New Zealand | Collector's Choice exhibition

Collector's Choice is an exhibition and project presentation by Korean artist Jaewoo Oh at the City Gallery Wellington, New Zealand and runs 15 December 2012 - 10 February 2013. It looks at how art is valued and consumed within Korean culture. Korean artist Jaewoo Oh is in Wellington at the invitation of City Gallery Wellington as part of the WARE (Wellington-Asia Residency Exchange) artist residency exchange programme run by the Wellington City Council and Asia New Zealand Foundation. The residency and this exhibition extends Oh’s ongoing project Collector’s Choice, which subverts the collecting impulse to explore the ways that modern and contemporary art is valued and consumed within Korean culture. The exhibition sees Oh push his project into new geographic and conceptual territories by extending it to include New Zealand collectors and audiences. During the residency Oh has negotiated with a handful of New Zealand collectors and has subsequently made and submitted art for their collections based on information they have supplied. It’s a project that gets to the heart of collecting, to art as a commodity, the role of the contemporary artist, and the lines between the authentic and the fake, the sincere and the insincere—whether in the making, collecting or exhibiting of art. The artist gives a talk about the project on December 15 The WARE (Wellington Asia Residency Exchange) programme is jointly run by the Asia New Zealand Foundation and the Wellington City Council. If offers New Zealand artists the chance to work at art spaces throughout Asia, while also offering Asian artists the chance to work in Wellington. WARE is aimed at professional, contemporary arts practitioners of all disciplines from Asian countries and Wellington. Image: Keila Martin's lounge showing Saskia Leek's work, 'Magic Hour 6' (2008), in situ.