22 October 2026 — 17 January 2027
Karl Fritsch and Gavin Hipkins:
Die Ausgrabung
Artists’ Talk • Thursday 22 October • 5 - 6PM
Opening Celebration • Thursday 22 October • 6 - 7:30PM
Die Ausgrabung (2014) is a multidisciplinary collaboration by leading Aotearoa artists Karl Fritsch and Gavin Hipkins.
Karl Fritsch and Gavin Hipkins, Die Ausgrabung, 2014 (detail). Image courtesy of the artists.
The project was initially exhibited in conjunction with a joint artists’ residency at the Dunedin School of Art, Otago Polytechnic. This is the first showing of Die Ausgrabung in Tāmaki Makaurau. The German phrase Die Ausgrabung translates literally as ‘the excavation’. Comprising multiple elements, the installation presents image and object fragments that contribute to a holistically atmospheric viewing experience in which no part is more important than any other.
About the artists
Karl Fritsch
Karl Fritsch (b. 1963 in Sonthofen, Germany) lives and works in Wellington. Fritsch has travelled around the world exhibiting extensively and presenting lectures in the United States, Europe, Asia and Australia. His rings speak of traditional goldsmithing, but they also dramatically reframe its expressive range, making him one of the most influential contemporary jewellery makers.
His work has been acquired by leading international museums and public collections, including: the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, Victoria and Albert Museum London, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Pinakothek der Moderne Munich, Te Papa National Museum Wellington. He often collaborates with designers and artists from other areas, such as Gavin Hipkins, Francis Upritchard and Martino Gamper.
Gavin Hipkins
Gavin Hipkins is an award-winning Tāmaki Makaurau-based artist. He has exhibited widely over the last three decades. His photography and moving image works interrogate how images create meaning through fragmentation and circulation. 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 practice engages film as a cinematic art that blurs conventional genres of essay film, documentary and experimental narrative structures.
His work is included in public collections including the Queensland Art Gallery, the Auckland Art Gallery, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, and George Eastman Museum of Photography and Film, New York. He is an Associate Professor at Te Waka Tūhura Elam Fine Arts, the University of Auckland.
Events & Public Programme
Artists’ Talk
Thursday 22 October • 5 - 6PMOpening Celebration
Thursday 22 October • 6 - 7:30PM