The exhibition in 2004 was inspired by a visit to an abandoned Whalers Base in New Zealand.

The exhibition consists of a series of large colour photographs entitled Aipotu: Psychogeographies; a blackboard mental-map of Stewart Island and a psychedelic computer animation accompanied with a mixed-up soundtrack. It is Joy Divisions Love Will Tear Us Apart performed by the string quartet.

In ‘Aipotu’, Mladen Bizumic is interested in what he calls ‘psychogeographies’, or the psychological and cultural experience of place. Producing layered and complex works, he enables a multitude of references and ideas to come into play. Bizumic alludes to the way in which ideas and trends can transcend geographic distance.

The subject matter for the show was influenced by a trip to Stewart Island’s remote Paterson Inlet during Bizumic’s Frances Hodgkins residency in Dunedin. Bizumic admits that he expected to find emptiness, isolation and a sublime landscape. What he actually found differed so greatly from these preconceptions that he found himself unsure at first how to interpret the environment. Between 1923 and 1932 the Ross Sea Whaling Company of Sandefjord, Norway, made nine expeditions to the Ross Sea in Antarctica, using an over-wintering base located in Paterson Inlet, Stewart Island, New Zealand. Situated in the remote inlet were the remnants of a Norwegian whaling station, built in 1927 in the ‘International Style’ of architecture. The station had been abandoned since the industry had dried up during the Depression and in 1932 the Norwegians returned home never to return to Stewart Island, but its spirit of migratory modernism was still very much alive.

Artist's statement

This installation allows the viewer to observe the recesses of this familiar but improbable place, which is now a zone of division between architecture and nature, dream and projection, light and time, past and present…

When I arrived in Stewart Island my knowledge has failed me. My value-system, social role and education meant absolutely nothing - I knew nothing about this foreign environment. Surpassingly it was neither sublime nor romantic experience. It was liberating. It made me realize how little I know. This discovery is a pilot for creation of this installation. Starting with an act of recognition, the artist attempts to explore a foreign space (in past Fiji, Paris, Vienna) This traversal of signs and places is not the same as colonizing them, as referring them to oneself, but means, simply, being open to sensations of images, seeing what they arise from, from what experiences.

In order to read these works we need to accompany them, find a possible continuity between them. Each of them is a point on a map of the world, the search for a space, and the search for an inhabited moment, for an element of fiction, a system. To read this world the viewer needs to choose a language, apply thought to the image, draw out elements of the narrative, find their unity from the point of another person, on the verge of fiction, in search of a character who has been through part of the works history and geography, but doesn't know everything.

About Mladen Bizumic

Born in Belgrade in 1976, Mladen Bizumic grew up in New Zealand. He now lives and works in Berlin.

Mladen Bizumic works in video, sound, photography, sculpture and other media by exploring relationships between subjectivity and representation, physical locations and psychological states, memory and present. He regularly uses the pre-existing cultural material as a scenario that is dismantled so that new one can be constructed to reveal the ‘unconscious’ of human production.

Often he invites other artists, musicians, or other professionals to collaborate on exhibitions, presenting them as 'translational' models. By questioning the meaning of various cultural structures Bizumic systematically explores the bonds that unite individuals, groups, and images and produces new possible relationships and connections.

Notable exhibitions include: New Zealand Book at the Venice Biennale (2007), Through the Picture at the 2nd Moscow Biennale (2007), Busan Biennale (2006), Hide-Tide, CAC, Vilnius and Zacheta National Art Museum, Warsaw (2006), Re: Modern, Künstlerhaus Vienna (2005), Fiji Biennale Pavilions, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth (2003), Mladen Bizumic ARTSPACE, Auckland (2002).

Video, images and text courtesy of Mladen Bizumic and Sue Crockford Gallery (Auckland, New Zealand) and City Gallery Wellington (Wellington, New Zealand).

MLADEN BIZUMIC

Born 1976. Lives and works Berlin, Germany and Auckland, New Zealand.

Education

2003
MFA (1st Class Honours)
Elam School of Fine Arts University of Auckland New Zealand

2000
BFA (University Of Auckland Scholar)
Elam School of Fine Arts University of Auckland New Zealand
Selected Solo and Group Exhibitions

Exhibitions

2007
- Istanbul Biennale, Santralistanbul, Istanbul
- Lyon Biennale, Musee D'Art Contemporain, Lyon
- New Zealand Book, Venice Biennale, Venice
- Moscow Biennale, Federation Tower, Moscow
- How If A Translation in III Acts, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (solo)
- How If A Translation in III Acts, PROGRAM: initiative for art and architectural collaborations,Berlin (solo)
- An Expedition - Yet To Happen, Two Rooms (in ass. with Sue Crockford Gallery), Auckland (solo)
- Colonial Atmospheres, Physics Room, Christchurch, N.Z. (solo)
- Toi Te Papa Art of the Nation, Te Papa, Museum of New Zealand, Wellington

