Art Collectables I

Above: The Klimt Glory Box (spotted at Hearst Castle, California)
Below: The Klimt Dance Costume: set with single fringed appliqué for bra (Don't ask)
Click on picture to enlarge image

Forty whacks

One of our readers has filled us in on the Barry Lett sign affair and tells us that the new sign - this time for the RKS gallery - was designed by, you guessed it, Billy Apple. Thanks for that. Here though is an account by Wystan Curnow, written at the time and published in Art New Zealand Number 15, Autumn 1980 in his report The Given as an art-political statement. So thanks too to Wystan and Art NZ.

“That during the opening (ALTERATIONS: The Given as an Art-Political Statement 16 October 1979) an open letter to Rodney Kirk Smith from Barry Lett was distributed. It read, in part, as follows:
It is now over five years since I left Barry Lett Galleries and it is almost two years since I approached you with the serious proposal that you change the name of the gallery... Since then we have had numerous discussions on this subject and still nothing has been resolved. My opposition to the present situation continues to grow and intensify...Your current exhibition... offers a propitious moment for me to move from words into action... I have decided to remove and destroy the Barry Letts sign... which now hangs above the gallery entrance. I hope that this action speaks to you more powerfully than my words have.

“That muffled sounds of axe blows were to be heard. The screech of tires of - was it a getaway car? That the police arrived. That Barry Lett was subsequently charged with and convicted of wilful damage. And that Rodney Kirk Smith and Barry Lett have since come to an agreement on this matter.”

Snap

When Ronald Lauder, heir to the Este Lauder fortune first visited Serge Sabrasky, a New York dealer of Austrian and German art, he asked if he knew of any American collectors of Klimt or Schiele.
“I know of two,” Sabrasky said.
“There’s also me and my brother,” said Lauder.
“I already counted both of you,” Sabrasky replied.
Reported in Rebecca Mead’s An acquiring eye: Ronald Lauder’s career in collecting art in The New Yorker, 15 January 2007. Lauder recently paid $US 135 million for Klimt’s Adel Bloch-Bauer I

Pauline Thompson and her circle

Our ‘Where are they now?’ section begs the question, ‘Who were they then?’ Here’s one answer in two parts from a New Zealand Vogue article on the visual art scene published in 1968. Auckland, the article tells us, is “large and complex. Its centre shifts, but is mainly around the painters, sculptors, collectors and dealer galleries.” Ok, so what else has changed? “Both newspapers run regular reviews. Usually the day after an opening: Terry McNamara writes for the Herald, and Gordon H. Brown for the Star.” Right.
Pictured above: Top row left to right Michael Illingworth (with beard), Pat Hanly, Ted Smythe (with beard), Milan MrKusich, art dealers Barry Lett and Rodney Kirk Smith (with beard) Kees Hos, T J McNamara. Second rowfrom left: Pauline Thompson, Ross Ritchie, John Perry (with beard), Gordon H. Brown. Crouching and seated from left: Colin McCahon, Robert Ellis and Paul Beadle (with beard).

Sign post

Over the last few months the sign for Peter McLeavey’s Gallery in Cuba Street, Wellington has been tagged not once but four times. The first strange thing about this is that the sign has been pretty much left alone since it was put up. The second is, that although every square inch of the doorway and sign have been covered with tags, labels and posters, the small disk that displays Peter McLeavey’s hours have remained untouched. We asked Peter if he knew why, but he is as puzzled as we are. He did mention that he is getting a new sign made and that he has kept every single sign the gallery has had since it opened - tags and all.

Some more gallery sign stories. One of the earlier sign for the Peter McLeavey Gallery that simply said GALLERY in red lettering on white, was designed by Billy Apple. From memory, putting up the Apple sign on the day of Billy’s opening, also involved the removal of the Elva Bett Gallery sign. A Neil Dawson opening was slated at Elva’s - just across the hall from McLeavey’s where Enjoy is now - for the same night. Tempers were heated as Neil took Billy to task for the removal of the Bett sign during his show. Sign rage. And wasn’t there also a sign rage incident in Auckland when someone attacked the Barry Lett Gallery, or was it RKS sign, with an axe? Sounds too good to be true. Details anybody?

Another Gallery sign, this time from Auckland’s Artspace, was kidnapped and taken for a ride to Otira by artist Dane Mitchell. The Artspace sign also attracted attention - well Billy Apple’s anyway - when, unsolicited, he cleaned a Malone tag off it during Daniel’s exhibition.

