City Gallery Wellington takes a light-hearted look at the relationship between architects and artists in a new exhibition, Demented Architecture, featuring artworks from across the globe. It explores the role of architecture and the mythology of the architect from a contemporary art perspective.

The show includes video, sculpture, painting and Lego. Made up of thousands of white Lego pieces, Danish artist Olafur Eliasson’s The Cubic Structural Evolution Project explores the power of architecture to determine, experience and maintain social order. Visitors are invited to ‘become architects’ and participate in the construction, modification, destruction and re-construction of the work.

The exhibition also includes highly staged and stylised videos of Slovenian artist Jasmina Cibic. Cibic’s The Fruits of Our Land (2013) represented Slovenia at the 2013 Venice Biennale. Videos from this project, restaging historical debates around the relationship between art and architecture, will show alongside her recent A Double Game (2014).

There is also Scottish artist Henry Coombes’s video I Am the Architect, This is Not Happening, This is Unacceptable (2012); which was shown at the 2014 Biennale of Sydney. This dark, noisy and mesmerising work is set inside the confused mind of retired modernist architect ‘Clive’ (inspired by the artist’s father) as he slowly surrenders himself to the impulsive and chaotic values of art.

Demented Architecture
27 June – 8 November 2015
City Gallery Wellington

Free entry via citygallery.org.nz