Seddon Bennington
Chief Executive, Museum of New Zealand
Te Papa Tongarewa

All strength to you City Gallery, for capturing and defining the New - 'the most interesting and innovative' - not a simple task in the cacophony of claims for Newer than New.

Artist and audience dare each other to raise the threshold of provocation and sensation. Our imagination, our emotion, our intellect craves the post-contemporary - the contemporary necessarily temporary as we anticipate its offspring. Have we at any time in the past been as obsessed with innovation - the competitive call of our times? Yet in this high volume frenzy (or maybe in one's middle age) the antidote I seek is the quiet, the place to pause and reflect, but not to be confused with a place of safety and comfort - to be shunned at all costs. In these times that too easily infect with paranoia and prejudice, let us unleash the uncomfortable, the unfamiliar.