December 2024. Final touches are underway for the unveiling of a new public art commission in Sydney, Australia! 

A land art work referencing the stars, Asterisk (from the Ancient Greek asteriskos, meaning little star) commemorates journeys past and present as it explores a future decolonisation of space. Circular formations of ancient stones and earth speak to cultural traditions and spiritual connections between the Earth and Sky. From the far corners of Australia, unique rocks tell the stories of the oldest continent on Earth. They are anchored to traditional Gadigal and Kameygal land by a unique composite stone created by the artist from rock recovered from tunnelling deep below the sculpture site. Asterisk is orientated towards Ginan, the brightest small star in the Southern Cross which was recently internationally given its ancient Aboriginal Australian astronomy star-name. Encircling shadows trace the passage of time inside a circle of heritage stone, dating to the Triassic period, which once lined local roads. Part of a major transport infrastructure project developed by NSW Government and Westconnex, Asterisk is a placeholder at the entrance of a new parklands. 

Asterisk 2020-2024
Pilbara Marble, Chillagoe Marble, Sydney Tunnel-Stone, Heritage Sandstone
11m Dia.
Public Art Project Sydney NSW

July 2024. Artist-led public activations at Brooklyn Bridge Park invite encounters and discourse about the monumental stone circle HALO, geolocated in extended reality 50m / 165ft above the East River. Presented in collaboration with the Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art NYC 2024, artists, writers, coders and technologists meet to engage with this ancient stone rune as it reframes an iconic skyline, stimulating the imaginary and connecting people through digital fluidity. Drawing from ancient, natural and computational worlds, HALO brings into focus a cultural continuum – past, present, and future – shaped by capital and colonisation in the city that never sleeps.

June-July 2024. News is spreading about HALO in New York!  Discovered from Brooklyn Bridge Park on the floating pier next to the Dumbo ferry, the codified stone sculpture is being unlocked by locals and visitors who create and curate their own 'halo'. Shared and viewed through mobile phones, the suspended monument is experienced at grand scale over Manhattan in a digtal-real confluence that shifts perceptions, enchants and intrigues. HALO's reach is extending beyond the city, being livestreamed by New York City podcasters and guides to audiences online, tranmitting the live mirage via digital networks onto thousands of screens elsewhere.

May 2024. Awarded a Saas-Fee Summer Art Institute (SFSAI) scholarship, NZ artist Gill Gatfield will participate in SFSAI New York City with 25 international artists, researchers and writers. Founded in 2015 by artist and theorist Warren Neidich, the nomadic art academy runs in alternate years in Berlin and NYC with shifting programs in contemporary critical theory. “Art, Apparatus and Neural-Digital Entanglement in Cognitive Capitalism NYC 2024" maps artistic forms of resistance in order to critically engage with new neural and brain-based technologies and consider potential new forms of practical insurgency. The intensive program of seminars, deep readings, experimental workshops, and public lectures is led by an interdisciplinary faculty, in NYC 2024 comprising: Defne Ayas, Davide Balula, Suparna Choudhury, Stephanie Dinkins, Thyrza Goodeve, Lyle Ashton Harris, Isaac Julien, Liz Magic Laser, Reza Negarestani, Warren Neidich (founder/director), Alison Nguyen, Diane Severin Nguyen, Barry Schwabsky, Martha Schwendener, Mindy Seu, and Anuradha Vikram.

8 June 2024. Presenting three new exquisite glass and stone sculptures - Narcissus, Echo and Symposium, artist Gill Gatfield shares insights into these ephemeral abstract forms and their embodied ideas. The talk will canvas the sculptures' relationships with abstract, classical and feminist bodies and philosophies, and their resonance with mysticism, love psychologies, and AI. On view in the first ever survey show of Aotearoa abstract women artists, at NorthART Gallery Auckland NZ until 6 July, the public Programme and Artist Talks is supported by Chartwell Trust.

