Ash Keating (Australia)

23 August 2010 - 8 November 2010

This residency was cut short due to the September 4 earthquake. SCAPE is currently postponed.

Ash Keating (Australia) is the Arts Centre’s Artist in Residence Programme artist for SCAPE 2010.

Ash Keating is a visual artist who in recent years has predominantly integrated ecological issues into a hybrid visual arts practice. He will be making a work for SCAPE which deals with the 'gap site' in Cathedral Square a site that has been vacant and undeveloped for sometime. Working with architectural and design collaborators Dorian Farr, Patrick Gavin, Chris Toovey and David Campbell, Keating will create a unique work for SCAPE 2010 called Gardensity (www.gardensity.co.nz).  The project focuses on new condensed sustainable living developments in response to inner-city planning processes currently taking place in Christchurch. Through both a physical site-specific presentation and equally as important an updated internet presence, the project aims to raise awareness and open up the debate about pending changes in shaping Christchurch city’s urban environment.

As SCAPE has been postponed, Ash did not get the chance to bring his project to fruition. SCAPE may yet happen at a later date and Ash will adapt his project to consider the inpact of the September 4 Canterbury earthquake. The website component of his project, Gardensity IS currently  live www.gardensity.co.nz. Check it out to engage in discussion about the future of inner city living in Christchurch.

 

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Biography

Contemporary visual artist Ash Keating was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1980. Keating completed a Bachelor of Fine Art in Painting at Monash University, Caulfield in 2003 and then went on to complete a first class BFA Honours at the Victorian College of the Arts in 2006. Ash Keating is currently a studio artist at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne, and is represented by BREENSPACE, Sydney. Keating’s work has been written about extensively in numerous art journals such as Frieze, Broadsheet, Art and Australia, Un, Artlink and Photofile. He was the winner of a 2008 ANZ Art and Australia RIPE award, as well as being selected as a finalist in the 2009 SOYA and RBS Australian emerging artist awards.
In seeking to bring about positive change or alternative thinking, Keating's site-specific contemporary art projects are presented through diverse and poetic forms that often seek to radically transform the viewer’s understandings of local and global environmental issues.
In early 2009 Keating undertook a project in Sydney’s Western district created through the Museum of Contemporary Art’s C3West initiative, which saw the artist negotiate a collaboration with the MCA, SITA Environmental Solutions, Penrith Performing & Visual Arts and Penrith City Council to produce an installation and performance based project titled, Activate 2750 (http://activate-2750.blogspot.com). Keating has created several ambitious site-specific art projects internationally including, Pascua Lama created at the Museo de Contemporeano as part of The South Project’s 2006 gathering in Santiago, Chile, Label Land created during a 2008 Asialink Residency in Seoul, Korea, (http://label-land.blogspot.com), and Timuran, created as part of The South Project’s 2009 gathering in Jogjakarta Indonesia with support from an Australia Council for the Arts emerging artist new work grant (http://timuran.blogspot.com).