Inside out

It’s not often that Te Papa pauses from telling ‘our story’ to let the world beyond these shores creep in. Simon Denny has certainly thrown open a window up on the fifth floor. Te Papa’s bold purchase of a chunk of Secret Power, Denny’s contribution to the last Venice Biennale, has just been installed and it is wrapped in an antipodean version of the Marciana Library in St Mark’s Square. Drawing on his colonisation last year of the Venice airport, Denny has transformed the floor and walls of the Te Papa exhibition space. They’re covered in an enormous colour photograph of the Marciana Library complete with its famous murals, ornate mouldings and arched windows, but inverted. The idea of being upside down at the bottom of the planet is a perspective NZers understand all too well, but this time our point of view is radically modified. By shining light on the evil darkness of the spy world Denny reminds us how inextricably attached we are to the rest of the world, whichever way up we like to think we are.

Image: Simon Denny’s Secret Power installed at Te Papa

Sixty-four characters in search of an economy

In counterpoint to his installation in the Marciana Library in Venice, Simon Denny has scored another amazing venue, this time for the Berlin Biennale. Sited in an institution he could have invented the name for – ESMT School of Management and Technology – he’s in the heart of the old East German State Council building. Lavishly fitted out in the early 1960s it boasts sweeping staircases, imposingly high ceilings and enormous windows, elaborate metallic patterned doors as well as murals celebrating the socialist state in glass and aluminum. 

Denny’s exhibition space features one of these murals soaring to the ceiling and looming over a constellation of Blockchain visionaries (the title of the show) whose mission is nothing less than to transform money and the global economy. Using the modular trades fair booth format Denny delivers three case studies presenting the key points of each strategy, a full-length portrait and even a set of stamps (in collaboration with Linda Kantchev). 

OK, the Trade show format can be a struggle for art audiences with its direct messaging, reductive graphics and slippery politics but chances are they’ll grow accustomed to it. After all, many visitors to the Biennale now admire the once ignored or even despised murals of Socialist ideals that contextualize the Denny work. And yes, they look pretty damn good. You can see a short video and pics of Denny’s installation here on OTN:STUFF

Image: visitors climbing the stairs of the ESMT School of Management and Technology to see Simon Denny's instalation

12 cool things Kiwi (visual) artists have achieved in the past year

The other day a headline in the NZ Herald caught the attention: '12 cool things artists have achieved this year'. Of course when you clicked through the artists involved were musicians and not of the installation, photographic, painting or sculpture variety. So here’s a 12 cool things they have achieved in the past year.
 
Billy Apple at 80 finally got his long overdue survey show at the Auckland Art Gallery. Did that mean he'd then sit back and take it easy? Not a chance. Apple is always ticking off items on a list of shows and projects that stretches into the future as well as getting to most of the key art events in the city.
 
Ruth Buchanan turned artist/ curator in Berlin with a series of thoughtful and witty interventions into a private collection being exhibited at the Hamburger Bahnhof. In the overall project A-Z The Marzona Collection Buchanan made changes and additions to the sections J, L and K in the alphabet-based show.

Simon Denny has to be included. He had a very good year but who’d have thought that MoMA, having purchased his sculptures last year, would make another large purchase from his Venice show.  As they say, the first purchase is representation, but if they come back for more, it’s serious attention.

Lisa Reihana proved that history can pull crowds with her large-scale video installation in Pursuit of Venus [infected] based on nineteenth century wallpaper. It got her the Venice gig, it's in contention for the Walters Prize and already some significant art museums have shelled out big bucks to buy their very own copy of the work.
 
Michael Parekowhai certainly kept his cool over the last 12 months. And that despite the politicians of Hamilton and some vociferous people in Auckland ranting on about how his public sculptures were a waste of money no matter who pays for them. They'll be the same people in a few years doting on their grandkids playing in the waterfall of the Hamilton one and looking through the windows in the Auckland one.

Judy Millar who somehow manages to live in Europe and New Zealand at the same time also seems to be able to work at both a major and intimate scale. Not only did she produce the huge architectural scale sculpture The Model World at Te Uru, she also managed to illustrated a kids' pop-up book of the same name.

Dick Frizzell continues to be the whirlwind of New Zealand art marketing. He's always there in some media release or other weighing in on a contentious issue, launching a product or gifting works to this charity or that. Is this cool? Maybe not exactly, but it is impressive.

Len Lye continues to be the only artist in NZ ever to reach out from beyond the grave and continue to ghostwrite new works via a ouija board of governors. If that’s not cool, nothing is.