Feb-Nov. 2024. A 10 month expanded artistic research residency with FOREIGN OBJEKT, an international network and ecosystem, examines art and philosophy in the AI era. The research group of artists, philosophers, scientists and engineers collaborate on projects expanding on the framework: "Deep Objekt [0]: Agency at the Computational Turn" developed by philosopher Reza Negarestani and residency curator Sepideh Majidi. Founded in 2019, Foreign Objekt promotes interdisciplinary discourse on the transformative potential and future for human and artificial intelligence. Gill Gatfield’s residency research formulates a new rubric: RADICAL MONUMENTS, investigating the transmission of intelligence between human and the AI-AR monument, the creative potential of this art-form, and the implications for diverse, dynamic and democratic public space.

Resident research and artistic projects are presented at Space Gallery Berkley USA, New Art City Virtual, Foreign Objekt and Posthuman Art Laboratory. Deep Objekt 2024 residency advisors and faculty include:  Sepideh Majidi, Maure Coise, Reza Negarestani, Marek Poliks, Roberto Alonso Trillo, Keith Tilford, Borna Radnik, and invited guests.

May 2024. At the opening plenary of the First International Scientific & Practical Conference "European Future", Gill Gatfield presents ‘A Philosophy of Harmony in Abstraction – Sculpting Virtual and Real Worlds’.  The interdisciplinary forum hosted by Kherson National Technical University is convened by philosopher Professor Halyna Berehova for philosophers, scientists, and scholars from Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, France, Canada and USA to examine contemporary philosophical, educational and communication problems across disciplines, including politics, technology and AI. Gill Gatfield's presentation expands on her 2022 project UNITY in the 59th Venice Biennale collateral exhibition 'Personal Structures' proposing ephemeral and virtual aesthetics as sites of consciousness and agency.

7 May-6 July 2024. ABSTRAXT ABSTRAXT, a survey show of Aotearoa New Zealand women artists at NorthArt Gallery NZ, features three new sculptures by Gill Gatfield – Narcissus, Echo and Symposium. Curated by director Jessica Pearless, this first ever large scale exhibition of contemporary abstraction by NZ women artists charts a constellation of the field today, examining the artistic processes and methodologies employed by leading and emerging artists across cultural and aesthetic perspectives. Exhibition catalogue includes essays by Jesssica Pearless and Nina Dyer.

April 2024. Milan based Jenna Grace, art researcher and historian at Fondazione Prada, reflects on Native Tongue XR, Simone Leigh’s US Pavilion and Maria Eichhorn’s German Pavilion, projects changing the notion of monument at the 59th Venice Biennale:
 
"Amongst all the speculation and all the strangers everywhere for the opening of the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Cecilia Alemani’s boldly curated 59th reliquary and its wave of concurrent collateral events still resonate. In 2022, the surreal The Milk Of Dreams theme stirred connections with international movements interrogating colonial monuments. Not all projects had the sentient scale of Simone Leigh’s literal wrapping and reinvention of the US Pavilion to highlight histories of presidential slavery. Two of the most insightful reinventions of monuments didn’t really exist at all. …"
 

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April 2024. New Zealand's premier event for contemporary art amplifies public art in DON’T SCROLL PAST: The Importance of Public Art in a Modern World⁠: "In a transient, distributed and screen-mediated world, art in public spaces takes on an urgent necessary role in rehabilitating, defining and elevating spaces to encourage discourse. As part of our ‘Let's Talk Art' Programme, a panel of leading artists, experts and cultural thinkers, convened by public art director Deborah McCormick, discuss the philosophies, strategies and modes of public art."⁠ Speakers: Natasha Smith, Director Curatorial UAP | Gill Gatfield, Artist Gatfield Studio | Tavakefai`ana Sēmisi Fetokai Potauaine, Sculptor & Lecturer | Rachael Rakena (Ngai Tahu, Nga Puhi), Artist & Academic | Andrew Paul Wood, NZ Art & Cultural Critic.