Slowpokes

We were so busy ckecking out what Artforum thought was the best of 2007, we didn’t notice they had kept part of the best for last. At the back of the issue is a picture and review of Eve Armstrong’s show at Michael Lett.

Thumbs up

This is the story of a thumb. It belongs to Andy Salisbury who was born 39 years ago in Liverpool, England. Salisbury, a left-hander, brought it with him to New Zealand in 1990. Around 10 years ago he was working as a photographic re-toucher in Wellington and had the opportunity to press his thumb into service for Te Papa. After dipping it into a mix of coffee and water, he enlarged the print, refined the whorls, added at touch of his own – an Air New Zealand-style koru-shape – and handed the result to the Saatchi & Saatchi art director in charge of creating ‘Our Place’s’ logo. With the Te Papa name attached, the new logo was presented to Te Papa and accepted. It remains the core of Te Papa’s brand identity. Andy Salisbury still lives in Wellington.
Image: Left Andy Salisbury’s thumb. Right, the thumbprint as adapted for Te Papa

Rabbits!

Just when you started to think New Zealand artists and overthenet were alone in their obsession with rabbits, the rest of the world catches on. This photo from Tokyo Fashion Week earlier this month.

The Peter Principle

Peter Robinson meets Peter McLeavey at Peter Robinson's opening at Peter McLeavey's Gallery this morning.

For art's sake

It's art, it's ping pong, it's on overthenet.

Also serving

9 am might be a bit early in the morning perhaps, but today was the day Massey University promised its One Day Sculpture site would ‘go live’.
31 March: The site now says it will go live on 2 April.

Wipe out

Have we ever had an Etch-A-Sketch artist on otn? It rings a bell but we can’t find one on the search. No matter Jeff Gagliardi is worth posting whatever. If you check out YouTube you will find Etch-a-sketchers buy the truck load but Jeff’s special skill is reproducing great works of art, which gets him a berth here. If you want to dive deeper into the Etch-a-sketch world of Jeff Gagliardi, go here. By the way the Etch-A-Sketch was launched in 1960 by Ohio Art.
Images: Top and left bottom Jeff’s sketches. Bottom right, Jeff.

Peter Tomory 1922-2008

Peter Tomory died yesterday. He was Director of the Auckland Art Gallery from 1956 to 1964. There is a nice piece on Best of 3 about his life and an obit by Mary Kisler on Auckland Art Gallery’s Outpost blog. Tomory will be remembered as a great champion of New Zealand art at a time when the country was still looking to England for its cultural signals.
Image: Cover of Eight New Zealand Painters the first in a series of exhibitions curated and toured round the country during Tomory’s direction.

Hats off

Last week a Goldie painting, estimated at 240-280K (itself a wide enough margin for error one would have thought) sold for $400,000 ($454,00 with commissions). Even this price is around $50,000 shy of the figure the then-National Art Gallery (like so many national institutions, always a trend setter in pricing) paid 18 years ago for an admittedly bigger Goldie. It’s been a long haul getting to I-told-you-so prices on CF but, so long as we don’t do mean things like insist on dollar value corrections, the end may be in sight.
Image: The Goldie [Detail]
Oh, oh. It's only 8.15 am and an OTN reader tells us, "Goldie's Te Aho O Te Rangi Wharepu sold for $589,625 at Fishersonline in April 2004, the current auction record." Ok, so now this story is only about Goldies at auction.

Shopping report

For all the talk of Billy Apple having his photograph alongside Andy Warhol when he showed in The American Supermarket at Paul Bianchini's gallery in 1964, has it ever been reproduced in colour since that day? Has now.

Warning to everyone in general

It’s not often you get an art scam and maybe this is only one by association, still nothing like throwing a scare into everyone.

This email came to us yesterday from a Hye Rim Lee.

Hope things are good with you? I am sorry I didn't inform you about my traveling to Africa for a program called "Empowering Youth to Fight Racism, HIV/AIDS, Poverty and Lack of Education, the program is taking place in three major countries in Africa which are Ghana, South Africa and Nigeria. It as been a very sad and bad moment for me, the present condition that I found myself is very hard for me to explain. I am really stranded in Nigeria because I forgot my little bag in the Taxi where my money, passport, documents and other valuable things were kept on my way to the Hotel am staying, I am facing a hard time here because I have no money on me. I am now owning a hotel bill of $1300 and they wanted me to pay the bill soon else they will have to seize my bag and hand me over to the Hotel Management., I need this help from you urgently to help me back home, I need you to help me with the hotel bill and i will also need $1400 to feed and help myself back home so please can you help me with a sum of $2700 to sort out my problems here? I need this help so much and on time because i am in a terrible and tight situation here, I don't even have money to feed myself for a day which means i had been starving so please understand how urgent i needed your help. I will appreciate what so ever you can afford to send me for now, Please let me know on time so that i can forward you the details you need to transfer the money through Money Gram or Western Union. Have a great easter. Best Regards, Hye Rim

Yes it’s just the old Nigerian shuffle in a new unnerving disguise – this time they use the names of people you actually know. Ok, they shifted Hye Lee Rim's name about a bit, and the Yahoo address they used wasn’t anything like the right one. Still, after an opening, tired and befuddled...

On the road

On the road is an ongoing series celebrating the Ministry of Land Transport and Local Body support of New Zealand artists. For others in the series search 'on the road' on the blog search above.

Where in the world is David Trebletsky?

You can Google the name David Trebletsky as much as you like, but you’ll get nowhere, well we didn’t (maybe we have the spelling wrong – anyone?). But recently, in Auckland, that was the name we heard everywhere we went.
“Trebletsky? … huge private art collection. Close, Kapoor, Murakami, Nara, Haring.”
“You must have passed him as you came in, he just left.”
“Trebletsky’s buying work by Kahukiwa, Lionel Grant, Michael Parekowhai, lots of Chris Heaphys and Jacqueline Fraser.” (Do we sense a theme here?)
“I heard that Trebletsky and Paula Savage have had talks about his show going to the City Gallery.”
“Queensland Art Gallery’s doing something with Trebletsky. He’s putting together an exhibition from his collection and touring it round the world. At the end of the tour he wants to sell it to a public institution.”
“I think he lives in Singapore. His wife used to work for Larry Gagosian.”
“He’s the one with Polynesian tattoos you see around the dealer galleries. I heard he bought a big Shane Cotton at auction.”

Image: not David Trebletsky

Film fun

We don’t want to go on about CNZ. Well, that’s not quite true, we do, but only until they come out of hiding. The latest in CNZ’s batten-down-the-hatches approach to the NZ public we’ve heard, is over a proposed documentary film. The idea was pretty simple. Make a film about NZ's participation in the Venice Biennale from selection to exhibition. The movie was to start with the discussion during the selection of the artist from the short list. “Not in our lifetime” was CNZ’s reply (or words to that effect), followed by the admonition “This is not about winners”. They are right of course, thanks to their process, it is about one person exhibiting at Venice and all the others not exhibiting at Venice.

Good news and bad news

“In the short time we had to build the collection, it was difficult to source suitable works from many of the country’s top female artists as their exhibitions were selling out so quickly.”
Rob McLeod, in Artnews New Zealand, explaining why only 10 of 64 of the artists represented in The Real Art Show (art in a truck) are women.