The best art gallery sign story, or useful correction and addition to the ones above, gets a overthenet table tennis ball signed by an artist of note.
CORRECTION: Billy Apple's cleaning of the Artspace sign (removing Crazy Dave's 'malone' tag) was in fact commissioned by Daniel, and documented by him as a work of his own for his Artspace show.

Copy cat IV

Bus shelter. Eastbourne, Wellington

Quick Quiz

Three of these photographs of bus shelters were photographed by Christopher Herwig, on a bike tour through the Baltic countries to St. Petersburg. One was taken by us in Wellington yesterday. Spot the odd one out. No prizes, no correspondence entered into.
For more of Christopher Herwig’s amazing Soviet shelter shots go here.

Strippers

The invitation to the opening of artist-run gallery Gambia Castle at the end of the month in Auckland, marks a good time to remember Teststrip, another artist space run on spirit and determination. Teststrip opened in Vulcan Lane in 1992 and later moved to Karangahape Road. It closed in 1997. Teststrip made a guest appearance in Wellington in March 1993 for the exhibitions Teststrip on tour at Cubewell House and Suffer in July of the same year at the Hamish McKay Gallery. For the ‘tour’, the whole team drove down and stayed in Rachel McAlpine’s Sugar Cube apartment (she was in Japan). Danny Butt has written a brief history of Teststrip which you can read here.
Photos: Top left Daniel Malone (on the left) and Giovanni Intra organise an exhibition opening and Christmas dinner in the Vulcan Lane space in December 1992. Top Right. The Vulcan Lane sign. Bottom Left: Denise Kum’s installation at Cubewell House. Bottom right: Daniel Malone preparing for his opening performance at Cubewell House.

Copy cat III

Buffalo soldier

Journey through the centre of two worlds by Rohan Wealleans is in the current group show Stolen ritual at the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in Sydney . The Gallery also shows New Zealanders Bill Culbert, Jacqueline Fraser, Rosalie Gascoigne and Michael Parekowhai. Now we see, from an invitation received this week, Rohan has been added to their list of regular artists and will have solo exhibition opening next week on 1 February. The exhibition will have the same title as his Dunedin Public Art Gallery show last year - Tatunka. For those without friends who stay up late at night to answer questions, Tatunka is the word for male bison or buffalo as used by the First Nation tribe Lakota. We are also told (why the hell didn’t we know this?) that it was the first word Kevin Costner used as he changed sides in the movie Dances with wolves. Costner on his personal web site spells the word Tatanka, but it seems both spellings work – it’s a Google world.
Picture: Rohan Wealleans Journey through the centre of two worlds on exhibition at the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery.

Dutch treat

When we were in the Hammer Museum recently, they were patching and painting the walls in the foyer. Now we discover this was in preparation for Jan van der Ploeg who has just installed two large wall paintings there. Bad timing – ours, that is.
Pictures: Jan van der Ploeg Wall Painting No.183 ‘Grip’, 2007, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles

Cloud nine

With so many artists acting as curators and a number of curators thinking they might even be artists, it was interesting to see an exhibition where artist and curator combined to present the work. We've talked before about the Magritte show, Magritte and contemporary art: the treachery of images, at the Los Angeles County Museum. It was a knock out. For a start the collection of Magrittes was incredible and unlikely to be brought together again for a long time. There was also a good attempt to place some contemporary work in the context of Magritte’s influence – not so successful, but some stunning work.

What made this exhibition so memorable was the addition of artist John Baldessari onto the exhibition team. As you can see from the photographs Baldessari carpeted the whole exhibition with a custom made cloud scape and papered the ceiling with photographs of the LA freeway system. It was the sort of bravura gesture that only a great artist could get away with. He literally turned the gallery on its head. Let’s face it, if a curator had come up with this idea all hell would have broken loose. So why don’t more curators involve artists in the display of art works? Seeing Jeff Koons bronze life raft sitting on cloud carpet is one of the most astonishingly thought provoking sights we have seen in an art gallery. It is obvious to anyone who has been going to exhibitions over the last ten years or so that most the designers (and all to often they are designers) of our exhibitions don’t have a clue how to energise an exhibition space. The fact is that artists can bring a creative approach to exhibition design that is missing from most of the exhibitions we see. At the very least it’s worth a try.
Photo: LACMA, Peter Brenner

