Animal Spirits - NZ & UK Artists in Stockholm

David Masters Townsend is a New Zealander living and working as an artist in London. He holds a BFA from ELAM School of Fine Arts, and was cofounder and director of the Fiat Lux Gallery Auckland between 1996-2000. He has exhibited in New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom.

Maria Walls is a Canterbury based artist whose current practice willfully runs a range of media and genres in order to produce ‘art studies’ (of the works of others), and in extension to this, her art writing cuts up and pulls apart found resources as an affective manipulation of the participants and circumstances of fine art. She is currently pursuing DocFA studies at ELAM School of Fine Arts.

Ben Webb is a New Zealand artist who has for the past several years lived and worked in a variety of countries including Germany and Argentina. Self-trained as an artist, he works with still-lifes, found images and portraiture, often using photographs as a starting point.

Adam Willetts is a Christchurch based musician and artist whose practice shifts between the hi-tech and handcrafted, exploring relationships and interfaces between people, technology and popular culture. He has performed and exhibited throughout New Zealand and internationally since the late 1990s, featuring at numerous festivals and exhibitions including SoundWalk, LA (2005) Lines of Flight, Dunedin (2006 & 2009); TASIE, Beijing (2006), Cloudland at ISEA, Singapore (2008); Towards a Cinema of Pure Means, The Physics Room, Christchurch (2010).

Leon Tan gained a PhD in Art History from the University of Auckland, in which he specialized in the history, aesthetics and politics of social networks. He previously lectured in Art History and Psychotherapy in New Zealand before relocating to Sweden in 2009. He is one of the curators of Animal Spirits, and co-organizer of the Animal Aesthetics Symposium at Stockholm’s Royal Institute of Art.