Friends

The current exhibition Julian Dashper and friends at the City Gallery approaches Dashper through the way he collaborated with other artists. It brought to mind a time when Julian worked with Michael Smither. They were both in Wellington and spent an afternoon or two making drawings on large sheets of Steinbach paper. Julian - who could never cram enough metaphors into anything - loved the reference to McCahon's famous seventies black and white works on Steinbach. From memory the two came up with complicated free-style pencil drawings with Michael Smither-rock shapes included in most of them. Who knows where they are now, although having said that Marie Shannon probably does. Julian had already shown his interest in Mike’s work back in 1987 when he made the painting Young Nick’s Head featuring Smither-like rocks as a central motif. We were reminded of this friendship when we found this photograph of Michael Smither drawing Julian on New Year’s Eve just an hour or so before 1992.

Image: Michael Smither (left) drawing Julian Dashper 1991

Takes two to tango

It’s not too often that you walk into a public art museum and experience a bout of hyperkulturemia #stendhalsyndrome. Yet in the Dunedin Public Art Gallery last week we saw two very familiar paintings in an unexpected juxtaposition of great personal meaning. One was Julian Dashper’s large painting Rural Sheraton. As we'd lent this painting to the Gallery ourselves there were no surprises there (although we were pleased to see it hanging again) but it was the company it was keeping that caused the reaction. The last time we saw Colin McCahon’s Series D (Ahipara) it was hanging on the far wall of the smaller room at Peter McLeavey’s Gallery in Wellington. That was over 40 years ago. Back then we had placed a hopeful second option on it, but it was never going to happen. As far as we know it went overseas with its new owner who many years later put it on loan to Dunedin. 

To see these two works together showed just what public art museums can do that is so particular to them: putting great things together to create new ways of seeing and thinking. The chances that Julian’s painting would ever sit next to this great McCahon were never high and if it were to happen it could only ever be via a public collection. In a couple of weeks at Wellington's City Gallery there's going to be another pairing of McCahon and Dashper in another public institution, Wellington's City Gallery. This one will be something that Julian always hoped would happen: his Here I was given alongside Colin McCahon’s Here I give thanks to Mondrian. Now that is going to be something to see.

Images: Left  Colin McCahon’s Series D (Ahipara) and right Julian Dashper's Rural Sheraton at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery

Second life

As far as we know, an invitation yesterday to Robert Leonard’s exhibition Julian Dashper and friends at the City Gallery, marks just the second effort by a public museum to present a substantial body of work by this important artist since his death over six years ago. What's exciting is that this will be a different sort of exhibition to anything that could be curated during Julian's lifetime. When artists aren't around anymore, curators can often take a freer hand in developing their own interpretations and exhibiting styles. A distinctive feature of Dashper's career was his enthusiasm for working with curators, writers and other artists. This tendency is, of course, reflected in Leonard’s title for his exhibition and it also emphasises the importance of Dashper's personal energy and relationships. And it's another good reason for us to post a few photos. Some of them already appear in OTNSTUDIO but they could do with an outing here too. You can see photos taken in Julian Dashper's studio over the years via these OTNSTUDIO links 1985 | November 1986 | May/July 1988 | 1989 | March 1989 | January 1993 | November 2011

Images: top, Julian Dashper and Robert Leonard in Shane Cotton’s studio in 1994. Middle, Julian Dashper, Peter McLeavey and Ivan Anthony hanging work in Dashper’s March ‘89 exhibition at the Peter McLeavey Gallery and bottom, Julian Dashper and Mary Barr looking at Big Bang Theory paintings in his Grey Lynn studio, January 1993

Drumming up visitor numbers

If you were there it's hard to believe that the first outing of the two-man band The Woollastons was over 22 years ago. Robert Leonard gives a good account. “It started as a prank. The National Art Gallery, Wellington, invited Dashper and John Reynolds to give a lecture on the work of senior New Zealand painter, Toss Woollaston, on the last day of his 1991–2 show, Toss Woollaston: A Retrospective.” You can read the rest here in Re-reading Julian Dashper’s The Big Bang Theory on Leonard's website. The site now includes a substantial selection of his writing back to 1989 with the exhibition Nobodies. Looping back to The Woollastons, we were there and photographed the event with these pics now up on OTNSTUDIO. Along with Dashper/Reynolds as The Woollastons we have also added photos taken in et al’s studio back in 2004, Shane Cotton’s in 2007 and Peter Robinson's the same year.

