Split/ Fountain
Located on Karangahape Road in Auckland, New Zealand, split/fountain (S/F) shares a street-frontage with a Laundromat, a promotional outpost of a downtown gallery, a café, and sex shops. As the title’s reference to blended ink technology suggests, S/F merges at least 3 forms of production and dissemination – art, design, and print – through its operation as a shop, design studio, project space, exhibition venue, niche publishing house and pocket-scaled laboratory for urban aesthetics and collaborative thinking. The project’s title also alludes to Duchamp’s infamous fountain – S/F sees its gradations between commerce, art, ideas and printed matter as speculative, experimental, and adaptable. S/F stages art exhibitions that change every six weeks or so; working with artists as well as designers and architects. The space and furniture are rearranged regularly to accommodate the special requirements of each new exhibition. S/F has its own publishing imprint, producing publications, newspapers and artists’ editions. As a shop/reading-room, it also stocks an ever-expanding range of local and international art and design catalogues, print editions, artworks, and small run publications unavailable elsewhere in the country. (AS)
