Curated by Natasha Conland

Conceived within the context of the global economic recession and titled “Last Ride in a Hot Air Balloon,” 2010’s Auckland Triennial promises a timely exploration of the potential for adventure and risk. Conland astutely brings a crossgenerational selection of some thirty artists to the exhibition’s five venues, concentrated in New Zealand’s primary financial center. Dominated by new commissions, the transnational show will layer the utopian conceptualism and formal rigor of Mahmoud Bakhshi, Gerard Byrne, and Walid Sadek with more provisional propositions and performances, such as the makeshift accumulations of Shilpa Gupta and Jorge Macchi and the mythic explorations of Philippe Parreno and Olivia Plender. The catalogue offers substantive essays by Doryun Chong, Leonhard Emmerling, and the curator, as well as short texts by more than twentyfive artists, critics, curators, and scholars.

— Claire Doherty