Gavin Hipkins

Gavin Hipkins is an Auckland-based artist who works with photography and film. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Auckland and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of British Columbia. He is currently Associate Professor of Fine Arts at Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland.

His photographs and moving image works interrogate how images create meaning through modernist technologies. His work explores the nation state, particularly in colonised countries in an era of re-imagined communities and ideas of social and political utopia. His recent moving image works engage film as a cinematic art that blurs conventional genres of essay film, documentary and experimental narrative structures. In 2014, Hipkins’ first feature film Erewhon — an essay adaptation of Samuel Butler’s 1872 novel Erewhon, Or Over the Range — premiered at the New Zealand International Film Festival and Edinburgh Art Festival.

His work has been exhibited widely over the last two decades, with recent screenings including: 25FPS International Experimental Film and Video Festival, Zagreb; Recontres Internationales Paris/Berlin (2020); Videoex, Zurich (2019); 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia (2018); International Film Festival Rotterdam (2018, 2015); International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (2017, 2016).

CIRCUIT Resources

Podcast with Yona Lee, Amy Howden-Chapman, and Thomasin Sleigh (2021)
Podcast with Sonya Lacey (2018)
Essay by Robert Leonard (2016)
Review by podcast panel (2014)

CIRCUIT Projects

The Sound of Seeing, Wellington (2020)
Renewal, Aperture Asia & Pacific Film Festival, London, UK (2019): Blue Oyster Art Project Space, Dunedin (2019)
This is not film-making. Artists work for cinema, various venues New Zealand; Europe (2016)

Selected Exhibitions

2020
The Homely I and II (solo), Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney
Gone Home (with Peter Peryer), Aratoi Museum of Art and History, Masterton

2019
The Homely II (solo), Te Uru Center For Contemporary Arts, Auckland
Gone Home (with Peter Peryer), Centre of Contemporary Art, Christchurch

2018    
Block Units (solo), Starkwhite, Auckland

2017
The Domain (solo), The Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt
Block Sculptures (solo), Hamish McKay Gallery, Wellington

2016
Erewhon, Len Lye Centre, New Plymouth
Block Paintings (solo), Hamish McKay Gallery, Wellington

2015
Block Paintings (solo), Starkwhite, Auckland
Erewhon (solo), Hamish McKay Gallery, Wellington
Erewhon (solo), Mangere Arts Centre, Auckland

2014 
Erewhon (solo), Edinburgh Art Festival/New Zealand International Film Festival
Gavin Hipkins: Leisure Valley (solo), ST PAUL St Gallery, Auckland University of Technology
Erewhon: The Book of the Machines (solo), Starkwhite, Auckland
Die Ausgrabung (with Karl Fritsch), Dunedin School of Art, Otago Polytechnic

2013 
The Dam (O) (solo), The New Zealand Film Archive, Wellington
Der Tiefenglanz III (with Karl Fritsch), Ryan Renshaw Gallery, Brisbane, Australia
The Quarry (solo), The Physics Room, Christchurch
Der Tiefenglanz Im Schmuckladen (with Karl Fritsch), Hamish McKay Gallery, Wellington

2012 
This Fine Island, The New Zealand Film Archive, Auckland
Der Tiefenglanz (with Karl Fritsch), Hamish McKay Gallery, Wellington
Second Pavilion, Starkwhite, Auckland
Der Tiefenglanz II (with Karl Fritsch), Starkwhite, Auckland

2011
The Pavilion (solo), Ryan Renshaw Gallery, Brisbane, Australia

2010 
Bible Studies (New Testament) (solo), Starkwhite, Auckland
The Valley (solo), Hamish McKay Gallery, Wellington