2006
- Busan Biennale, Metropolitan Art Museum, Busan, South Korea
- HIDE TIDE, Zacheta National Museum of Art, Warsaw and Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius
- Superstructure Doubled , (with Øystein Aasan), Korridor Galerie, Berlin (two-person show)
- The Crystal Memorial , Charim Galerie, Vienna (solo)
- Don't Misbehave , SCAPE - Christchurch Biennale, NZ
- PLAY: Portraiture and Performance in Recent Video Art, Institute of Contemporary Arts, Perth
- Tour Retour Films, Play: Special Edition, Okto TV, Vienna (screening)
- ARTFORUM Berlin, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, MesseHalle, Berlin

2005
- Planet Wittgenstein , Sue Crockford Gallery, Auckland (solo)
- Re: Modern , KunstlerHaus, Vienna
- Truer Than the Truth , Charim Galerie, Vienna
- Playground , Art Play-Architecture & Design Centre, Moscow
- Skin Oil , Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland
- Small World, Big Town, Wellington City Gallery, Wellington
- Recent Acquisitions, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth
- PLAY: Portraiture and Performance in Recent Video Art , Adam Art Gallery, Wellington
- Hotere, Tan, Aberhart, Reynolds, Bizumic, Sue Crockford Gallery, Auckland

2004
- event.horizon.black.hole , Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, N.Z. (solo)
- Aipotu: Love Will Tear Us Apart, Sue Crockford Gallery, Auckland (solo)
- We are the World , Chelsea Art Museum, New York
- Aipotu: Love Will Tear Us Apart (again), Hocken Library Gallery, Dunedin (solo)
- Everyday Minimal , Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, Auckland
- Break-Shift , Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth
- International Art Fair and Cake Stall , Blue Oyster Gallery, Dunedin

2003
- Fiji Biennele Pavilions , Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth (solo)
- Making Waves (performance), Lobby of the Pompidou Centre, Paris (solo)

- Making Waves (performance), Lobby of the Pompidou Centre, Paris (solo)
- The Night Shift, Sue Crockford Gallery, Auckland (solo)
- Vecu , (with Katherine Huang and Nick Mangan), Conical Artspace, Melbourne
- Break, Govett-Brewster Gallery, New Plymouth
- event. horizon , Ramp Gallery, Hamilton (solo)

2002
- Tauranga Guggenheim , ARTSPACE, Auckland (solo)
- 7000 Rimu Trees , Rear Window, Dunedin Public Art Gallery (solo)
- A Beautiful Afterlife, (Window Project), Auckland Art Gallery (solo)
- Sublime Indigo , Waikato Museum of Art and History, Hamilton, N.Z.
- Video , Sue Crockford Gallery, Auckland
- Botanica , The Gus Fisher Gallery, Auckland
- I See, The Croft Institute, Melbourne

2001
- Bright Paradise , The 1st Auckland Triennial, Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland
- Mladen Bizumic , Sue Crockford Gallery, Auckland (solo)
- Bloom , Sue Crockford Gallery, Auckland
- I Like Victoria Park and Victoria Park Likes Me,
(24-hours - 7 days - installation series), Light-box Gallery, Auckland (solo)

2000
- Mladen Bizumic and Glen Hayward , George Fraser Gallery, Auckland (two-person show)

Awards, Artist Residencies
2007 Oct - Dec - Two Rooms, Auckland
2006 July - August 2007 - Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin
2004 Feb. - Jan 2005 - Frances Hodgkins Fellowship, University of Otago, Dunedin
2003 July - Sep - Govett-Brewester Art Gallery and Taranaki Polythec, New Plymouth
2002 Oct - Jan 2003 -Research Residency- Contemporary Art and Modernist Architecture, Paris

Public Collections/Archives
- Te Papa Tongarewa, The Museum of New Zealand, Wellington
- Ursula Blickle Video Archieve, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna
- Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth
- Chartwell Collection, and Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, Auckland
- Hocken Library, University of Otago, Dunedin
- University of Auckland Art Collection
- Wallace Art Trust, Auckland

Catalogues and artist's books
- Uncompleted Workbook, E-book, 2007
- How If - A Translation in III Acts, PROGRAM, Berlin, 2007
- Superstructure Doubled (in collaboration with Øystein Aasan) Korridor, Berlin, 2006
- One Love, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Hocken Library and the artist, Dunedin, 2004
- Fiji Biennale Pavilions , Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, 2004

