Art Journey. He was chosen from a shortlist of three artists who displayed work at the Discoveries sector of Art Basel Hong Kong this year. Langdon-Pole’s proposed project, titled Sutures of the Sky, has been inspired by the way in which migratory routes of birds have been used by Polynesian pathfinders to map their way across seas and will follow the flight path of birds such as the white stork or arctic tern, travelling along the earth’s axis through Central Europe, Southern Africa, and the Pacific Islands of Samoa and Hawaii, to ‘understand how culture intersects with the science of celestial mapping—and from there flows into larger existential inquiries about who we are and how we are situated in the world’. Zac Langdon-Pole is represented by Michael Lett in Auckland.
In a statement, the jury said: The first artistic expressions of humanity, until the 19th century, had been largely inspired by the beauty, grandeur, and spellbinding mysteries of nature… After the Enlightenment, this view of the wonders of the world became outdated. Zac Langdon-Pole’s concept of an artist’s journey brings this sense of wonder back to art, and as an occasion for ideological and political reflection. We were particularly impressed by how the artist plans to meet experts in various disciplines to share his experience and join him as interlocutors.’
New Zealand-born and Berlin-based Langdon-Pole was selected unanimously by a jury that consisted of Richard Armstrong (director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, New York); Claire Hsu (director, Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong); Bose Krishnamachari (president, Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India); Matthias Mühling (director, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau, Munich) and Pauline J. Yao (curator, Visual Art M+, Hong Kong).
15 June 2018
