2015 - Simon Denny
Simon Denny, 2015. Photo: Nick Ash.
Core Team Members
Commissioner: Heather Galbraith
Curator: Robert Leonard
Project Director: Jude Chambers
Exhibition Attendants
Pauline Autet, Amber Baldock (Exhibition Registrar), Andrea Bell, Monica Buchan-Ng, Jodie Dalgleish, Jhana Millers, Tendai John Mutambu, Sophie Thorn, Alice Tyler
Project Publication Secret Power
Editors: Robert Leonard, Mary Barr
Contributing Writers: Chris Kraus, Metahaven
Designer: David Bennewith
Publisher: Mousse Publishing
In his exhibition for the Biennale Arte 2015, Simon Denny drew upon the historic weight of Venice to offer an unprecedented perspective on the visual culture of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance revealed in documents leaked by NSA contractor Edward Snowden in 2013.
Secret Power took its name from Secret Power – New Zealand's Role in the International Spy Network. The 1996 book by investigative journalist Nicky Hager presented the public with its first look at New Zealand’s most elite intelligence bureau, the GCSB.
Secret Power was installed in two locations: the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana and Marco Polo Airport. In the Marciana Library, Denny used operational server racks of the kind used in data collection facilities as exhibition vitrines. On these he placed sculptural interpretations of visuals used by intelligence agencies to represent operations and communicate complex programs.
The exhibits stood amidst maps and paintings commissioned by Venice’s historical state powers to represent powerful data. Visualisations like these, including maps based on geographical surveys and intelligence reports by travellers such as Marco Polo, were crucial to Venice’s dominance as a commercial and political power.
In the airport a series of plaques, profiling historical maps and mapmakers from the Marciana’s collection, extended into international territory. These greeted travellers as they passed through security into the city. Recreations of the library’s richly painted ceilings spanned the airport’s floor, offering a unique chance to consider at close hand the allegorical symbolism and iconography within these works. They were state-commissioned in the mid-1500’s to represent the value of knowledge and express the power and authority of Venice.
Four of the Secret Power vitrines have been purchased to become part of the national collection at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Other aspects of the installation were acquired by MoMA and private collections.
More on the artist
Simon Denny studied at the University of Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Arts and at Frankfurt’s Städelschule, graduating in 2009. Born in Auckland, he is currently based in Berlin. Denny was a founding member of the Auckland artist-run space Gambia Castle.
Denny’s work is regularly exhibited in New Zealand and is held in major public and private collections in New Zealand, including the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu, and Dunedin Public Art Gallery.
Denny has been included in shows in major European and international art museums, including the ICA, London; Kunsthaus Bregenz; KW Center for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Fridericianum, Kassel, Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art in Beijing and the Aspen Art Museum.
In 2012, Denny won the Baloise Art Prize at Art Basel. He has been the only New Zealand artist invited to exhibit in the curated show at La Biennale di Venezia, which he did in 2013 and was shortlisted for the 2014 and 2012 Walters Prize in New Zealand.
In 2013, he presented All You Need Is Data. The DLD 2012 Conference Redux at Kunstverein Munich; Petzel Gallery, New York and Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (as one of four nominees for the 2013 Preis der Nationalgalerie für Junge Kunst). In 2013, he also exhibited The Personal Effects of Kim Dotcom, at MUMOK, Vienna, and, in 2014, at Firstsite, Colchester and the Adam Art Gallery, Wellington. In 2014 Denny presented New Management at the Portikus, Frankfurt.
In 2015 MoMA PS1 in New York presented The Innovator's Dilemma, the first museum to survey a number of his recent projects and the first large-scale museum solo show of Simon Denny in the United States. He was included in the 2008 Sydney Biennale and the 2008 Brussels Biennial.
Denny’s work has been extensively written about and reviewed including in the New York Times, Focus, Frieze, Art Forum, Modern Painters, Monopol, Mousse and Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Since Secret Power for the Biennale Arte 2015, Denny has continued to achieve international success with Products of Organising at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, London in 2015 and Business Insider at WIELS, Brussels in 2016 as well as exhibiting at the 2016 Berlin Biennale.
