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Join SCAPE 2010 artist Hector Zamora for a picnic lunch near his artwork Muegano in Victoria Square. Enjoy a relaxed midday break and come prepared with a BYO lunch ready to enjoy the outdoors and discuss contemporary art.

Inviting all who wish to mix, mingle and experience SCAPE 2010's opening celebration at Christchurch's new Civic Building. Enjoy an evening of fabulous entertainment that will surprise and delight along with fine finger food and drinks.

Only 500 tickets available!

Taipei based independent curator, critic and co-founder of the Taipei Contemporary Art Center Manray Hsu will mark the beginning of SCAPE 2010 Opening Weekend with his keynote lecture on global issues relating to public art events, including biennales.

Curatorial group members Julia Morison and William Field will lead a tour of the temporary artworks along the SCAPE 2010 Public Art Walkway. Curators Julia and William will discuss each artwork as viewed through the curatorial framework. SCAPE 2010 artists will also join the guided walk to introduce their artworks. This walk offers a unique opportunity to experience the 2010 artworks with the insight of the SCAPE curators and artists.

Chair: Blair French, Curatorial Convenor SCAPE 2010 and Executive Director of Artspace (Sydney).
The first of four panel discussions held over the opening weekend of SCAPE 2010 and involving an array of participating artists, curators, writers, architects, urban designers and commentators will take up the question of what forces – economic, political, geographic, cultural, environmental – are currently driving urban consolidation and how do or might contemporary art practices contribute to, redirect, openly challenge or actively subvert these forces?

Chair: Emma Bugden, Director, Artspace (NZ).
How do the changes that happen within the inner city (architectural, demographic etc) have an impact on human use and the experience within these spaces? Does the constant regenerative nature of a city facilitate possibilities for artists to work in participatory ways within public space? How is the mutable, dynamic city reflected in and/or formed by developing models of community? Can works of art in public space somehow institute such notions of community?

Chair: William Field, SCAPE 2010 Curatorial Group and Landscape Architect
What do we understand by or experience as inner-city life and what new possibilities might we expect in the future? How is the city consistently rearticulated and/or claimed by the groups that inhabit it? How are subtle and not so subtle impulses to ownership or sovereignty of and within space manifested?  How do patterns of inhabitation shape public space?

Shanghai-based independent curator and former Director of the Curatorial Department at the Shanghai Duolin Museum of Modern Art, Biljana Ciric will discuss the notion of public space as it exists in China, from its place in traditional culture through to the appearance of public monuments during the Mao era. Considering the changing relationship between artists and the state Ciric will also track the shifting critical contexts for art in public space as well as look at virtual space as an important platform for public discussion and information sharing.

Chair: Lara Strongman, Independent Curator/Writer  
How do practices in contemporary art intersect with those of urban planning, design, architecture and environmental planning? Do any such intersections bear the potential to create new possibilities, conceptual frameworks and material environments for art in public space practices?