Simon Denny: first Art Bite
a lead up:
a ) Secret Power 2015/2016
I went to Wellington to look at Art at City Gallery in 2018
I visited Simon Denny's installation about Five Eyes security pact in Secret Power(2015) in 2016 TE Papa . Graphic Art, flags, glass and steel cabinets of meticulous assembly, were built by him for this exhibition. It was the New Zealand entry to the Venice Biennale of 2015. These were modded installations. Denny had chosen to dress two sites in style at San Marco, one modern, one ancient, with structures such as these for his exhibition there. In a room at Te Papa, Wellington, were three cabinets about Five Eyes from his artwork Secret Power. 2015*
Venue. 1. Italy
Marco Polo Airport Venice. Biblioteca Nationale Marciana Piazza San Marcohttps://artsandculture.google.com/story/secret-power-br-br-simon-denny-at-the-marco-polo-airport-la-biennale-di-venezia-new-zeland-pavilion/8AVhF5WdPH81Kw?hl=en *
* The advance notice was, before Venice Biennale,in 2015:
Simon Denny’s project Secret Power will address the intersection of knowledge and geography in the post-Snowden world. It will investigate new and obsolete languages for describing geo-political space, focusing on the roles played by technology and design. The project takes its title from investigative journalist Nicky Hager’s 1996 book Secret Power, which introduced details about New Zealand’s role in international intelligence work to a wider public. Robert Leonard, one of New Zealand’s most experienced contemporary art curators, will be the curator.
Prescience
Simon Denny2018
Founders Paradox was a commissioned installation. The artist arrived to Christchurch Art Gallery, Te Puna o Waiwhetu. I was especially thrilled to start with his work. Simon Denny is an established artist expressing ideas about Hi tech global life. He was commissioned by a New Zealander.
The artist was curated first at Michael Lett Gallery in 2017. After this it had it's Christchurch period. Then it exhibited in the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland. ( Google Cleveland.)
Denny ( resident in Hamburg ) was enticed by a journalist, Matt Nippert, to make a creative response to Peter Thiel being spotted in New Zealand(9) Thiel is a contemporary libertarian thinker, investor and entrepreneur who the whole world knows about since the last American election round of 2025. Not, probably, known so much about earlier, he made the assertion that since his time in the 1980’s, that we are in ‘ great stagnation’ now. Nothing much has happened since IT ‘ start ups’. I have heard him polish this talk for a number of venues, the latest and most historically traditional, the Oxford Union Debate. It opened with him for the 200th year celebration of the Union, in February 2023. Theil’s talk title was at the 200th year celebration of the Union, in February 2023. Anti,Anti,Anti Classical Liberalism (10)
As an artist, I saw, in one way or another, Denny is dealing with what his brain constructs s it responds to the industrial and commercial world. His response, conceptually, is via graphics, usually modded graphics.Four years after going to exhibit at Venice in a really big way, he assembled The Founders Paradox (2018/19) quickly.
I wrote an Art Bite on Ascent, one of the games Denny manipulated in this exhibition. He flipped ideas from the game Descent. This is a German Dark Romantic board game. Anthony Byrt, critic and writer on contemporary New Zealand Art who had lived a time on Berlin, came down to Christchurch to introduce this, the exhibition commissioned in New Zealand, first at Michael Lett in Auckland, then on here, by invitation from Lara Strongman’s curatorial mationatives. Strongman was senior curator then at Te Wai Pounamu, Christchurch Art Gallery, now working in Sydney.
