By the numbers

1   the average number of statements per month the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage has released relating to the arts so far this year

3  the amount in millions of dollars per year that Te Papa gets from the Government for ‘collection development’

6  the number of Billy Apple reviews in EyeContact since his survey exhibition opened at the Auckland Art Gallery

10  the number in thousands of visitors who attended the last Auckland Art Fair

12.5  the percentage of male exhibition attendants at the Simon Denny Venice Biennale exhibition

58   the percentage of women selected as finalists for the Waikato National Contemporary Art Award by Aaron Kreisler, Head of the Ilam School of Fine Arts in Christchurch

70  the percentage of Creative NZ funding that comes from money New Zealander's lose gambling

77.5  the amount in thousands of dollars that the Govett-Brewster paid Saatchi & Saatchi to deliver its new brand

143  the number in thousands of visitors to the exhibition Gottfried Lindauer. The Māori portraits at the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin this year

700 the value in thousands of dollars of the sales and commissions disputed in the Bambury / Jensen court case

1585  the number of exhibitions held at the Auckland Art Gallery since it opened on 23 June, 1927

Going public (not)

By now, many of you (six copies have come to OTN for a start!) will have read the critical letter Christina Barton sent to EyeContact about John Hurrell’s recent review of her exhibition Billy Apple: the artist has to live like everybody else, currently on view at the Auckland Art Gallery. The copies we received showed that the letter had been sent to at least 11 people including Creative NZ,  a dealer gallery and the senior staff of public museums. In her opening paragraph, however, Barton makes it clear that her letter is personal and that she does not feel it is ‘appropriate for a curator to respond to a critique of their own exhibition’. The result is that a topic one of our senior academics feels is worth a dense and passionately argued two-page letter is removed from open debate. To date John Hurrell has followed Barton’s instructions and not published.

Barton makes a number of contentious assertions:

Conflict of interest. Serving as EyeContact’s founder, editor, commissioner and regular contributor all at the same time is a conflict of interest for John Hurrell.

Photographic access. As the Auckland Art Gallery doesn’t publish photographs of its exhibitions, search engines will feature EyeContact as a key point of access to the exhibition along with Hurrell’s review.

The record. EyeContact serves as ‘the record’ so Hurrell is in a privileged position. That also gives him the responsibility to exercise ‘some level of editorial judgment’ and to consider his larger responsibilities to the culture.

Public responsibility. As EyeContact is funded through Creative NZ, it operates in the public sphere with public money. What larger responsibilities, if any, does this entail?

The role of EyeContact. Barton asserts Hurrell doesn’t understand that his role is to ‘perform at a high level’ and ‘lift debate’ and ‘set an example’ and ‘develop talent’ and  ‘shape the discourse’.

So a puzzle within a puzzle. If John Hurrell wants EyeContact to encourage ‘spirited discussion on art and visual culture in Aotearoa New Zealand’ (as he says on the site’s front page), why hasn’t he published Barton’s less-than-private letter? That would be a surefire way to get some spirited discussion going. And, if Barton feels her harsh critique is worth sending widely enough to ensure that at least a 100 people will get to read it, why not take on one of the duties she asserts EyeContact has and lift the debate?

Match play

The indefatigable John Hurrell has written over 40 reviews on his site EyeContact over the last six months each around 600 words. Never short of a metaphor Hurrell has probably described thousands of works since EC began. Here’s a few of them and here are the artists whose work they refer to: Jim Allen, Stephen Bambury, Joyce Campbell, James Cousins, Andrew Drummond, Selina Foote, Richard Killeen, Patrick Lundberg, John Nixon, Daniel Malone, Judy Millar, Seung Yul Oh, Jeena Shin. Match them up. Answers here.

 “a rainbowlike hippie sweetness”

 “serious and urgent themes”

 “muscularly textured but nuanced sheen”

 “pleasurable little columns”

 “a tortured ambivalence”

 “ubiquitous rawness“

 “an airy celebration of natural light”

 “cavernous space and descending fluttering leaves or birds”

 “an unnerving quality about their more optically ‘stable’ peek-a-boo laminations”

 “viewing and thinking benefits”

 “repeated configurations, total gestalt, contrasting alignments, and patterns in linear or spatial configurations”

 “unpredictable topographical clusters of linked up lines”

 “barely restrained anger and vibrant immediacy”

 “sumptuous richness” and “velvety colour”

Pic of the week

Is Jim Allen the oldest performance artist still standing? He’s definitely the oldest standing operating a chainsaw and with Marina Abramovic at 66, Vito Acconti 74, Gina Paine and Carolee Schneemann just a year older and even Yayoi Kusama a youthful 85, we reckon the honours most definitely go to Allen at 92. On Wednesday night about 50 people watched him recreate the performance On planting a native from 1976 that involved cutting down a small tree and representing it on the gallery wall. In the audience was art writer and critic Wystan Curnow who has been a strong supporter of Allen and the other performance artists of the seventies. It was quite something to see Curnow transfixed by the performance as though it were the first time he had seen Jim Allen at work. He even edged closer mid-performance to take more pictures. Turns out that Curnow is also that other essential glue to the art world, a fan.

