Power & Politics

Ruth Buchanan The scene in which I find myself / Or, where does my body belong Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth 7 December 2019–29 March

The exhibition The scene in which I find myself / Or, where does my body belong marked the 50th anniversary of the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery. Commissioned by recently arrived directors Aileen Burns and Johan Lundh, Berlin-based artist Ruth Buchanan (Te Atiawa, Taranaki) used the opportunity to build on her previous solo exhibition at the gallery, The actual and its document (10 September–4 December 2016), delving more deeply into the institution’s collecting history of the past 50 years. Buchanan selected a massive 273 works from the Govett-Brewster collection, grouping them into the decades in which they were bought and installing each of these across the five exhibition spaces. To choose her selection, she generated a simple set of rules: for each decade since the gallery opened in 1970, the first work purchased from an artist was included, unless practical considerations, such as large installations or videos requiring a dark space, prevented this.