Going Dutch

It’s like watching someone channeling Julian Dashper on the catwalk only the deconstructed canvases here were created by Viktor & Rolf for the last Paris Fashion week. V&R are Dutch arts chool grads who famously claimed “If you’re overdressed, you feel ridiculous. If you’re underdressed, you are ridiculous”. Julian Dashper on the other hand always used to say “Everything is interesting in its own way”. You can see more of V&R’s canvas works here and more of JD's here

And counting…

One thing about adding stuff into OTNSTUDIO is how quickly it grows. As of today we have 37 artists on the site and 81 studio visits. This is a mixed blessing really as now things are a little harder to find. Hmmm…we might have a go at doing a visual index. Today though we've added to the problem by putting up four more records of studio visits. The earliest are a few images of Julian Dashper taken in 1989. Julian was clowning around doing impressions of artist poses (we’ve already posted these on OTN) and finished up by posing as himself. About the same time the following year we were with Michael Smither who was painting a detailed self-portrait that you can see in its early stages. The Lillian Budd pics are from January 2000 and as per the wishes of the Estate Lillian Budd's image has been redacted. The most recent photos are from Glen Hayward’s studio in Wanganui. He is the current Tylee Cottage resident in Wanganui and that’s where these pics were taken.

Image: Glen Hayward in his Tylee Cottage Residence studio, October 2014

 

Skin in the game

OTN, as you probably have guessed, is never as happy as when it can cobble together two ideas. This time it’s artist tattoos and a quiz. The tattoo is on the arm of Julian Dashper’s son Leo and from the photo looks like it's copied from one of Dashper’s paintings rather than a drumhead work. And that takes us seamlessly to the quiz that was prompted by a reader sending in roundels used by air forces throughout the world as Dashper lookalikes. You can pop out for a tattoo, link each insignia with its country and then check your answers here. Done.
Images: top the Dashper tattoo and bottom quiz targets

Grey matter

On Friday 20 September 1989 Julian Dashper signed and dated his painting The grey in Grey Lynn. After some time in a private collection it ended up at Te Papa who purchased it at a Webb’s auction. About a month after Julian finished the painting we were in his studio and he started talking about the painting in one of those obsessive, humorous detailed monologues he sometimes dropped into. As we had a video camera with us we made a recording that recently turned up in one of our files. We’ve put that together with a heap of other information we had on the work in a short illustrated piece that tells you everything we know about that one object. You can check out  all this on OTN/STUDIO in the stories section on the far right of the menu bar.

Image: Julian Dashper holding Pink bananas, behind him The grey in Grey Lynn

In (and out of) the studio

A Julian Dashper exhibition was always a big event at the Peter McLeavey Gallery. Julian had a way of making his exhibitions and the openings into something to look forward to. His exhibition in March 1989 was a surprise. There were none of the hand painted works we were accustomed to and instead the canvases were preprinted commercial patterns like you might see on awnings outside holiday baches or shops.

We have put up some images on OTN:STUDIO of Julian, Peter McLeavey and Ivan Anthony as they set the exhibition up in McLeavey’s Cuba Street Gallery. Also added to this set are some black and white images of Popular Production’s studio in 1990, Neil Dawson’s studio and workshop in 1995, Peter Robinson’s studio in 2004 and photographs of Martin Basher’s studio we took in New York a couple of weeks ago.
Image: Julian Dashper setting up his March 1989 exhibition at the Peter McLeavey Gallery

And still they come

More studio images have been added to OTN Studio.

Toss Woolaston 1980
Julian Dashper 1993
Shane Cotton 2010
Xin Cheng 2013

Image: Shane Cotton's Palmerston North studio, 2010

The many me

We’re still going through files looking for studio photographs to put up on OTN IN (and out of) THE STUDIO. In the Julian Dashper section we found photos from 1989 of him mimicking the poses famous artists had taken in their portraits. Someone said recently that it's hard to get Dashper without knowing some art history and these pics tend to put brackets around that remark. Julian loved being part of art's big story and reveled in the idea that there was a link between what he was doing and what artists like Jackson Pollock did. Here he is doing image karaoke of (from top to bottom, left to right) Mark Rothko, Julian Schnabel, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and bottom right, Julian Dashper. If you saw the play Red about Mark Rothko that played around New Zealand you'll recognise at least one of these classic poses.

Auction fever

If you were wondering how NZ's two main contemporary art auction houses differ, Wellington was the place to do it last week. Both Art + Object and Webb’s did the man-in-a-van thing and brought down samplers of what's coming up in their next auctions. One (A+O) showed their wares in the white cube(ish) spaces of 30 Upstairs on Courtenay Place and the other (Webb’s) on the dark panelled walls of The Young up the hill.

