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International art stars sit alongside some of New Zealand's best contemporary artists in the Auckland Festival 2009 visual arts programme; a collection of high calibre, high impact contemporary work, exhibited across the city in galleries, found environments and art spaces, including a museum, a church - and an operational passenger bus.

The 2009 Festival will be the second time Auckland Festival has curated a significant visual arts programme. The programme features solo exhibitions from international artists Isaac Julien, Paola Pivi, Ray Lee, and The Little Artists, as well as dynamic group shows, and exciting cross-over projects that explore the visual arts within the context of a multi-art form festival. Leading local artist Sara Hughes will transform a passenger bus into the Auckland Festival Artbus, which will take the Festival onto the city streets.

One of the most anticipated international highlights is sound-art installation Siren, by UK artist Ray Lee, which will be performed at MOTAT. A sell-out hit of the 2007 Edinburgh Festival, Siren is an immersive experience that sits at the intersection of art and science - a spinning, whirling spectacle of mechanical movement, electronic sound, and light.

Tipped to have wide appeal is the playful and irreverent Art Crazy Nation, an exhibition of work by The Little Artists (aka John Cake and Darren Neave) who are famous for their ironic reproductions in Lego of modern art works and personalities; including Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, and Damien Hirst - complete with Lego shark in Lego tank.

Equally absorbing is a video/scupture installation from New Zealander Terry Urbahn, The Sacred Hart, which will be shown in St Mathew-in-the-City. Urbahn investigates ideas of ritual, memory and community through a record of the living past of much-loved New Plymouth landmark the White Hart Hotel.

Collaboration and cross-pollination between local and international artists and curators is a strong characteristic of the 2009 programme. New Zealand work will sit alongside that from international artists in two major group exhibitions that investigate notions of reality and fakery (F for Fake), and cultural translation and representation (MASH UP).

The global nature of the modern art world is also evident in the most visible element in the Visual Arts programme, the Art Bus. Leading local artist Sara Hughes, who uses pattern and iteration to explore space, has been commissioned to transform the exterior of a passenger bus into an original artwork, which is being created during her residency in Berlin. The Art Bus will transport passengers around Auckland during the festival, and will stay on the streets for several months afterwards.

The cultural currents flow in the opposite direction for Paola Pivi and Isaac Julien, two major European artists who are presenting solo works created in New Zealand, in response to the local environment. Julien's evocative photographic series, Te Tonga Tuturu / True South (Apparatus) 2008, is the result of a journey through the remote Urewera Ranges during his recent residency.

Pivi, whose star has continued to rise since she came to prominance at the 50th Venice Biennale, will be in Auckland during the Festival to install, exhibit, and close an original temporary artwork in a found space, all within in 24 hours - as part of New Zealand initiative the One Day Sculpture Project.

The Festival will also showcase the talents of a new generation of New Zealand artists - current students and recent graduates of Elam School of Fine Arts - with an exhibition in the corporate foyers and lobbies of Shortland Street in Elam Art Upfront.

The visual arts programme is rounded out by Ice Terrane, a new exhibition by contemporary New Zealand jeweller Kirsten Haydon, inspired by her 2005 Antarctic Arts Fellowship; Transform, a major survey of four decades of work by master abstractionist Milan Mrkusich; Presentation/Representation, a cross-section of contemporary German photography; and The Idiot, a Dostoyevsky-inspired work by neo avant-garde Russian collective Factory of Found Clothing (FNO).