Art at work: Tokyo

Art at work

Sculpture working for free speech at Republic, Paris

Art in the workplace

Art hard at work in the foyers of the world

Art in the workplace

Art hard at work in the foyers of the world

Art in the workplace

Art hard at it in the foyers of the world

Seconds

Just in case you think dropping the second post has stopped our love of the trivial, the weird, the did-you-see-that and the hilarious here is a omnibus edition of what we saw last week
Images: top to bottom, thinking about Tessa Laird in Te Kuiti, watching a couple of guys dismantling Choi Jeong Hwa's sculpture in the AAG foyer, spotting names on signs on the Auckland waterfront and haunting the foyers in search of art.

Art at work

Art hard at work in the foyers of the world

Art at work...

... in a Roppongi shopping mall, Tokyo

Art at work

A couple of German tourists do the holding-the-Dawson-in -the-palm-of-your-hand trick.

Art at work

A bird completely at home on Michael Parekowhai's sculpture in Britomart

Art at work

Playtime on Fiona Connor's Frieze installation Style guide spa
Photo: via Fiona Connor

Art at work

Solace in the Wind doubles up as a marker in a scavenger hunt.

What me warrior

There’s a great story about Marcel Duchamp (possibly apocryphal) who was seen at his retrospective exhibition in Philadelphia signing a Mona Lisa postcard for one of the visitors. A museum person suggested that given his famous intervention on the image, a signed postcard would be rather valuable. The next day Duchamp was sitting at a small table outside the exhibition signing a large stack of Mona Lisa postcards which were free to all. When asked what he was doing he replied, “Devaluing the currency.” 

We were thinking about this when we saw about fifty terracotta Warriors crated up and ready-to-go behind a small curio shop in Hong Kong. The heads were rather alarmingly packed separately. In 1986 some of the original terracotta figures were shown at the Auckland Art Gallery preceded by the usual blockbuster fanfare and rewarded with the usual public response. The public were rather less enthusiastic twenty three years later when a bunch of reproductions owned by touring exhibition guy Marshall Bird went round the country with good reason. A couple of years before a similar show had tried to slip through as the real thing at Hamburg's Museum of Ethnology but was outed by the Chinese as fakes to the embarrassment of all concerned. 

We saw yet another sorry stage in the warrior downward spiral at a bar last night. There, among the bar stools and tables, was a copy of a full size Terracotta Warrior with its head placed on a jaunty angle. As we took a pic one of the patrons leant over to take a closer look at the figure, turned back to his friend and said, “Unreal.” 

Images: Left Warriors to go in Hong Kong and right hard at work in a Wellington bar

Art at work

Paratene Matchitt's bridge sculpture paying its way in Wellington

Copy Cassie

The trouble with artists mixing it with design and fashion is that it gives your signature style an incentive to sneak off and slum it down in the commodity markets. One day you’re pimping Louis Vuitton, the next you’re background fodder for a trashy video clip. If you’re up for it here’s a music video by Nicki Minaj & Cassie performing The Boys. Apart from the Kusama blitz there are other art references to be spotted – at least a nod to Warhol and that sure looks like a Turrell roof piece, then there’s the Dali chair and (if one pink balloon is enough) the start of Creed’s Work Number 329 Pink balloons, a room with balloons talking up half its volumetric space.

Images: Lookalikes from top to bottom left to right, Yayoi Kusama, Andy Warhol, James Turrell, Salvador Dali and (at a pinch) Martin Creed

art at work

Art pitching in to help fashion students at the Art Gallery of New South Wales

Art at work

Bike security and billboard, public sculpture multi-tasking in Berlin

Art at work

Taking Calder cover in Paris

The chair is the same but not as this is

One of our very early posts (number 43 for OTN statisticians) back in 2006 was about a visit we made to search out ex National Art Gallery curator Gary Sangster. At the time he was running Headlands, an artists residency just out of San Francisco. When we made it out there our attention was caught by the dining room that had been ‘arranged’ by the American artist Anne Hamilton. She had selected an eclectic assortment of chairs, cutlery, crockery and kitchen utensils from locals and artists who’d been at Headlands to fit out the area. 

Yesterday we saw this idea taken to its logical and hilarious conclusion by Martin Creed in the restaurant Sketch in London. Creed has ensured that there isn’t a single object in the room that is the same as any other. Every glass, fork, table, napkin, vase, plate is different. The effect is surprisingly cozy, Martin Kippenberger meets high tea. 

Images: table arrangements at Sketch

art at work

Sitting it out on Mary Louise Brown's Deed to Word