Art to go

This Saturday forget joining the gate lice at international airports and the long wait for Biennale / Art Fair / Special exhibitions to open. Just sit back in your chair and create your own installations in galleries, public spaces or Turbine halls. All this now possible in the comfort of your own home thanks to Artomat (...and also thanks  to P)

Direct hit

There was hail and then there was lightning. In Wellington's Evans Bay at around 2.30 pm Phil Price's 2003 sculpture Zephyrometer scored a direct hit and has been badly damaged only five month's after its extensive refurbishment.  More here on Stuff.

FYI BNJP VIA LOL OK

For those of you who don’t follow Leg of Lamb (and you really should) here is a link she found and shared that takes you to BNJP (Brand New Paint Job) the next step along the road to ruin after Great art in ugly rooms. Send flowers

In which Claudia goes to the Academy

What’s going on at the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts? Now that's not a question you'd ask very often and even if you did you may not hang around for the answer. Back in the seventies though the Academy's gallery was the place you went to see some of the best art exhibitions available in Wellington. There were at least a couple of reasons for that - Brian Carmody and Constance Kirkcaldie. Constance was director from 1975 to 1977 but was really running the place from the beginning of the seventies. She got up a programme that featured things like the Ten big paintings show from the Auckland Art Gallery, as well as a slate of exhibitions that included Ralph Hotere, Colin McCahon, Pat Hanly, Jim Allen, Tony Fomison and Terry Powell. 

Since then the Academy slowly reverted to being…er…an Academy again but now it has appointed Claudia Arozqueta as its new director and believe us this is no prints and pots curator. LOL was invented for how you would respond if anyone told you that this would happen even a couple of years ago. Claudia has been director of Enjoy (another Academy? .... just kidding) and before that a highly regarded and very well connected curator in Mexico and Russia. She is also a regular reviewer for Artforum so the NZAFA’s is waving rather a large contemporary art flag here. Go Claudia.
 
Image:The Selection Committee for the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, voting in 1956. (Negatives of the Evening Post newspaper. Ref: EP/1956/2170-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. http://natlib.govt.nz/records/22659842

Appalling

OK, some of the staff staff here at OTN said "no-way" but most of the others thought this strange little video was a classic Paul McCarthy lookalike and the perfect opportunity to settle back and watch a bit of quality smearing on a nice Saturday morning.  WARNING people easily offended by the rough or off-hand treatment of children's toys may find part of this video disturbing (oh ... and thanks for sending it our way P)

Sitting ducks

Anyone who is a regular at art openings will have been to at least one after show dinner. At worst you’re trudging the streets in a pack of twenty looking for a restaurant (“no, we won’t have to book, there’s plenty of places") or the place has been pre-booked ("there’s 30 of us now and we're two hours late, can you manage?”). Even if you get inside the doors though, you'll still be left with the biggest question of all: where do I sit? Or, even more importantly, who will I end up sitting next to?

Fortunately help is at hand thanks to some brain time by Alex Cornell. He points out that “as the diameter of the table increases so does the importance of who you sit next to.” Safest are four person round or square tables where at least one of the three should be good company and is easily available from every sitting position.

A room with two tables of any size? As Mr Cornell says, “You’re fucked.“ He explains. “Whenever you make your choice of where to sit you will always choose too soon. You can only lament as the other table’s attendance crystallizes into what is clearly the superior group. Sometimes it’s best to visit the bathroom while seats are chosen, so any seating disasters are the result of chance, and not your own miscalculation.” You can read Cornell’s comments on other table arrangements and important concepts like diagonals, quiet spaces and lonely end-seats here.

And if you want a reminder of just how bad these dinners can be, try watching the ultimate glad-I-wasn’t-there after opening party in this clip from Julian Schnabel’s movie Basquiat.

Image: 'Andy' and Co. at the diner from hell in Basquiat

Members only

Outstanding combination of images on the Sarjeant Gallery's Tumblr promoting Sarah Maxey's Dome installation Comeback. Thanks to regular reader KEAT for pointing it out. If you need an innuendo break go here.

One day in the Minister’s office

Minister: The Sunday Star Times Magazine has asked me to do one of those what-I-like columns called Culture Vulture. 

Advisor: Don’t do it Minister. 

M: Exciting. It’s a great opportunity. 

A: Minister don’t do it. 

M: Gosh, there are just so many things to think about, painting, photography, that installation thing. 

A: Seriously Minister, no 

M: (Checking his email) Hang about, here it is, they want to know my “favourite piece of sculpture”. 

A: Minister please, don’t 

M: I love sculpture it’s so… three dimensional. 

A: Minister… 

M: (distracted) Yes, yes? 

A: Don’t do it. 

M: But what sculpture? That’s the question. The trick is to pick one that will make me look well informed and ‘with-it’ at the same time. A plugged-in politician who’s not going to back off the avant-garde. 

A: D.O.N.T. 

M: I know, I’ll go for something political. A sculpture that’s not afraid to have something to say. 

A: (Head in hands) omg 

M: (seeing the headline in front of him) "Fearless Minister for Arts picks political sculpture." That’ll get me some respect. 

A: (silence) 

M: Ring the SST. We’re going with the statue of Keith Holyoake

A: Yes Minister.

Down the upside down

For your Saturday bemusement a 3D version of Escher’s waterfall, or is that water rise?

Things you hoped you'd never see

The Freeda Kahlo colouring in book.