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NAG
Wellington 2021
Marcus McShane
Nag is a bicycle-powered studio entirely built out of found and recycled objects. A series of invited artists must pedal as they work, and the more power they require for their work, the harder they need to pedal. They’ll power laptops, printers, wifi, lighting, a record player, and a sound system, as well as anything else that the artists need and have the stamina to run. Nag has been a DJ booth, a writing retreat, a Manhattan recording studio for The Clean and, and of course, an art and animation studio. It’s both recycling taken to a kind of risky level and a demonstration of how little energy the human body can actually produce. Nag premiered in Wellington in 2009, caught fire during it’s initial season, and has been rebuilt several times and toured the world across 28 varied installations since then.
Marcus is one of New Zealand’s most prolific designers, having produced over 500 theatre designs and installation artworks since 2005. He has 26 awards in visual art and design. In 2016 he created a commissioned work (Nests) for the NZ Festival, in 2017 he completed a permanent interactive artwork driven by waves, Wash, for the Tauranga City Council, and in 2019 he launched an installation of his lightbox works, 101 Rants, which transformed the public spaces of BATS Theatre for 101 days. In 2020 he had new works premiering in the Frankfurt Luminale, Vivid Sydney, Light Nelson, and the NZ Festival, all of which were cancelled. Yay Covid! He originally worked as a copywriter, and his artworks tend to revolve around light and text. Marcus has a postgraduate degree in English and Philosophy that he’s philosophical about, and his interests include growing vegetables, building bicycles, and reading things worth reading.