Selected Bibliography and Writing
- Andreeva, Ekaterina - "Through The Painting", (article), Moscow Biennale Special Projects, 2007, Moscow, 2007, pp.204-207
- Barnett, Cassandra and Matheson, Grant -"Ride on Time: Recent Works By Mladen Bizumic" (article), The Velvet Rickshaw- A Ramp Magazine, April 2004 Vol.1 No.1, pp. 26-30 or http://www.rampmagazine.org/thevelvetrickshaw/
- Barton, Tina - Mladen Bizumic, (essay), "Speculation", Venice Project N.Z. and JRP Ringier, Zurich, 2007, pp. 86-91 and 213
- Bizumic, Mladen "event. horizon", http://ramp.mediarts.net.nz/
- Benzer, Christa - "Kritishe Ausgleichsmasse", Der Standard, Vienna, Juni 1 2005
- Byrt, Anthony- "The Creepy Contemporary Sublime", (review), Broadsheet, February 2004, p.55
- "CAC stand", Vienna Art Fair catalogue, Herausgeber Publisher, Vienna, 2005, pp. 54
- Cherrie, Derrick -"Dream Run For Elam Artist" (article), The University of Auckland News, May 2001, pp. 8
- Conland, Natasha - "Passing Through: A Base in New Zealand Art", Broadsheet, June-August 2005, Vol. 34 No.2, pp. 84-86
- Crockford, Sue -"Sue Crockford Gallery Catalogue", 2001
- Cormick, Emily -"Feeling for the Edges" (exhibition catalogue "Vecu"), Conical and Arts, Melbourne, Feb. 2003
- Drouschl, Sandro - "Re: Modern", Künstlerhaus Vienna, http://www.re-modern.at/cms/cat16.html
- Garzon, Elisa - "Shuvarlev-Bizumic" (review), Exit Express # 19, April 2006, Madrid, pp. 28-29
- Gallagher, Kate -"Mladen Bizumic- A Beautiful Afterlife", (article) Auckland Art Gallery News, Nov. 2001-Jan. 2002 p.4
- Gardener, Sue -"An Alternative Venice", (review), Art Monthly Australia, June 2003, pp. 37
- Gloede, Marc - "Loci of Agglomeration and Spatial Dynamics", How If - A Translation in III Acts, PROGRAM, Berlin, 2007
- Hipkins, Gavin - "Middle Earth", (article), Visit - Govett-Brewster Publication, New Plymouth, December 2002, pp. 12
- Laird, Tessa - "Occhio alla Nuova Zelanda", (article), Case Da Abitare Magazine, Giugno 2005, pp.62-63
- Leonard, Robert - "Mladen Bizumic", Artspace web site http://www.artspace.org.nz February 2002
- Leonie, Bridie - "To the Center of the City Where All roads Meet" (article), www.listener.co.nz/default,3329.sm
- McAloon, William -"The Arrival Lounge", www.listener.co.nz/default,3583.sm
- McNamara, T.J. - "Mladen Bizumic", exhibition review The New Zealand Herald, 03/04/01, pp. 18
- McNamara, T.J. - "Art from Lens", exhibition review The New Zealand Herald, 25/11/01, p.17
- McNamara, T.J. - "The Strong Lines of German Influence", exhibition review The New Zealand Herald, 18/02/02, p.18
- McNamara, T.J. - "Like Stonehenge on Stewart Island", exhibition review The New Zealand Herald,14/09/04
- McNamara, T.J. - "Minimum Effect, Maximum Efforts", exhibition review The New Zealand Herald,27/07/05
- McAllister, Janet -"Spectator", (article), Metro, January 2002
- Melhart, Erwin - "Retro-Look in Der Künst", Kultur, Vienna, Mai 20,2005 pp. 38
- Panckhurst, Paul -"Getting in on the Franchise", (article), The New Zealand Herald, 18/02/02, pp.-18
- Park, Manu - "event.horizon.black.hole", Busan Biennale Catalogue, Hyunsil Cultural Studies, Seoul, Sep. 2006, p.41-42
- "Pavement to Tauranga Guggenheim", (Artist project -Pavement Magazine), Auckland, April-May 2002
- Rees, Simon - "Point Break", (article), VISIT , Govett-Brewster Art Gallery Publication, New Plymouth, December 2002, pp. 5-7
- Rees, Simon - "Changing Address", Govett-Brewster Art Gallery Publication, New Plymouth, December 2004, pp. 10- 14
- Smith, Allan - "Artifice", (exhibition catalogue), 1st Auckland Triennial, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki with Artspace and The University of Auckland, 2001, pp. 62 and 122-125
- Speigler, Almuth -"Malewitsh, Mumifiziert", Die Presse, 25 Mai 2005
- Architecture New Zealand - "Bopp-Gugg", (article), April 2002, p.12 (unknown)
- Art Daily-the first newspaper on the net- "Bizumic Examines the Branding of Modern Art Museums", 24/02/2002 (unknown)

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