Image: Wystan Curnow photographs Jim Allen at Michael Lett

From the stream

Hamish Keith doesn't quite get it

Wystan's world

The critic's part Wystan Curnow art writings 1971-2013 is an elegant book containing a selection of Curnow’s writings edited by Christina Barton and Robert Leonard. As Leonard says in his introduction, the great thing Curnow did was to leave New Zealand, and then come back. While Curnow could have gone on to have a successful academic career in the US, in 1970 he bought a ticket home.

The first thing to say is that this is a very good read. That's probably because Curnow has always had a firm grip on his position in regard to culture and is happy to put it in plain albeit stylish and sometimes playful language. You may not agree with everything Curnow says (why would you) but you could never accuse him of obscurity. The second point is that Curnow has a particular talent for sussing out where the interesting stuff is happening and going with it. His writing probably made some of it interesting in the first place. And it's good to have so much material so readily available. Curnow is also a diligent observer of our culture and very generous with giving over important dates, times and events.

Some of the pieces will be familiar to some readers but there are a lot of fresh connections to make now that it's all together. A nicely edited selection of photographs tells its own story - men in suits and with pipes look out at the world, people scramble across the moonscape of the Mount Eden Crater, the now vanished tiled floors of the Auckland Art Gallery take a formalist turn, and Colin McCahon holds the centre. The selection of writing feels pretty representative and the editors are relaxed about letting Curnow show his obdurate side when it works for him. He has always had a very personal take on what’s what so you get some odd artists corralled together and many, many important people and events missed out or skated over. Most notably this version of Curnow hasn't engaged with many women artists. Only three of the 22 chapters focused on single artists are devoted to them so let's note them: et al., Julia Morison, Linda Buis in partnership with Peter Roche and Jacqueline Fraser coupled with Gordon Walters. Obviously there are women included in some of the other chapters, but still.

What Wystan Curnow nails is a style of art reporting we don't see much. Even though he peers at things through a global lens Curnow is always fully engaged with the work in front of him. It's the local he cares for and like a concerned parent he urges it on to greater heights. An essay like High culture in a small province is still provocative reading and its updating at the end of this book demonstrates that Curnow hasn't let his guard down.

Now what’s needed is an annotated edition of Wystan Curnow’s travel diaries from his years in the United States. No pressure.

Image: The critic’s part: Wystan Curnow art writings 1971-2013, published by Adam Art Gallery | IMA | VUP with funding via Creative NZ. Edited by Christina Barton and Robert Leonard.

Bites

"In the wider world the notion of perspective is an inducement to get our heads out of our arses: in the art world it’s just a term associated with a horizon line."

Art curator, art consultant, art writer, art commentator, art collector and artist Peter Ireland bites the hand that feeds him in EyeContact

Think biggish

"There are no economies of scale in art and expanding the scale isn't going to increase the percentage of good art."
US art critic and writer, Dave Hickey.

Give or take

The exhibition Take it or leave it at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles is our kind of show. Artists putting institutions - especially art institutions - up against the wall by provoking, mocking, testing and deconstructing them. The gallery spaces were packed with work (only the Cady Nolan boxing ring suffered seriously) but the show seemed small in ambition. It was American artists only so keystone political artists of the 1980s and 1990s like Hans Haacke were excluded.

The fascination of the exhibition was to be taken back to when the relationship between artists and institutions was anything but cozy. Today so many artists depend on funding from their universities and art institutions are so enmeshed with dealers for funding, exhibition support and facilitating loans, that anything uncomfortably critical is self-censured fast. Andrea Fraser demos how it was done stripping down to nothing when giving a thank-you speech at the opening of a survey of her work. Louise Lawler goes on the attack presenting copies of iconic photos as her own work. Fred Williams points an accusing finger at virtually every collecting institution in America. It was quite a time.

Image: Andrea Fraser in full flight

Makes sense

“That task of the critic is to infer the best explanation of what is there, using whatever helps in arriving at an intelligible interpretation.”
Philosopher Arthur C. Danto, who died last week

Just for a moment there..

T.J reviews art works featuring towels in the NZH on Saturday

NZH WTF?

