No pressure

Fiona Connor is one of 60 artists selected for the Hammer Museum's first biennial exhibition Made in LA. ‘Good on you, Fiona’ you’re probably thinking. And it is impressive. Connor has only been in LA a few years and she is already a regular exhibitor and, if our experience was anything to go by, a bit of a star at CalArts where she studied after finishing up at Elam.

But that is not what the title of this post is pointing at. One of the features of Made in LA is a prize. Now Connor, as one of the finalists in the last $NZ50,000 Walters Prize, is no stranger to prizes but this one is more than double the Walters cash at $US100,000 ($NZ122,000) and also comes with a monograph. In terms of cash in hand this package even edges out the Turner Prize. 

Unlike the Walters Prize the decision-making process is a little more random. After the initial selection of 60 "emerging and under-recognized" artists, a group of five finalists will be selected by “a jury of art experts.” After that the final decision will be left to visitors to the exhibition. The last bit is a classic marketing tactic, but if Connor beat the odds and won, for once we’d come down on the side of the marketers.

You can read more about Made in LA and its funding here.

Image: Fiona Connor in her CalArts studio 2011

Googling on

What happens when you check out 'art school plaster casts.' Nice.

Image: Heather Tomkins drawing on Taylor White's casts via Boing Boing

Pony up

So shoot us for getting it wrong. There we were suggesting that foregrounding Wellington-based artists on Te Papa’s fifth floor might sweeten the passage of the Wellington City Council’s annual allocation of $2.25 million to the museum. Well that didn't happen. The WCC decided to give the sum a haircut and reduced the allocation to Te Papa to $1 million. Te Papa’s startling response was to tell the DomPost that the WCC's $2.25 million made up more than half its total annual cash sponsorship of $3.81 million. So Wellington ratepayers were stumping up over 59 percent of Te Papa’s total cash sponsorship. Who knew? 

By that accounting, even with the cut, WCC is still a major sponsor with a contribution of over 25 percent of the annual amount Te Papa attracts in sponsorship. As it stands. Te Papa has eight sponsors. Four are government agencies (including WCC) and four are commercial concerns. So the other seven sponsors are putting up an average of $222,000 each making even a reduced WCC contribution of $1 million kind of significant.

Image: Dr. Evil: ONE MILLION DOLLARS! Number Two: Don't you think we should ask for more than a million dollars? A million dollars isn't exactly a lot of money these days.

The write stuff

“I sprinkled about twenty adjectives (‘fey,’ ‘gestural,’ ‘restrained’) amid a small repertory of active verbs (‘explore,’ “trace’, ‘question’). I also inserted the phrases ‘negative space,’ ‘balanced composition,’ and ‘challenges the viewer’ every so often.”

Alice Gregory describing her technique when writing about artworks published in Sotheby’s art catalogues. You can read more of the entertaining account of her days working for the über auction house here.

Gate series

Since graffiti was invented in Wellington the doorway entrance to Peter McLeavey’s Gallery has been a prime location. As it was never cleaned up the site just kept on encrusting. Sometimes it was brilliant, most times it was ... like a graffitied doorway. Now a strangely suburban iron gate has been installed to stop the street artists from applying their trade. Will it work? Watch that space.

Things we hoped we'd never see 2

This time it's American conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner modelling for Ann Demeulemeester. You can see more (it gets worse) here.

The sculpture’s not for kicking

Maybe Scott Eady insisted that his Kick Me sculpture was protected by a flimsy rope barrier in the City Gallery exhibition The obstinate object as added irony, but we’re pretty sure we saw it on show in Auckland with no barriers at all. The written material claims that Eady "makes disruptive and troublesome sculpture” although it's hard to imagine it causing much trouble if the audience isn't even allowed close enough to touch it. Why the caution? What’s the worst thing anyone can do? Kick it?

Other OTN stories about barriers to enjoying art:

Paying the piper in Upper Hutt

A barriers medley

Little Aussie barriers

Serra the fall guy

Not bourgeois

We were a bit mean about the lookalike Louise Bourgeois parked up on the roadside next to Wellington’s Disney-like playground Carlucci Land (home of “mini golf, stone masonry and cherished junk”). Since then the Carlucci staff have excelled themselves with this spider sculpture featuring a real car as the body. Good work.

