Canary Gallery Annual '07: A Momentum of Activity

The sunset years: Canary Gallery September 2005 - September 2006 Annual! Annual to your left! No, your other left!

This second annual publication by Canary Gallery celebrates the momentum of activity Canary inspired and continues to motivate in its immediate Auckland environs and beyond. The quiet after-life of the physical Canary Gallery space that closed in 2006 is disturbed enthusiastically by those who have contributed to the Annual '07, enlivening once more the network of artists, contributors, audience and supporters that make the Canary call heard even now.

Writing featured in the Annual is not restricted to the chronology of shows at Canary, or indeed the artists and works that showed there. Rather the Annual '07 expands outwards from the gallery and its limitations - financial, social, spatial and geographical.

Exploring opportunities via a programme that would eventually supersede its physical site didn't intimidate Canary and the Annual aims to follow through on this ethos.

Laura Preston fires up the Canary engine by looking at the relationship between the works of Finn Ferrier and Gordon Matta-Clark in her essay An End Note to the Shape of the Future and the future focused time-capsule project by Fiona Connor, Finn Ferrier, Chris Fitz and Ben Tankard is also documented. Which Craft? by James Robertson will have you knitting your brow as he tries to spot the difference between forms of craft practice represented in the Canary exhibition programme.

Nick Austin's series of photographs pay homage to sites of potential pause or activity, drawing the eye level with humble door-stop and coat hanger, A pagework by J. A. Wallace illustrates his recent drawing experiments based on the perfect explosion, while the Canary Gallery Minder Survey by Leah Mulgrew and Kah Bee Chow provides a behind-the-scenes insight into the day of an anonymous gallery sitter.

Harold Grieves expands on the synthetic taste of original flavour by pitching the local dairy against supermarket, while Frances Loeffler puts her walking shoes to the test as she observes the pace set by the photographs of Courtney Lucas. Design tremble in the work of Susie Pratt inspires Rachel O'Neill to wobble through an articulation of phenomenological forthrightness in the artist's work, while Paula Booker has written arcade archaeology.

Canary Annual 07 acknowledges that the Gallery operated as a "self-funded, artist run exhibition space". But equally invests in what continues to emerge via a momentum of activity inspired by Canary Gallery.

The Canary Annual '07
Published November 2007 by Canary Gallery
ISBN 978-0-473-12923-1
Edited by Paula Booker and Rachel O'Neill
Designed by Hannah Ngaei