On May 27 , Massey University's School of Fine Arts in Wellington will launch LITMUS - a new platform for contemporary arts research, practice and presentation. Distinct amongst University arts initiatives nationally, LITMUS is not a gallery, but a catalyst for the production of new work in new contexts. LITMUS - as its name suggests - is conceived as a means to develop and test a range of strategies and conditions for the making, reception and discussion of contemporary art.

Image: Simon Morris somewhere to sit 2004 for Constructed Colour, Artspace Sydney.

On May 27 , Massey University's School of Fine Arts in Wellington will launch LITMUS - a new platform for contemporary arts research, practice and presentation. Distinct amongst University arts initiatives nationally, LITMUS is not a gallery, but a catalyst for the production of new work in new contexts. LITMUS - as its name suggests - is conceived as a means to develop and test a range of strategies and conditions for the making, reception and discussion of contemporary art.

Image: Simon Morris somewhere to sit 2004 for Constructed Colour, Artspace Sydney.

Focusing on projects which are public, temporary and which exist beyond gallery space, LITMUS provides an open and flexible structure in which to bring artists, curators and researchers together to create and write about artistic activity in an expanded field.

Operating on campus from the former Director's Office of the now relocated National Art Gallery, LITMUS inherits a rich contextual history. Embracing the potential of this context as a stimulus and site for contemporary art, LITMUS - in its first year of operation - focuses its attentions within the museum. In a series of projects the initiative will work with significant national artists to develop new work, which engages with the particularities of this remarkable location.

The inaugural LITMUS project Sit Talk Look Write, which opens to the public on 28 May, is a new site-responsive work by Wellington artist and Fine Arts lecturer Simon Morris - made specifically for the LITMUS facility in the former Director's office.

Radically transforming what is currently a standard and anonymous office space within the administrative annex of the College of Creative Arts, Morris's work will vitalise LITMUS as an active environment for research and discussion, and signal the initiative's commitment to the development of contemporary visual art.

Sit Talk Look Write presents a process-based wall drawing, together with new furniture, reworked existing furniture and interior surfaces to encourage viewer awareness of space and function. While inhabited by Morris's work, the LITMUS facility operates as both exhibition site and office. The viewer becomes participant and visa versa.

Closely aligned with the aims and scope of LITMUS, Morris's practice has long been engaged with the conditions of site. His work has developed from the field of painting into the expanded terrain of installation, architecture and public space. In previous projects, he produced wall drawings that aimed to reveal the architectural qualities of interior environments and heighten the viewer experience of space in time. More recently, this trajectory has concerned itself with ideas related to objects in three- dimensions.

LITMUS will be launched on 27 May at 6pm. Sit Talk Look Write is open to the public from 28 May to 8 July, with weekly hours of Wednesday-Sunday, 12noon-4pm.
Access via Massey University Entrance D. From main doors to the Museum Building, follow signs to mezzanine floor and space 10Bmezz10.

For further information and/or images please contact Kate Griffin, LITMUS Project Director on tel: (04) 801 2794 extn: 6197 or email: k.a.griffin@massey.ac.nz.