Tape recording

We’ve not seen much of the Swiss artist Thomas Hirschorn’s work in New Zealand although he did contribute to One Day Sculpture with his work Poor racer and we understand Gregory Burke ex-director Govett-Brewster is working with him in New York on a project.

We saw this telling piece titled Outgrowth at the Quai Branly in the exhibition Masters of Chaos. Hirshorn had identified crisis hotspots around the world and represented each one with images clipped from newspapers and magazines located under its own globe. To mark where the crisis had manifested Hirshorn built up lumpen globs of packing tape in proportion to the horror and scale of the event.

For anyone still wondering why the rich of the world are all headed down south to claim property and residency, one striking feature of the 113 globes was that New Zealand (and mostly Australia) was never touched.

Now how long would that take?

One door closes and another opens. Since Massey University’s One Day Sculpture frenzy last year, we haven’t seen many (well, none) one-day works created by anyone. But funny-guy Austrian artist Erwin Wurm has opened up new pastures for quick-hit sculpture with his exhibition penciled in to open in China. The One Minute Sculpture. Opportunity knocks.

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Around this time last year the One Day Sculpture programme was in full flight. One of the more memorable ODSs was Billy Apple’s unsuccessful attempt to get the Wellington City Council to de wax and conserve Henry Moore’s sculpture Bronze form in the Botanic Garden. At the time we walked round the work with Billy tut-tutting over the many scratches and blemishes that have accrued over the years. Well Wellington, rest easy in the looking-after-Henry-Moore stakes if the work outside the Neue Nationalgallerie in Berlin is anything to go by. Botched and scarred it has had some horrible attempts at repair none of which have helped one little bit.

Flash Art

You’d have to be hard-hearted indeed not to have warmed to the One Day Sculpture project as it worked its way up and down the country. In Wellington it started with Roman Ondak’s queues of people waiting outside buildings that weren’t open and closed with Michael Parekowhai putting an open sign outside a whole lot of things that (in various ways) were already open. In between there were lions and billboards and penises (come to think of it the penis was a fringe event) and a cardboard car.

Ok, the three day conference for One Day Sculpture Project was a bit open to comedy, but the whole One Day Sculpture idea has been delivered with energy, relentless communications and an amazing ability to get institutions to work together. In the end it has proved an outstanding branding exercise for Massey University’s School of Fine Arts. If it wasn’t taken seriously before, it certainly will be from here on in. In the Battle of the Art Schools (basically a battle for bums in studios and funding via research points for staff), Massey has taken a chunk of high ground. And it was very droll gesture to select a senior staff member from Elam to close proceedings. Your move Elam.
Image: Michael Parekowhai’s Yes We Are

Dalu Mncube 1983-2009

From a Tinks03 Tweet we learnt the sad news that it was Dalu Mncube, the senior cat handler at Zion Wildlife Gardens who worked on Javier Tellez’s One Day Sculpture Intermission at Everybody’s Theatre in Opunake, who was mauled and killed by a white tiger in Whangarei.
Image: Dalu Mncube at work on Intermission