Spam

unvarnished facts, reckless guesswork, insinuations and possible inventions that have arrived at overthenet.blog@gmail.com: a turnaround at the govett-brewster where a number of len lye sculptures will now remain in place during 'emanations', the upcoming ‘all-galleries’ photographic exhibition • artspace’s director adnan yildiz duked it out on his fb page with eyecontact’s john hurrell declaring of artspace's audience that 'we are expecting them to have questions with us’ but then not seeming to much enjoy hurrell doing just that • when creative nz announced that ‘funding from our two principal sources – the crown through vote arts culture and heritage and the new zealand lottery grants board – could decline over the next four years they meant will decline • leo dicaprio has lined up with the aag when it comes to collecting contemporary photography having snagged his own copy of andreas gursky’s 'ocean iii' • twinkle-toed rohan wealleans danced right through richard frater’s scatter installation at robert heald’s gallery without stepping on a single item • after their success with giant ww1 personnel te papa is going the big-bug way preparing an internationally touring show with weta on giant bug duty • new zealand’s venice biennale commissioner alastair carruthers is leaving these shores to settle in london but no suggestion of the baton being passed on at this stage •  any missed details, indignant denials or additions gratefully received, and any that makes us laugh out loud rewarded with an increasingly rare otn painting horse badge.

Entrails

At OTN we’ve always been great fans of reading the entrails. Back a ways a haruspex used to interpret the divine will by inspecting the entrails of a sacrificial animal. So here for you all to interpret are some Te Papa's entrails as revealed in the media recently. 

•   Te Papa will take no international touring art exhibitions in 2016. This will be the first year without such an exhibition since the museum opened.

•   There will be no temporary exhibitions for the next five years unless they are from the permanent collection.

•   Te Papa is to collaborate with Weta Workshop to create experience based touring exhibitions to hire out to the global ‘museum’ market. Chief executive Rick Ellis has said that these touring plans will ‘help shape the museum for another stellar year in 2016’.

•   Rick Ellis also believes that the 1.56 million visitors this year were ‘driven to the museum by the "destination exhibitions" Tyrannosaurs, Air New Zealand and Gallipoli’

•   Te Papa has made it clear that it recognises ‘the importance of the Chinese market.’

•   To build links with Australia, Ellis had assigned ‘senior leaders to each state’ (‘Art, I’m giving you Western Australia…the bottom bit’).

What can it all mean for art at Te Papa? Prize for the best answer.

LATER: Meanwhile back in the rest of the world. 'Whatever the motivation, modern and, especially, contemporary art has become so big a draw that few museums can afford to do without it.' – Calvin Tomkins in the New Yorker

Image: bronze instructional liver from Etruria (You can find instructions on how to interpret your own entrails (sic) here)

Get real

The aesthetics of Socialist Realism

• Figures are scaled larger than life
• Compositions are dynamic and dramatic
• Emotions are exaggerated
• Representation is naturalistic but highly idealised
• Subjects are portrayed as dauntless, purposeful, well-muscled, and youthful
• Themes are officially sanctioned by the state to glorify the state

Images: Left hand side Weta Workshop figures for Te Papa’s Gallipoli display. Right hand side top to bottom, Statue Park Budapest, Children heroes statue Shanghai, Soviet Military cemetery Warsaw and Grieving mother Stalingrad

In Shanghai

We were thinking about Weta Workshop’s foray into public sculpture in Wellington.

We are not alone

The new six meter high statue of Martin Luther King in Washington created by a Chinese artist in the social realist style

Metal fatigue

One of the Wellington’s public sculptures that was lashed in Tommy Honey’s article was the Weta (sorry LB) spider in Courtenay Place. OK, it's not very good, but globally it’s not even a starter.
Image: Karen Cusolito ad Dan Das Mann’s sculpture Ecstasy in San Francisco

Game’s on

There are two competing teams in Wellington’s Sculptural smack down. In the red corner is the Wellington Sculpture Trust, earnest proselytisers for high art to denote a cultural Capital. In the blue corner stands Weta Workshop, brash enthusiasts who see art as popular culture in its own right. The Trust believes in promoting established artists like Dawson, Moore, Drummond and Lye while Weta is convinced its own skills are more than up to the job of creating cultural monuments. And so from Weta and its staff Wellington has already got the Louise Bourgeois-like Spider in Courtenay Place and a couple of naked guys on the waterfront. 

Now Wellington is about to debate a Weta proposal for giant footy players to mark the 2011 Rugby World Cup. This latest scheme is backed by Wellington’s Mayor Kerry Prendergast, someone who knows a major contributor to her city when she sees one. 

The proposed sculpture is five metres high (as a rough guide it would take ten of them stacked on top of one another to equal the height of Sweden’s proposed giant moose) and is budgeted at $350,000 to be picked up by Wellington ratepayers. Prendergast has told the NZ Herald that, "Art always invites debate but I am hoping that the majority of Wellingtonians will see that this legacy is more than just about rugby." The Weta people, more pragmatically, announced, "It will be a massive construction job with probably up to 30 people working on it at any one time…" 

The proposal is to go up for public consultation. It will be interesting to hear the Wellington’s institutional art leaders stand, in particular the members of the Wellington City Council Public Art Panel (you can see who they are here) will have to say.

Copies cat

Weta can take comfort from the fact that somewhere out there, possibly at some crazy Burning Man like event, there are other Louise Borgouis copycats.
Images: Left recently discovered photo of crazy people in the desert dancing in front of weird Louise Borgouis-like sculpture. Right top, Weta effort in Wellington. Bottom the original from Louise Borgouis