Signed up

Since we last posted on a Dick Frizzell painting in Moore Wilson’s store in Wellington, another huge work has appeared as a feature in the new supermarket. This is the scale of work you could imagine Frizzell putting into a Big Painting show, like that one back in 1971 that featured McCahon’s monster Gate III. Like McCahon, Frizzell has taken as a starting point the handmade signs you see on roadsides selling fruit and veg to passing motorists. A nice twist for the Frizzell painting is the way it has been seamlessly integrated into Moore Wilson’s own signage systems. A perfect storm of sign and signifier (we've always wanted to say that).
Images: Frizzell art at work in Moore Wilson, Wellington. Roadside inspiration.

Perfect storm

" I do like it when I get a commission where everybody is on song, the idea is received with open arms, the execution is spot on, and the price is right and the client goes bonkers when they unwrap."

Dick Frizzell reveals the secret to commissioning art to the Dom Post

Present

Today you get a perfect storm created by OTN’s ongoing interest in Marina Abramovic meeting our relentless promotion of the talented games designer Pippin Barr (relation). Drawing on Abramovic’s stand-out performance The artist is present at MoMA last year, Pippin has created a game so you too can have the experience. Go to MoMA, join the queue and, if you keep the faith and play hard, get to sit opposite the mute one. A few things you need to know, the game only works during the opening hours of MoMA in New York (closed Tuesdays) and yes, you really do have to queue. Line up here.

Vote damn you

Unless it’s a statue of a sporting hero or retired politician, putting large sculptures into a public space has always been a high-risk. Usually the fuss is geared up by the media prodding readers to make an extreme response so they can report it back as news. Perfect storm. Even better new tech tools enable editors to come up with ‘surveys’ to check the racing pulse of the public sculpture loving public. Loosely worded and structured these often set out to net naysaying.

So nice to see that New Plymouth rallied to the idea of yet more Len Lyes in their backyard. When the first Wind wand was erected many New Plymouthites responded by sticking up their own versions in a gesture that was part cheek, part my-kid-could-do it. This time a cluster of half a dozen mini-me Wind wands was put to the test in a poll of just over 1,000 people by the local newspaper. Forty percent were positive about this specific project, another 18 percent were positive about public sculpture in general and neutral about the project, and another 10 percent neutral to positive. Just 32 percent were strongly opposed. Given that two out of the four voting categories (‘ I like it’ and ‘It’s ok’) were tilted with negative overtones (‘but I’d like to see something different’ and ‘or I don’t really care too much’) that would have to be a pass. Please feel free to move around the cabin.

Perfect storm

It’s ping pong, it’s Bruce Lee playing the game with nunchuck, it’s CGI, you’re on OTN. What more could you ask for?

A perfect storm in Tuba City, Arizona

It's a public sculpture, it's bronze, it's a guy and he's an artist.

Dealer take all

The art world talks about über dealer Larry Gagosian in Sarah Douglas’s 4000 word plus profile, The art of the deal, in Intelligent Life.

“He's like a visitor from another planet, an extraterrestrial trying to communicate with our species.”

“He's like a shark or a cat or some other perfectly designed biological mechanism."

“He's sort of a combination of a corporate raider, a dark lord, Peggy Guggenheim, and a railroad magnate.”

"Of two great paintings, Larry can determine what makes one greater".

“It's a perfect storm where Larry becomes art.”

On brand, Gagosian wouldn’t talk. The best of three short quotes from him in the piece came from way back in 1980. “If I weren't doing this, I'd probably be in real estate.”

Perfect storm 2

Again it's a bronze public sculpture of an artist holding paintbrushes and a palette. What's not to like.
Image: Bust of Maltese artist Mattia Preti

On the beach

As people who lived through many performance works in the seventies and eighties we're not quick to respond to a temporary installation on a beach in freezing conditions and wind-driven rain. But it was Kate Newby who we admire and the curators were Claudia Arozqueta and Rodrigo Azaola, so what’s to do? As it turned out it would have been a big mistake to miss Newby’s installation Laura, Lucy, Mark and Felix. And the stormy day was the perfect setting for the delicate interventions into the beachscape. For a start the wind chime that Claudia hung between the beach wall and a piece of driftwood she wedged into the rocks was sounding its way right through the half hour we were there. Being a Kate Newby installation there were also lots of other things to find including introduced rocks and some glass shapes that looked liked they’d been washed up in a storm. Rodrigo and Claudia will install the work each day at 5.30pm until next Tuesday so, looking at the long range forecast, there are opportunities to see the work in just about all the different weathers Wellington throws at us. You can check out all the installations in the series here at Modelab

Blackie’s hoofed it

Where do you go to read about animals, art, art theft and Billy Apple? Here on OTN. In this tale the perfect OTN storm takes place at the Kingsland end of New North Road where Horseland’s Chevalier store has been for around 30 years. The reason you knew Chevalier was in the horse business (apart from the name) was the presence of a horse standing on the top of the store's canopy three meters above the footpath. Not a real horse though, one of those fiberglass ones, a horse sculpture. 

These days finding Chevalier is not so easy as the horse - all 75 kg of it - has been nicked. The story has played out in the Auckland City Harbour News (front page six column header, full colur photo, above the fold etc) which tells us that the horse (painted black in 2001 and sensibly named Blackie) has not turned up. 

The Billy Apple angle? Blackie’s representative, store manager Mark Corner, was, “Flabbergasted… Mr Apple used the horse as inspiration when designing the company’s logo several years ago. It’s one of the icons of Kingsland. It’s sad to lose it.” 

Crimestoppers hotline: 0800-555-111

Image: The ghost of Blackie lives on in Billy Apple’s logo for Chevalier.