Found: Greg Burke

An OTN reader sent in Greg Burke’s name for the 'Lost’ column. Seemed a bit harsh (thanks anyway L) but for those who don’t know Burke is now executive director and CEO of a rehoused art museum in Saskatoon, Canada. The project is huge. Over $75 million dollars of hard-earned Saskatoon cash is building a four-storey museum of 11,582 square metres. For comparison, the Auckland Art Gallery has 7,200 square meters of public space and is also four floors, so probably a similar sized building.

The name of Burke’s new institution is the Remai Art Gallery of Saskatoon. The Remai bit is the name of the major donor Ellen Remai.  No doubt having come from the land of DAG (Dowse Art Gallery), NAG (National Art Gallery and G-BAG ( Govett-Brewster) Burke was wary of the RAGS acronym and has branded the new museum Remai Modern. 

A couple of years back Remai donated over 400 Picasso linocut prints instantly doubling the value of the collection and weighting its direction. So the 'new' museum will probably be more ‘Modern’ than ‘Contemporary’ or as Burke put it recently, “[Having the word 'Modern' in the gallery's title] doesn’t mean we’re going to be focusing on the most bleeding edge form of contemporary art. Not so.”

Burke is hoping to have a physical museum building to direct in June 2016.

Images: Top left the new building and right Greg Burke standing next to what has been built so far. Bottom a modern vision for the future

Kcin

When you’re rummaging around the OTN Forgotten Archive, you may notice that Nick Spill was once found and soon after disappeared. The reason is simple. Nick asked us to remove the entry that was peppered with references to security, guns and bodyguards and so we did. 

Now Nick has re-emerged, this time via the image of an early art work sent in by a reader (thanks A). It turns out that Spill might well be a world leader in art taping. Our earliest example used to be Maurizio Cattelan’s effort with his dealer Massimo De Carlo but Spill’s precedes that by 21 years. 

When we asked if we could publish the taping pic we were pointed toward his novels published on Amazon. Whoa. Nick has literally spilt the beans on NZ art and sex (mostly sex) in the seventies. It’s a novel but those who were there and anyone who can google should be able to sort out who’s doing what to whom. You can buy Growing Up Horny in New Zealand by Nick Spill for kindle here on Amazon. His next book The Way of the Bodyguard is coming soon.

Image: Llips together 1978, courtesy of the artist

Where in the world is Derek Cowie?

If you want a hiding to nowhere, try getting into the young-artists-who-will-be-giants game. Of course it is irresistible and was once one of the more interesting, higher-risk games played by curators of public institutions. The group show of young artists was a staple format that put out curatorial opinions of where we were headed, or at least where the curators thought where the culture was off to. But for curators, as with most everybody else, predicting the future is not easy.

In the eighties if you were talking about artists who were likely to have long and important careers in New Zealand, the name Derek Cowie would certainly have popped up. His work was strange and provocative with its uneasy combination of punk attitude and surrealism played out in a jarring colour palette. Cowie was also championed by Robert Leonard, one of the leading curators of that time. Leonard always had a keen eye for the transgressive, and in eighties NZ, that was Derek Cowie. He was everywhere and matched his art with a super-charged personality and high style. Derek and his partner at the time Liz were not easily forgotten. And then he vanished.

Lost:

Some years later, and quite unexpectedly, a strange exhibition (painted on overalls from memory) appeared at the Peter McLeavey gallery. It had been sent from London where Cowie was now living and working as a scenic painter for Convent Garden. He had also been involved in the interior design of Peter Gordon’s Sugar Club when it moved from Wellington to London in the eighties. 

...and found:

More recently Derek Cowie has been involved in scenic painting for films and television including the series Little Dorrit which won the art department an Emmy for art direction. He lives and works in London.

Image: Derek Cowie’s We forget we have two nostrils is available for sale here on Trade Me, auction closes 6 December

Found: Robert Jesson

OK, we didn’t actually find him, but the OTN post on his re-mashed sculpture smoked him out.

Robert Jesson. One day he wasn’t there and the next he was everywhere. It turned out he had gone to the UK to get his art ed. and then, via Closet Gallery and Denis Cohen ended up at McLeavey and Crockford. Te Papa has a sculpture, Auckland Art Gallery has three (1984, 1985 and 1986).

And then he'd gone to Australia, which at the time was equivalent to setting up shop in the Sahara. More recently Robert Jesson - following the maxim “fuck art, let's travel”- is in the fifth year of cruising the world in a yacht with his wife. If you want to catch up with them they are “currently in Japan. Next stop Philippines, Borneo and Malaysia.” As to the rejigged Starfish, “I'm not in the least bothered by what they did with the Starfish, that reflects their bad taste not mine, and as far as I'm concerned, once it's sold, it's pretty much forgotten.”

Found: Nick Spill

Nick Spill has asked us to remove this post. 16-11-09
Then in 2013 he turns up again!

Found - Anne Kirker

To say Anne Kirker was lost may be unfair, but lost to New Zealand certainly. Still, as a reader has put her name up on the board, here we go. Kirker was Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Auckland Art Gallery and then at the National Art Gallery during Luit Bieringa’s directorship. In 1986 she wrote one of the early books looking at the role of women artists in New Zealand. Two years later she left New Zealand to become Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs at the Queensland Art Gallery and eventually senior curator (special projects). She left the Gallery in 2006 to become a freelance consultant. The photos of Anne Kirker were taken by Christine Webster. There are more on Kirker’s website.