Putting the down in down under

Colin McCahon didn’t have it easy in New Zealand. His work was strongly supported by a small group but had a rough ride when it entered the public arena. This could come from anywhere: poets (Fairburn’s famous ‘celestial toilet’ comment), local body councilors (“I could do it in my lunch time”) and, when we gifted McCahon’s masterwork Victory over death 2 to Australia, even prime ministers (Robert Muldoon’s stupid remarks). On the other side of that stoush, however, was James Mollison the then director of the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra who regarded Victory over death 2 as “one of the most important paintings to have been made in this hemisphere in recent times.”

Since then the painting has held pride of place at the Gallery often showing with Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles but now, not so much. The current director Ron Radford is familiar with McCahon’s importance - and where has he hung it? Pride of place, skied above the audio tour pick-up counter. You can see how much attention it's getting there.

OK Australia, so you don’t respect this painting any more. Here’s a thought. Give it back.

(Thanks for the head's up J)

  

Hamish Keith responds with some interesting background on the gifting of Victory over death 2: the gift was the initiative of myself and Frank Corner. ­James Mollison was consulted at the outset and was given the choice of Victory Over Death or Colin's original Urewera piece ­ he chose VOD - only after that was Muldoon involved. ­ Muldoon's role was ambiguous, cabinet initially turned the proposal down, but Muldoon insisted that it go ahead, possibly because he could frame it for the philistines as a prank played on the Australians. But having had several conversations with him about the gift, I believe more so because of the long term impact it would have. The gift was associated with a visit to Australia by Deputy PM Brian Talboys and the initial and critical talks on CER. ­Both Frank and I emphasized the point that a gift on this scale associated with the newly opened National Gallery would attract major Australian media attention ­ the more so in the wake of the Jackson Pollock Blue Poles row. Muldoon may have been a pig but he was no fool and he got the point.

Driving down the North Island

Thinking about Wayne Youle

Careful what you wish for

The Auckland Art Gallery’s marketing department must have been beside itself. The gaggle of celebrities they'd offered free tickets to paper the $75 opening of Degas to Dali not only turned up but were also happy to mug for the cameras. But the Josie McNaught gotcha story headlined in the NZ Herald will have team marketing hiding under their desks this morning. Turns out that over 40 percent of the tickets for the Masterpiece art bash were freebies. Guess they'll all be hoping against hope that the patrons, donors and other supporters who were asked to pay can’t read.

Image: Liam Fennell, Ben Barrington and Colin Mathura-Jeffree add lustre to Degas to Dali. Photo Auckland Art Gallery Flickr set

McCahon house

As you know from our ongoing series On the road, New Zealand is dotted with street names honouring New Zealand artists. Now here’s a chance to have one of them on your letterhead or the envelopes that come through your mailbox. Simply by resettling in Rotorua and stumping up $349,000 you can have 30 McCahon Drive (a “modern, quiet cul-de-sac”) in Pukehangi as your own.

On the road

On the road the ongoing series celebrating the Ministry of Land Transport and Local Body support of New Zealand artists.

Dog bites sculpture

There have been some dramatic images in the history of photography. The miracle of a bullet passing through a light bulb, the analysis of movement by Muybridge, the moon rising over Half Dome in Yosemite National Park. Now we add to that roster another decisive moment, this photograph of Billy Apple’s dog eating a piece of Peter Robinson’s sculpture at Sue Crockford's gallery. Fortunately dog Macintosh (spoiler alert – Apple connection) didn’t swallow the small cube so there will be no issues with coughing up felt balls. As there is the faint possiblity that the dog was tweaking the sculpture by moving the block we have also tagged this post Animal Art.

Style section

In the continued blurring of high art and popular culture here are skateboards by US artist John Baldessari. The defining difference as we can see it is that skateboarders would probably only buy one, art collectors would want the set.