New Mission

SYDNEY—For 21 years Sherman Galleries, in Sydney, has served as Australia’s leading commercial space for contemporary art, championing the work of Australian and Asian-Pacific talents such as the Sydney-based landscape painter and photographer Tim Storrier, the performance artist Mike Parr, also of Sydney, and Indonesia’s Dadang Christanto, known for his politically provocative installations. Then, at the end of 2007, the gallery’s founder Gene Sherman closed its doors to fulfill her philanthropic vision of a not-for-profit dedicated to promoting these works. Sherman Contemporary Arts Foundation opens this month in the gallery’s Goodhope Street locale. From April 30 to July 26, the inaugural exhibition, “Ai Weiwei: Under Construction,” showcases the Chinese artist who has garnered recent headlines for his politically motivated protests against the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, for which he designed a stadium with the Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron. The show debuts a new commission, Through, made with iron and wood fragments from dismantled Qing Dynasty temples. Ai Weiwei’s Documenta 12 video, Fairytale, which captures the experience of 1,001 Chinese citizens whom he transported to Germany for the fair’s 2007 edition, is also on view.

"New Mission" originally appeared in the April 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's April 2008 Table of Contents.