Art is where you find it I

Koru lounge, Auckland

Nakaochiai

Returning to the Tokyo theme sparked by the rediscovery of Ray Castle, let’s turn to the Nakaochiai Gallery in Shinjuku. Run by New Zealander Julia Barnes and Californian artist Clint Taniguchi, the gallery is on the ground floor of a traditional shop house. This one was originally a kakigori and okashiya shop (a place that served shaved ice deserts and cake) and although most of the old buildings in the area have gone, it still feels like a real community. Even the walk from Nakai station is an eye-opener, taking you past houses, stores, workshops and a large temple complex. The gallery opens out onto the street and is often used by artists for installations. Some of the rooms upstairs (tatami, sliding doors) are also used from time to time. Julia and Clint were in New Zealand over the holidays talking about possible exchanges of artists and ideas between NZ and Tokyo. One of their projects, the Instant Drawing Machine from the San Francisco based collaborative team, Crust and Dirt, is already slated for Barcelona and Melbourne.
Pictures Left: KazumasaNoguchi-Small Impact. Right: ChrisDuncan-PlayingFields

Tipped

One of the more influential books published over the last few years has been Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point. Gladwell offers an explanation for why change often happens so quickly and unexpectedly. He calls this sudden change the Tipping Point. Gladwell describes tipping points as those “social epidemics that surround us”. Looking at the list of exhibitors, the 2007 Auckland Art Fair is turning out to be one such epidemic. From our memory of the previous fair in 2005, new exhibitors for 2007 include: Gow Langsford Gallery, Hamish McKay Gallery, Ivan Anthony, Jensen Gallery, Jonathan Smart Gallery, Michael Lett Gallery, McNamara Gallery, Peter McLeavey Gallery, Roger Williams Contemporary, Sue Crockford Gallery and from Australia, the Anna Schwartz Gallery and the Kaliman Gallery. From a Fair that was – let’s be kind - average, the Auckland Art Fair has obviously tipped and become essential.

Lost in the wilderness

Over at stimulusresponse is a new comic called KIM. It combines the layout of a junkmail flier, the text of a Jews for Jesus pamphlet, and the story of a man who died of hypothermia in the snow in Oregon while walking to find help for his family stranded in their car.

Copy cat II

Left: Pieta, by Michelangelo. Right: The statue of Returning Son, created for the movie Superman Returns by Weta Collectibles.

Frame up

This just in from one of our readers. As authentic as it seems, we are still not convinced.

Where are they now? – Ray Castle

Ray Castle ran the Closet Gallery, a dealer gallery at the top of Queen Street, in the late seventies and early eighties. Ray described himself as the gallery’s "visual arts and sound curator". His exhibitions were never less than surprising and had titles like Mixed mulch (group show), Strip show (films and animation), Art is my wife (Clairmont) and Erotic art (erotic art). The gallery was open for about five years. In the eighties he travelled extensively ending up in Tokyo, where he now lives. He now describes himself as an “Astrologer, Musician, Film Maker, DJ, Writer, currently researching the Japanese 'otaku' manga & anime scene, particularly, the Akihabara district of Tokyo.” You can read Ray’s blog here and get links from that through to his various web sites.

Gold standard

One of our readers insists that the Auckland Art Gallery took part in last year’s Santa parade. Carrying large gold frames staff members, dressed as characters from well-known paintings, offered to be photographed with people in the crowd. Anyway, that’s what we’re told. We don’t believe a word of it, but the story won’t go away. The only way out of this impasse is evidence, so we have decided to offer one of our rare overthenet artist signed table tennis balls for anyone who can come up with a photograph. Photoshop entries are not eligible for the prize (unless they're really good), but more than welcome.