A + O promoted their offering via one of their distinctively oversized catalogues while Webb’s returned to a more conventional Sotheby’s-like format complete with a magazine front section.  Both catalogues featured a fold out, Webb’s for Bill Hammond and A+O for Ralph Hotere.
 
As usual the core offerings are pretty similar. Both include Michael Smither (two sixties domestic paintings), Peter Robinson (A+O four, Webb’s six), Michael Illingworth, Peter Peryer (both offering his portrait of Christine Mathieson, Webb’s with a low estimate of $5,000 to A+O’s $7,000), Pat Hanly, Michael Parekowhai (A+O a couple of photographs and Webb’s a maquette for the rejected 2002 proposal for The Christchurch Square), Don Driver (both including a work featuring sacks spills that could have been made the same day but are in fact separated by 14 years) and  Frizzell (A+O two, Webb’s six).

And the differences? A+O have works by Ted Bullmore and Julian Dashper on offer, Webb’s have half a dozen by Ralph Hotere,  a couple by C F Goldie and six works by Bill Hammond.

Of course the big difference is in sheer volume. Webb’s are presenting 103 lots that they are hoping will fetch (on low estimate) $3.15 million. A+O are going for $1.96 million (on low estimate) from 69 lots. Webb’s are putting up seven works valued over $100,000 on low estimate to A+O’s two.

So 26 November for A+O and two days later for Webb’s. Game on.
Images: left, A+O present Smither at 30 Upstairs and right Smither via Webb's at The Young

In Auckland

Thinking about Julian Dashper

A distant drum beat

One of our readers is in LA thinking about Julian Dashper.

Image: T. Lux Feininger Bauhaus Band Performing c.1928–9 collection J. Paul Getty Museum. (Thanks R)

Just writing

“I am not a writer. I never have been and don’t ever want to be one. I find every word written too difficult to write. Even this.”

Julian Dashper in his book This is not writing published by Clouds and Michael Lett 2011

Driven

The new print of Martin Scorsese’s feature film Taxi Driver has gone global for the 35th anniversary and you can catch it at the New Zealand International Film Festival. In the run-up to the launch, Columbia Pictures released some memorabilia from the movie, including the driver's licence Robert De Niro used when playing the role of Travis (you talking to me?) Bickle - and here it is.

One of our own artists was a number one Scorsese fan and could in fact recite the entire Jake LaMotta dressing room speech from Raging Bull. We’re talking about Julian Dashper. In his early days a taxi driver himself, he took the name Travis as his nom de taxi - as you can see.

Visionary

As you know if you have been with us for a while, we have an intense (some might say creepy) interest in art dealer signs. Two years ago, almost to the day, we were wondering what would happen to the New Vision Gallery sign that Julian Dashper had saved from a skip. This was the gallery that showed Gordon Walters' koru paintings for the first time among many other firsts, but Julian couldn’t find an institutional home for it. We saw the sign at work in the weekend outside the exhibition of Julian’s work wisely curated by Ariane Craig-Smith for the Gus Fisher Gallery in Auckland. The sign served as a telling reminder of Julian’s love of New Zealand’s art history, and it was great to find it displayed on the steps of the Gus Fisher still doing its job.

Other gallery sign posts from OTN:
Jonathan Smart
Barry Lett
Peter McLeavey

Copycat

On July 7, Ringo Starr's 70th birthday, the Metropolitan Museum of Art will inaugurate a special display of his gold-plated snare drum that will remain on view to the public through December 2010 in the Museum's second-floor Musical Instruments Galleries.

Metropolitan Museum of Art Press Release

Images: Top Julian’s drums at the Adam. Bottom Ringo’s drum for the Met

Beating the drum for history

How quickly history envelopes life. As part of an exhibition at the Adam Art Gallery that included bringing together Julian Dashper’s Big Bang Theory (a set of five drum kits) and Michael Parekowhai’s Ten Guitars (you work it out), Robert Leonard was brought over from Australia to give a talk on the Dashper work. The last time we had seen the full set was seven years ago in Artspace. Julian had arranged a dinner on a long trestle table for the evening and, there being a whole lot of drum kits in the room, we all had a go including Tony Green. He had been involved with Julian’s set-up of the Colin McCahons kit in the Auckland Art Gallery. At that time all the kits were different. Julian probably had to scrabble to get them all together without spending a fortune so in the warehouse-like Artspace of the time down by the waterfront, they looked like the set-up for a drum kit face-off. At the Adam the kits are pristine in shiny matching colours, red, black, red, black etc, with the effect fetishistic. Listening to Robert place the works into history with its inevitably selectivity and earnestness, it was hard to remember how much we all laughed that night.

Image: Tony Green plays for the Colin McCahons