It’s either a fake or a damn clever original

Looks like the practical joke of the year will be courtesy of the University of Auckland’s Gus Fisher Gallery. For one week in November the Gallery will present an exhibition of hand-painted replica masterpieces. This Barbarians-at-the-gate moment comes via Masters student Nate Dunn whose style is long on omg gauche. You can read his outpourings on the ups and downs of getting Replicating Genius off the ground on the exhibition’s blog. As in up, ‘What I love about all these new experiences is that not only do I meet interesting people, but each time I do, a little more of the art world becomes less scary to me’ and down, ‘Emailing venues and applying for spaces ensued, and of all the venues I emailed, I didn’t hear back from a single one’.  

Dunn sees the Gus Fisher exhibition as an opportunity to prove the viability of  ‘a proper museum’ of replicas. The whole project is apparently driven by Dunn’s Masters thesis that is ‘an argument for the creation of a museum of replica paintings’. He’s raising funds for the exhibition on Pledgeme offering rewards like an invitation to ‘a pompous opening night event…’ and a chance to ‘…rub shoulders with other fancy Auckland art supporters.’

The University of Auckland is really being a good sport about all this. You may recall it recently threw its weight behind another fake show featuring ‘life-like’ photographic copies of Rembrandt. This time round there’s some academic rhetoric thrown in as its gallery, the Gus Fisher, claims to ‘foster creative and academic research, encourage curatorial practice…’. And of course who can afford to miss out on the publicity a stunt like this is bound to bring.

Postscript: There is the slightest chance that the whole enterprise is for real and so is itself a fake, as in a fake parody. Oh, oh, if the Replicating genius project is for real, 3D printed copies of various heads will have to roll.

The Empire strikes back

The University of Auckland wasn’t too impressed by our evaluation of that unfortunate Rembrandt poster show or our suggestion that it was associated with it. They made it clear that Auckland is not the only university involved and the two cash prizes (sorry, scholarships) are available to any NZ art history or fine arts students in the country. OK, we guess that spreads responsibility but doesn’t really avoid it. 

They were also pretty hot on pointing out that the Art History Department of the University of Auckland was 'not administering the scholarship but only publicising it'. Well, that was of course the point we were making all along. 

As a side note, we got it wrong when we said the students had to pay $15 to get into the show so they could write their ‘motivating 500-word letters.’ The U of A tell us there was a special student rate of $5.  You will be pleased and proud to know that, as tempting as it was, at no time did we reach for the ‘only haggling over the price’ joke.

Muddy Waters

Anyone who believes that the experience of looking at original artworks can never be replaced by reproductions will be in full sneer mode if they visit the exhibition Rembrandt remastered currently on show at Smith & Caughey in Auckland. It is billed as a once in a lifetime opportunity to see 'Rembrandt as never before' which is sort of true. The exhibition turns out to consist of 57 badly-lit, colour prints pasted onto boards. The boards are without frames and presented on cheesy trade-show exhibition display units. 

But the exhibition’s promoters sure know how to play the PR game. For $6,000 they managed to get the University of Auckland’s Art History Department on board to help spruik the enterprise. The cash was put up to offer two students a one-week visit to Amsterdam. All they had to do was front up with the $15 entry fee ($20 on weekends) and check out the show. To win the trip required ‘reflecting on their engagement with Rembrandt’s artworks in a motivating 500-word letter.’ The fact they will not be engaging with ‘Rembrandt’s artworks’ at all seems to have passed the University of Auckland's Art History Department by. Presumably the 500 word promotional pieces will be ‘motivating’ future visitors.

Image: Smith & Caughey, Rembrandt to go

Talk back

While you were sleeping Creative NZ got a focus group together to advise it on what should be done with the visual arts. It has now released a draft report and wants your thoughts before it writes a final report for the Arts Council.

Ok, all this might seem a little abstract but what ever the Council approves will be put into action from January next year. And at this stage there are some significant changes in the wind.

You can tell who's who in CNZ's world by the make up of the focus group:
4 from art institutions (including Chartwell)
3 from tertiary institutions
2 from the commercial world (dealer and art fair)
1 representing ‘non commercial exhibition spaces’
1 practising artist

Oh, and two more art institution people who somehow joined in the discussions.

So not surprising the key driver in the document is Organisational Leverage. Creative NZ wants to team up with the existing arts infrastructure in NZ (art museums, universities) to spread its money further. Looking at you Artspace and Physics room.

To get to the good stuff check out the series of 'options.' You can read and respond here.

Red flags? A trend to greater centralisation, more bureaucracy and support of the status quo, aka art museums and tertiary education. As an organising idea leverage has one big negative - to reach agreement among participating organisations they tend to support the same projects with the same people around the same ideas that have already been proved successful.

Watch out for:
•    A strong indication that independent art spaces may be under attack for future funding. The options are complex but two possibilities are some kind of centralised organisation to manage experimental work  in non-commercial exhibition spaces and CNZ focusing its visual arts support via regional art museums and artist-run space.

•    Boosted support for international initiatives including artist residencies and the Venice Biennale

•    A proposal for $120,000 king-hit grants over two years for “established” artists

•    A concerted push to give more support to public art museums through artist residencies, curatorial internships, international projects in NZ, publications and organised talking. It's the leverage thing.

•    And most positively the idea of funding being “more tightly targeted towards independent artists who don’t have access to institutional resources, such as studio facilities and research funds for creative projects and publications."

Plus, hilariously “We propose to support a greater level of collaboration between New Zealand institutions”

Good luck with that

Uni Verse

A major shift in arts funding over the last few years has been the entry of the universities. They have put up funding for many of the largest exhibitions by NZ artists and more than a few of the art publications and now the University of Auckland is taking Len Lye to the opera.

With words by Lye’s biographer Emeritus Professor Roger Horrocks, music by Eve de Castro-Robinson a teacher in the Music Department and produced by the University of Auckland's National Institute of Creative Arts and Industries, LEN LYE the opera had its first outing at the University's Maidment Theatre in Auckland last night. In the cast are University of Auckland staff members including Te Oti Rakena, a key player in the presentation of Michael Parekowhai’s On first looking into Chapman’s Homer.

As Te Oti Rakena singing in his role as an art dealer has it:

“To survive in art

You have to be smart.”

You can catch rehearsal action here.

Opportunity for comic academics

Here’s a job for someone itching to do a PhD in the arts. How paintings are represented in comics. OTY.

A matter of degree

Sometimes you see something that sums up a moment. We spotted such a piece of weirdness in Los Angeles. 

Anyone who is not comatose will have noticed the growing influence of the tertiary education sector as the selector and funder of a defined set of artists (also known as the staff). This trend looks set to shape much of the visual arts in NZ over the next decade. Artists inside the education system can readily access additional funds via the research patronage of their institutions and this makes such subsidised exhibitions and publications virtually irresistible to museums and publishers. If it continues the way it's going, and there's no evidence of it slowing down, an academic position is going to become a crucial component of any ambitious artist's portfolio. 

You can see a rather tragic result of this trajectory at the MOCA and the Geffen Contemporary in LA. On every label along with the title, date and medium is recorded the artist's academic position. Even more strangely, academic positions held in the past are also included. Is this just an indicator of LA's famously hierarchical mindset and obsession with credentials (as in top 10 lists, Academy Awards, stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame etc etc) or, more likely, an indicator of what's to come? Follow the money.

Images: details from biographical info on MoCA labels in Los Angeles