The duck mouse problem

The concrete attempts to represent Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse pictured above, are familiar figures in a children’s playground in Picton. They are also the inspiration of Ronnie van Hout's installation Duck Character and Mouse Character. In the catalogue of his survey exhibition Ronnie van Hout: I have abandoned me Ronnie says. "I think I have always been drawn to the amateur aspect of art making." Justin Paton, curator of the exhibition adds, "In a culture where products (art products too) are prized for efficiency and self possession, van Hout looks instead for unlicensed franchises and knock-offs so off that they outflank the originals."
Top Ronnie van Hout, Duck Character and Mouse Character 1999. Bottom: Picton pictures- Hamish McKay

Pants on fire

“Our Marketing material is not highlighting Keku’s mummy as a main attraction”
Te Taru White, Chief Executive and Kaihautu of Te Papa – Te Papa podcast

Dead reckoning

Here’s a question for you. Given that it’s offensive to Maori and contravenes its own written policy, how does Te Papa justify its exhibition of the human remains of the Egyptian woman Keku in Egypt beyond the tomb?

Its very confusing. Te Taru White, Chief Executive and Kaihautu of Te Papa states on the Egypt beyond the tomb podcast, “As far as Maori are concerned, any public display of remains is inconsistent with very, very deep cultural feelings.”

Seddon Bennington, CEO of Te Papa agrees “Indigenous communities have expressed pretty consistently that they don’t think museums should hold human remains in their collections.”

OK, so if it is offensive to Maori and other indigenous people, and given that Te Papa has a written collections development and human remains policy forbidding it, how do they end up exhibiting a mummy? Simple. “We decided to make an exception to our policy.” says Bennington.
The illustration above is from the Lift the lid on Mehit web feature on Te Papa’s Egypt beyond the tomb web page. As Te Papa’s CEO also mentions on the podcast it is the responsibility of museums to be “respectful.”

Where are they now? - Ian Hunter

Ian Hunter was acting director of the National Art Gallery before the appointment of Luit Bieringa and a sculptor and curator. Along with Andrew Drummond and Nicholas Spill (Drummond and Spill also worked at the National Gallery) Ian Hunter was very active in creating opportunities for installations and exhibitions, including his own pet project ANZART. Ian was the driving force behind the F1 exhibition held in an old soft drink factory in Wellington where Moore Wilson’s is today located. During the exhibition a wit sprayed a slogan on the outside wall: “When is a factory not a factory? When it’s a closed shop.”

After leaving New Zealand he was Arts Officer at the National Council for Civil Liberties in London until 1984. Ian is currently the Artist director of LITTORAL ARTS which he started in 1989. This non-profit Arts Trust for Social and Environmental Change is based in Lancashire.
Picture: Ian Hunter (Photo © Rossendale Free Press)

Sand castle

Whenever anyone comes back from a trip out of NZ, we always ask what the best thing they saw was. It only seems fair to answer the question ourselves. The best thing was in Palm Springs: the Kaufmann house designed by Richard Neutra and built between 1946 and 1947. The house is not open to the public but you can see enough lurking around the front gate to know it is a miracle. The only quibble is that the exquisite renovations might have lurched into the too exquisite. For example, all the screws in the deck are installed so that every groove faced in the same direction. This house and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, also commissioned by Kaufmann, are considered to be two of the top five houses designed in the twentieth century. For plans and interior photographs go here. And in case you didn’t get the full weight of the power message, the trespass sign is cast in bronze.

The meanest Indian

The background. Meena Kadri worked as a designer with us on some of the exhibitions we did for the Film Archive in Wellington. She then set up shop in with the graphic design company Meanest Indian in the Land and is currently in Ahmedabad, India where she does some teaching at the National Institute of Design. And the connection? Trolling through RSS feeds recently Boing Boing pointed us to some terrific photographs of graphics painted onto the mudflaps of Indian trucks. Turned out they had been posted by Meena on Flickr along with a huge archive of other images. Big Internet, small world. When we got in touch she was just back from a trip to Pondicherry, a former French colony in southern India, where she was working on the proposal for an exhibition in Glasgow this year on vernacular typography. If you go for the vernacular, check out her flickr page here.

“Aw, c’mon Cupcake. Be nice.”

The invitation to the City Gallery’s Prospect exhibition contained a surprise: Saatchi & Saatchi were not listed as a sponsor. The word on the street (always wanted to say that) is that the agency’s campaign idea for Prospect was rejected and the City Gallery and Saatchi & Saatchi have gone their own ways. The problematic campaign was based around the phrase “Is it art?” Apparently this tag-line was to be written in icing on a cup cake, spray-painted on a wall and painted on a canvas inside a gold frame. City Gallery graphics for the Prospect show appear to have been taken on by Len Cheeseman, ex Saatchi & Saatchi and now part of parkviewmotorcamp.
Header quote from Lost series 1 episode 7, Sawyer, played by Josh Holloway

What’s a nice goal like you ...