The Key government nationalization step taken had had a huge impact upon the journalists vis a vis this favouring of citizenship treatment ( in two words, 'investor preference'. - government enthusiasm for fantasizing about the future of ‘start up’ investment cultures ). Thiel had acquaint himself with New Zealand. He was planning for a new large house near Arrowtown. It went onto the drawing board on again and off again. Maybe it will go on again. Denny, known for intense scrutiny of technolgy and its engagement in individual power or society, set up in his exhibition a range of ideas that challenged societal paradox with wit and sophistication. One section was a broad ‘tongue in cheek’ personification of Thiel in posters. The exhibition was top drawer engagement. Denny knew that Thiel had a long time set of experiences in scope with Board games. As well as that he had spent willing hours putting speculative time into considering how Utopian research ideas play out. For example, he made a quick game assembly about a floating settlement as one of his exhibition spaces. He had put some money into early steps in such a concept but had ruled out any step further. Logistics on this idea are very hard, though residents in the Maldives would be at least be being pro-active by 2023 with a Floating city, these the ideas of architect Koen Olthuis’s (11) (Google this )
It was stimulating to get underway with that Art Bite. I was only three years returned from having worked in California with an interest in engineers and algorythms for video games and had visited Silicon Valley. As a New Zealllander, was already well having lived well past the rapid expansion of neo-liberal governmental policies here in this country and was aware of the suspicions that the practices of some journalism holds for 'investment society'. "Denny delivered three dimensional and 2 dimensional graphic imagery on the topic of questions of sovereignty." All society discussion arer about the collective or the individual. It is a matter of politics to challenge structures otherwise Philosophicl teachings have always struggled with such bounds. We are all taught that the inherent natural world has its own way of talking. It does this by doing. The ravages are the dark place that we all have coined words for. It is in the dark places that experience occurs. Nothing there is rationalism. Human paradox is that in darkness there is also light.
As an artist, I saw, in one way or another, Denny is dealing with what his brain constructs s it responds to the industrial and commercial world. His response, conceptually, is via graphics, usually modded graphics.Four years after going to exhibit at Venice in a really big way, he assembled The Founders Paradox (2018/19) quickly.
I wrote an Art Bite on Ascent, one of the games Denny manipulated in this exhibition. He flipped ideas from the game Descent. This is a German Dark Romantic board game. Anthony Byrt, critic and writer on contemporary New Zealand Art who had lived a time on Berlin, came down to Christchurch to introduce this, the exhibition commissioned in New Zealand, first at Michael Lett in Auckland, then on here, by invitation from Lara Strongman’s curatorial mationatives. Strongman was senior curator then at Te Wai Pounamu, Christchurch Art Gallery, now working in Sydney.
The Key government nationalization step taken had had a huge impact upon the journalists vis a vis this favouring of citizenship treatment ( in two words, 'investor preference'. - government enthusiasm for fantasizing about the future of ‘start up’ investment cultures ). Thiel had acquaint himself with New Zealand. He was planning for a new large house near Arrowtown. It went onto the drawing board on again and off again. Maybe it will go on again. Denny, known for intense scrutiny of technolgy and its engagement in individual power or society, set up in his exhibition a range of ideas that challenged societal paradox with wit and sophistication. One section was a broad ‘tongue in cheek’ personification of Thiel in posters. The exhibition was top drawer engagement. Denny knew that Thiel had a long time set of experiences in scope with Board games. As well as that he had spent willing hours putting speculative time into considering how Utopian research ideas play out. For example, he made a quick game assembly about a floating settlement as one of his exhibition spaces. He had put some money into early steps in such a concept but had ruled out any step further. Logistics on this idea are very hard, though residents in the Maldives would be at least be being pro-active by 2023 with a Floating city, these the ideas of architect Koen Olthuis’s (11) (Google this )
It was stimulating to get underway with that Art Bite. I was only three years returned from having worked in California with an interest in engineers and algorythms for video games and had visited Silicon Valley. As a New Zealllander, was already well having lived well past the rapid expansion of neo-liberal governmental policies here in this country and was aware of the suspicions that the practices of some journalism holds for 'investment society'. "Denny delivered three dimensional and 2 dimensional graphic imagery on the topic of questions of sovereignty." All society discussion arer about the collective or the individual. It is a matter of politics to challenge structures otherwise Philosophicl teachings have always struggled with such bounds. We are all taught that the inherent natural world has its own way of talking. It does this by doing. The ravages are the dark place that we all have coined words for. It is in the dark places that experience occurs. Nothing there is rationalism. Human paradox is that in darkness there is also light.
* https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/322708/descent-legends-of-the-dark
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Wall Poster fragment of posters for the game Ascent. Above the Nation State. Character, FOUNDER.
This becomes a game marker in the mod. The mod assembly case is a DEL Power Edge computer 1950.
Christchurch Art Gallery. 2019. Photograph by Stephanie Beth.