We spotted the two rocks that
are part of Kate Newby’s Walters Prize installation sitting up there on the
Auckland Art Gallery roof, but what happening up on the roofs of other
galleries, that’s the question you’ve gotta ask. Like on the roof of the City
Gallery for instance or up top at the DPAG. One thing we can tell you is that
on the roofs of Tate (Britain and Modern) in London it’s bees, thousands of
them, in and out of hives and swarming around the building. In fact if you head
into any Tate you can buy Tate Honey by the jar. It comes via Urban Beekeeper Steve Benbow and is rather blandly
branded Honey (order here).
Following up on the bee/art trail reminded us that in
1977 David Mealing (subject of OTN’s very first post back in November 2006)
installed three hives at the Govett-Brewster Art
Gallery. Complete with live bees that could fly in and out of the gallery via a
special tube the installation was titled Sting/stung.
And of course all this Anthophila
talk brings us to the grand master of bee-art Joseph
Beuys. For Documenta 1977 his work
Honey Pump For The Workplace pumped
two tons of honey through plastic tubing throughout the 100 days of the
exhibition.