This insightful quote arrived in response to our request for a "Where-are-they-now?" update on Cheryll Sotheran. The statement is from NZ Trade and Enterprise's own Better by Design site and comes under the modest heading: “Pearls of wisdom from a range of people who are convinced that design does matter.”
“The reality is that New Zealand must focus on design-led growth to avoid slipping further down the economic growth rankings – a key goal of Government.”
Dame Cheryll Sotheran, Sector Director, Creative Industries, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise

So close

Over at stimulusresponse is a response to the exhibition Wolfgang Tillmans on display at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles between 17 September 2006 and 7 January 2007. The response takes the form of a personal mapping of the exhibition space. The show was hung by the artist and largely consists of photography.

Fond farewell

Sadly Christmas has come to be connected with the deaths of good friends. Les Paris, Giovanni Intra and now Denis Cohn. Denis rang us earlier in December to tell us some hot news: a group of Webbs’ auction staff were leaving to form their own company. Like the best hot tips this one was confirmed three or four days later. During our conversation, Denis also mentioned in passing that he was dying and we talked over some of the funny and not so funny things that had happened over the time we had all known one another. Denis was always good for art talk and with his own delicious spin on events. He opened the gallery in 1979 and achieved what seemed impossible: exhibiting three very demanding artists (Clairmont, Fomison and Maddox) and come out of all the drama and raised temperatures with a grin on his face. Of course it was often Bill’s constancy that allowed Denis to step out further than was always safe and know it would all make for a great story later. Great memories. Thanks Denis. Cheers, Jim and Mary

Scatter brain

This arrangement of camera parts displayed in an LA camera store reminded us of Giovanni Intra. One of his installations (shown at the Auckland Art Gallery Chartwell exhibition Nine lives in 2003) called for the parts of a camera to be scattered on the floor. This witty deconstruction of photography is also reflected in a paragraph he wrote as part of a report for artnet in 1997. ‘Princess Diana's "untimely death" is certainly a major event in the history of photography, as the "most photographed woman in the world" is suddenly lost as a photographic subject. What's more, photography -- or rather, the euphoniously named paparazzi -- stand accused of murder. But it's not photography's fault! Photography is behaving just like it has always behaved.’

Multiplication

At the exhibition The treachery of images at LACMA, Jeff Koons’s sculpture Rabbit is part of an exploration of Magritte and his influence on American and European artists. Rabbit, like many of Koons’s works, is a multiple and the one in this exhibition is an artist proof lent by the Los Angeles collector Eli Broad. This sculpture has a personal connection for us as we have recently purchased a work by Hany Armanious of a chromed inflatable alien that obviously references the Koons. A clue to this is its title – Rabbit! Koons said of his own Rabbit “I used an inflatable rabbit as my model…and then I cast it into stainless steel.…so when you look at it, it looks like it’s still a light inflatable rabbit, a bunny, but actually, you know it has quite a density to it.” The same can be said for Armanious’s Rabbit created 20 years later, which plays with lightness of touch against density of material. Hany has foregone the perfect surface so important to Koons, however, for a more tarnished surface that seems to offer specific references to the process of its making. The Armanious Rabbit is a multiple and a great companion for Michael Parekowhai’s Cosmo, a large inflated rabbit. Cosmo is also a multiple of course – how could rabbit sculptures be anything else?
Left: Hany Armanious Rabbit 2006. Right: Jeff Koons Rabbit 1986

Form follows functions

A visit to the Palm Springs Art Museum brought us head to head with the end game many art institutions are playing. The Museum was setting up for the opening of the Palm Springs Film Festival (Brad Pitt was on the guest list) so we were unable to see most of the permanent collection - and this at 11 am. Sure art institutions are obliged to raise funds, but they need work on priorities. Are they museums or venues? Count on them putting down the former on their strategic planning documents, but a well paying or prestigious event can easily blow that out of the water. You can also see the demands of running a floorspace-hungry function venue driving the popularity of painting and photography shows in an age dominated by installation and floor based sculpture.

L.A. Santa

Anyone looking for insight into Paul McCarthy’s work has got to visit Clifton’s Cafeteria on Broadway in downtown Los Angeles.

