Author Description

New Zealand born Len Lye and Brazilian Hélio Oiticica are acknowledged internationally for their respective practices. These span direct film, kinetic sculpture, painting, installation and participatory performance, as well as bodies of writing that pushed language into new territory in ther efforts to convey their revolutionary views on art and life. Jim Allen, in contrast, is not as well known as he should be and whose 'environmental structures' and performances established him as the primary figure of post-object art in New Zealand in the late 1960s and 70s. Points of Contact joins a number of recent surveys that challenge the European and North American art historical paradigm, proposing and examining instead parallel and specific art historical trajectories outside these centres, in both their local and global dimensions.