“For all its size the painting represents only part of Frizzell's enormous production. He is our Picasso. He can paint anything in any manner and does so.”
T J McNamara goes AWOL in the NZH

While we were sleeping

Who says nothing happens over the run up to Christmas? Impressively, Chris Saines landed the directorship of the Queensland Art Gallery (congratulations) • consensually, the popular choice award for the Walters Prize went to Sriwhana Spong (same) • surprisingly, Dane Mitchell shifted his tent from Starkwhite to Hopkinson Cundy • harshly, Peter McLeavey was informed he no longer represented Liz Maw or Andrew McLeod • doggedly, EyeContact published another 18 reviews and attracted up to 3000 visits a week • curiously, Te Papa conducted an online survey asking people if they have ever heard of the Aztecs and for marketing tips • pointedly, no-one from the visual arts appeared in the New Year’s honours list • curatorially, Te Papa announced it would be selecting a Warhol exhibition from the collection of the eponymous museum • fashionably, Francis Upritchard featured in British Vogue • remarkably, T J McNamara was still writing art reviews for the NZH and sadly (and a little pathetically on our part), unbeknownst to us while we were in Shanghai Neil Dawson was also in the city installing a public sculpture (Feather from Afar)

Not so lookalike

The history of artists writing inscriptions on their paintings is well established in New Zealand and never more needed than on the streets of Dunedin. A OTN badge for the first reader to identify which one of the two figures in this Ivan Hill painting is Justin Paton.

Take no prisoners

“Winners win, losers lose. Shoot the wounded, save yourself. Those are the rules." 

Dave Hickey describing the art market as he takes his leave

Bob

Robert Hughes the art critic and writer died earlier this month and it set us thinking about our own memorable encounter with him. He was giving a lecture in Wellington in the 1980s and we were asked to keep him occupied for an afternoon. 

What the hell do you show Robert Hughes when he comes to Wellington? Not being complete masochists we stayed away from art and started with the Maori and Pacific collections in the Dominion Museum on Buckle Street. 

Captain Cook's Hawai'ian feather cloak completely captivated him and his knowledge of it was formidable. Across the way from this cultural marvel was the Museum's attempt to display something of its fish collections. This was done by sticking stuffed fish on rods so they looked as though they were in schools swimming through a fake grotto. They got Hughes going prompting astonishing stories from the history of displaying things on sticks (as we found out that day Hughes could speak with expertise on any subject at all and we kept throwing up arcane and silly topics to see what eloquent miracles came out of his mouth). Next we moved onto a small glass fish tank mounted into a wall that had a single sea horse floating in it. The abject poignancy of it all was too much for Hughes who was convulsed with laughter, his face (already pretty florid) going a sort of purple colour. 

Back home, Bob (we were nervously calling him Bob by this time) saw his book The shock of the new on the shelves. He strode over, pulled it out and wrote with a flourish ‘For Jim and Mary Barr with best from Bob Hughes’. We were too stunned to tell him it was a borrowed copy.

We stumped up with another copy for our friend and decided that to commemorate the afternoon anyone called Bob or Robert should sign alongside Hughes. Curator Robert Leonard and artist Robert Jesson did just that, but then it turned out we didn't know very many Roberts and no Bobs and everything went all to hell. 

From then on artists who stayed or visited were invited to do something with book and its illustrations, you can see a couple of them above. Now Bob's book is going to spend the rest of its life in the Christchurch Art Gallery library.

Images: Top left, Marie Shannon deals up The rat in the Rietveld chair and right, Michael Smither transforms Cezanne’s mountain into Taranaki. Bottom Neil Pardington converts one of Albert Speer’s buildings for Germania into the Sarjeant Gallery.

Respectfully yours

"Good art is often not easy to understand immediately. The four finalist works in the Walters Prize at Auckland Art Gallery are enigmatic, to say the least, and their format makes them difficult to approach."
T J McNamara's review of Auckland Art Gallery's Walters Prize in the NZH

Ouch

“But this charm was the show’s problem. At best, the works offered viewers a knowing chuckle; at worst, a smug grin. The collective effect confirmed the current dominance of a particular – and particularly strange – New Zealand aesthetic, a kind of lo-fi, apolitical cool that often seems finicky and far too concerned with its own looks to step outside its comfort zone. Its potential for fussy self-regard was reinforced by the lack of contextualizing voice: there were no wall labels, and the throwaway catalogue made no attempt to create links or frictions between the works.” 

Anthony Byrt reviews the Wellington City Gallery exhibition Prospect: New Zealand art now in Artforum

Late last century Francis Pound wrote his book Frames on the Land: Early Landscape Painting in New Zealand. Now, high up in the Waitakaries, his dream comes true.

The 96 percent

If you've ever been on the New Zealand art review site EyeContact (the place everyone says they never visit to but go there anyway), you will know that its editor John Hurrell rules with an iron hand. One of his bugbears is people who want to comment on reviews but prefer to remain anonymous or use internet sigs. Given the size of the New Zealand art scene you can get their point but JH has been firm: sign in or stay out. Still, he might like to consider new research courtesy of Disqus that shows that maybe the option of anonymity encourages participation and that people who use pseudonyms or social media IDs make the best comments. Disqus is a global comments system used by the likes of CNN, Time, Blogger and tumblr and their findings about how their system is used surprised us. Apparently 61 percent of commenters use pseudonyms, 35 percent choose to be anonymous and 4 percent use their real identity. They also found “those with pseudonyms post the best comments” and that commenters using pseudonyms are most likely to post 'positive' quality comments that get likes and replies”. As to the likelihood of John Hurrell changing his policy? No comment.