Quid pro quo

One of our readers has sent us a report (rumour?) from The Australian that Robert Storr has selected three Australians: Shaun Gladwell, Christian Caparra and Rosemary Laing to participate in his Venice Biennale exhibitions. This will be in addition to the three artists already being sent by Australia, Daniel von Sturmer, Callum Morton and Susan Norrie. Who knows whether Storr, who was in New Zealand to judge the Walters Prize a couple of years ago, selected any New Zealanders? Anyone? If he has, it would be a great act of generosity given that Creative New Zealand has decided not to support Storr’s Biennale with any artists.

Tiki tour

Two recent contacts with Pacific culture. The first is in the de Young Art Museum, San Francisco where a number of Maori carvings are on display as part of the permanent collection. The label includes the acknowledgement that “taonga are inalienably attached to the Maori community,” adding “even though a taonga may be separated from the tribal group it is always closely attached to it spiritually.” The fact that the carvings remain as part of the museum’s collection probably suggests these curatorial musings are more rational than emotional. The second, is the tiki carvings that decorate the Caliente Tropics, our Palm Springs motel. A dash of Easter Island with Maori flourishes.
Left: Gable figure. Central North Island Maori people. twentieth century, wood. Museum purchase M H de Young Art Trust Fund 71.19.1 (museum label). Right: Tiki c.1964 manufactured by Oceanic Arts, Whittier, California who are also global suppliers for Disney worldwide. The carving pictured was most likely carved by the fabulously named Leroy Schmalz. You can check out his carving style and influences in Douglas A Nason’s book Night of the tiki.

I am using the index finger and thumb at right angles on both hands to get some kind of perspective

Over at stimulusresponse there is a set of drawings relating to the exhibition Personal Views: Regarding Private Collections in San Diego, which was on at the San Diego Museum of Art in Balboa Park. Included in the package (of going to the show) was a great view of hummingbirds feeding on baubles filled with coloured sugar water. Also spotted one in the "wild" beside the swimming pool at the Caliente Tropics where we're staying.

Fundamental

Fifty miles out of Palm Springs, on the margins of the Salton Sea, half a mile from the Polo Wash, in a deserted factory blown apart by wind - a room full of APU’s. In the middle of the desert, no one around for miles, and echoes of p mule and et al.

Space race

Inspired by Ronnie Van Hout’s work on UFO’s and the paranormal, we never miss an opportunity to check up on local organizations optimistic about topics such as “expanding our awareness and connection with galactic intelligence.” And so we visited the Unarius Academy of Science at 145 South Magnolia Ave in El Cajon a small town just out of San Diego. Unfortunately the Academy was closed, but you can get the rest of the picture from their informative web site here. Many of you will already know that Unarius is an acronym for Universal Articulate Interdimensional Understanding of Science.

Concrete poetry

We saw the documentary My architect at a Wellington Film Festival. The film was made by Louis Kahn’s illegitimate son Nathaniel. Along with being a great architect, Kahn also ran three separate families. In the documentary Nathaniel Kahn related how he and his mother would wait at Christmas hoping that Louis would turn up to spend the holiday with them. In one of the more poignant moments, Nathaniel talked to an associate of Kahn’s who had worked on the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. The exchange was about how much he and his family had enjoyed having Louis for many Christmases, and how well he got on with their kids. Living with (or in this case without) artistic genius is not fun. The Salk Institute in La Jolla just north of San Diego looked astonishing in the movie and is just as wonderful in real life. The My Architect site has a link to a very good interview with Nathaniel Kahn published in Metropolis.

White Christmas

On the right the new multiple by Peter Robinson offered by Artspace. On the left an unsuspected twin: a Christmas gift we received of a vinyl figure called Treeson. The Treeson family was designed by Hong Kong artist Bubi Au Yeung For Treeson’s backstory go here. To get one of Peter’s multiples rush an email to Artspace now.

Am I being overly glib?

Over at stimulusresponse is a textual response to the exhibition TRANSactions: Contemporary Latin American & Latino Art. The show was on at the La Jolla branch of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.

This is not a pipe

We knew there was an Orosco in the gardens of the San Diego Museum of Modern Art at La Jolla but took a while to agree it was the long length of garden hose that wound around the paths and plant beds. So, award for the hardest to find and best art work we saw in La Jolla goes to Gabriel Orosco’s Long Yellow Hose made in 1996. There is another version of this work in the Miami Art Museum.