Found: Alexa Johnston

Someone called her in lost a while back but as she was still a fairly well known Auckland presence we gave it a miss. But when Alexa Johnston, ex-curator at the Auckland Art Gallery, turned up on TV3 a couple of nights ago, it felt like a sign. Since leaving the gallery where she curated some important exhibitions like the eighties classic Anxious Images and the Colin McCahon survey Gates and Journeys, she has mixed curating with Hillary studies. Johnston is the official biographer of Sir Ed, but it was her cookbook Ladies a plate that put her on TV last night.

Image: Johnston (right) talks up baking on TV3

Found

The fickle hand of fate moves its way silently through the arts. One day you’re illustrated in Brown and Keith’s New Zealand Painting: an introduction and being influenced by the “harsh New Zealand light” - and then you vanish. So it was for Michael Nicholson, who has in fact been back in New Zealand for a long time now and working away. Never one to back off the new, Nicholson, in his 90th year, is presenting a Visual Music Project at the Film Archive tonight at 5.30. The piece will include an animated video originally produced on a Scanimate in the 1980s.

Image: Nicholson in Brown and Keith

Found – Christopher Johnstone

In all fairness, Christopher Johnstone was never really lost. He tells us that since he resigned as director of the Auckland Art Gallery he has been an art writer, consultant and has organised exhibitions including Lee Miller’s War for Monash University and the Auckland Museum. His book Landscape Painting of New Zealand: A Journey from North to South was published this year by Random House has just been reprinted.

Found - Garth Cartwright

For those who were there, Garth Cartwright will always be the Clairmont groupie who was punched by art writer Francis Pound in Wellington. From memory, Peter McLeavey was on the spot, so he’s probably the best person to ask if you need details (don’t bother Francis with it). Garth, reaching for the third person, has described the time in his biographical notes. “Initially beginning with scribbles on Auckland punk and reggae bands as a teenager in the early 1980s, Garth developed into one of New Zealand’s most outspoken writers on visual arts, music, sport and all things multicultural.” He also mentions that, “Garth…trained as a boxer ('I sparred with David Tua who went on to unsuccessfully challenge Lennox Lewis for the heavyweight title.)” Certainly, no one at the time thought it was a fair fight.

Since leaving New Zealand in 1986 he has been a working music journalist based in London. His book Princes Amongst Men: Journeys with Gypsy Musicians was published in 2005 and, to bring things right up to date, he wrote an article for the Listener a couple of weeks ago. Garth “lives alone in a Peckham council flat. He has no wife, no car, no pets, no children.” You can read a fuller account of his life and times here.

They're History

Time moves on. This is the dusty archive for the Found and the Forgotten.
The Found: Anne Kirker, Garth Cartwright, Christopher Johnstone, Andrew Bogle, Bruce Robinson, Ray Castle, Ian Hunter, Barnard McIntyre, Gary Sangster, Cheryl Sotheran, Tim Garrity, Alexa Johnston, Nic Spill, Derek Cowie
The Forgotten: who can remember? 

Where are they now – Andrew Bogle

It turns out Andrew Bogle now runs an importing business out of Auckland. Tribal & Tribal sells “a wide range of old and new quality items for the collector, the home and for personal adornment …. sourcing items from Africa, India, Thailand, Myanmar, Indonesia, and Oceania”. Andrew was a senior curator at the Auckland Art Gallery in the late seventies and eighties. He presciently brought Ed Ruscha to New Zealand for a major exhibition in 1978. Graphic Works by Edward Ruscha, had a preface by Henry Geldzahler (curator at the Metropolitan Museum and then Cultural Affairs Commissioner for New York.) If you need to know where in the world Andrew Bogle is at any particular time, you can email him at info@tribalandtribal.co.nz

Where are they now - Tim Garrity

Tim Garrity, who represented New Zealand at the 1963 Paris Biennale, edited the Auckland Art Gallery Bulletin from 1975 to 1978, and was art curator at the Hocken Library for eighteen years, has been found. He continues to live in Dunedin and is still painting. His most recent exhibition was with the Marshall Seifert Gallery in 2006.
CORRECTION: In fact, it was the Auckland Art Gallery Quarterly, not Bulletin, that Tim Garrity edited.
Image: Tim Garrity at his Marshall Seifert show

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.

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)

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

Where are they now – Gary Sangster

In the late eighties, and for the briefest time, Gary Sangster was senior curator at the National Art Gallery in Wellington. Since then he has been a curator at the New Museum in New York and museums in Cleveland and Baltimore. Now he is the Director of Headlands Center for the Arts, an artist residency program in San Francisco. The residencies are housed in an old army complex with up to 20 artists working there at a time. The Center has also commissioned a number of artists to fit-out various rooms in the Headlands buildings. The communal dining room was designed, decorated and furnished by Ann Hamilton. She collected an eclectic variety of chairs, crockery and kitchen utensils from locals and other artists to fit out the area as well as design the spaces and functions.
Details of Ann Hamilton's installation are pictured above.

...but not forgotten

One of the great things about having much of our collection on loan to the Dunedin Public art Gallery is a feature that allows us to swap and return work to us here in Wellington. As part of the move to set up the Reboot exhibition, curated by Justin Paton, we asked the gallery to send us Barnard McIntyre's untitled sculpture that you can see on the left. It is a small (53 cm high) ribbed metal wall sculpture of painted copper. With its obvious reference to seed pods and regeneration it also retains a frailty that was a feature of much of Barnard's work. He was one of those artists that could make effortless looking objects that were, at the same time, incredibly authentic and believable. Unfortunately, for all of us, Barnard left New Zealand to live in Australia and we haven't seen anything from him for a long time now. What has been interesting for us is how many people have responded strongly to this work since it has been hanging here. The sculpture pictured next to our piece is another untitled work that was purchased by our friends Les and Milly Paris. This is not a small work, and once again for all its bold shape and exotic patterning, is quite frail in its construction. We’re having a wonderful time Barnard, wish you were here.