Li-Ming Hu used DIY cut-out masks and Vimeo to shift a few boundaries and crack us up at the same time. Her take on the team who ran Gambia Castle was a knowing mix of hilarity and edge.
 
Francis Upritchard’s exhibition at Monash University (MUMA) in Australia was a remarkable survey of her work from art school days to the present. Some of the museum based work of the early 2000s looks as fresh as the day it was made (and the poster is beautiful too). The exhibition is now showing at the City Gallery in Wellington. And Auckland, will it be showing in Auckland where all the people are? Er, no.

Fiona Connor has been based in LA for a while now and for the last year has been running her own apartment gallery featuring a strong showing of artists from New Zealand. Laurel Doody has now wound up its gallery phase but not before getting some serious critical attention in the city.

Luke Willis Thompson took a whole lot of people for a ride in New York City, well a walk in fact. His contribution to the New Museum’s 2015 Triennial was to invite visitors to step out into the city on a choreographed walk. Often unsettling, it continued Thompson’s investigation into cultural relationships, power and space.

Here comes the judge

Who guessed the four selected for the Walters Prize? We got two right but even that was pure luck. We're assuming that Simon Denny was selected but decided not to come all this way just to miss out again (not selecting Michael Parekowhai for his Brisbane show was pretty insulting but to not tick Denny would have bordered on incompetence at this particular time). Looking at the list of four you certainly wouldn’t have bet the house on a Denny win had he been a finalist. 

Over the years the selection criteria for the Prize have changed a few times and this year quite radically. At the outset the Prize was for 'the most outstanding contribution made to contemporary art in New Zealand'. Later that shifted to ‘an outstanding work of contemporary New Zealand art produced and exhibited during the past two years’. This year it's ‘exceptional artworks that pushed the boundaries of art making in 2014 and 2015.’ No not you painters, sit down.

The elephant in the room is of course the director of the Auckland Art Gallery Rhana Devenport. Her relationship with one of the finalists is extremely close. In fact this is the second time a Reihana project curated by Devenport has been a finalist for the Walters Prize. In 2008 Devenport, as director of the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, was on the panel that selected her Digital Marae for the 2008 Walters Prize. For the 2016 Prize, Devenport has not only curated and promoted a selected project, she has also been involved in the selection of the panel of four that chose it as a finalist and she will also be involved in selecting the judge who will make the final decision. No doubt many, many Chinese walls are being built within the AAG but there will be intense interest in how these obvious conflicts are going to be handled.

Past Walters Prizes have delighted with unexpected wins and left field choices but no mistake, the selection of the judge is a critical decision in the whole process. Anyone who listened to Charles Esche talk before the prize giving evening last time knew that Denny was dog tucker. As we've posted before, one reader claims to have picked most Walters Prize winners just by checking out the judge’s previous form. There will be much searching through the entrails when that announcement is made.

Denny exhibition brings out the cloak and dagger in Te Papa

We're approaching what's becoming a bi-annual tradition as Te Papa gears up to show off its latest Venice Biennale booty. Apart from the first outing, only one artist has failed to sell their Venice work to Te Papa and that was the super controversial outing by et al. in 2005. This year Simon Denny skirted controversy with Te Papa purchasing a very particular segment of the installation (they could always borrow some of the David Darchicourt material they excluded from the purchase via MoMA – ha, ha, just kidding). 

Denny's presentation at Venice put the Five Eyes spy network centre-stage reaching the dismal conclusion that the spy masters are just run of the mill corporate managers, albeit with chilling powers. So who's surprised that around 18 months ago, knowing that at least part of Denny's Secret Power was Te Papa bound, that someone hatched the bright idea to make a spy exhibition. The only reason we know this is thanks to the blog No right turn who used the Official Information Act to get documents out of Te Papa (you can read it here and also get access to the documents) outlining the show. The proposed timing is interesting too with Te Papa pushing for before Denny’s 2016 showing on their fifth floor. The original idea for the spy show actually came out of the Department of PM and Cabinet (Intelligence Coordination Group) working with Te Papa International Strategy Adviser. Hopefully not a standard source of exhibition ideas, but who was going to turn down a 'significant collection of scientific spying equipment, top secret documents, images (eg. political cartoons) and objects [to] tell the story of the secret world of NZ’s spies and their mission'?

As it turns out, Te Papa could. This proposal was in play months before the new CE Rick Ellis took over and it would be nice to think he was one to kick it into the gutter. Still, just think what might have been. This could have been an exhibition that overshadowed even Air New Zealand's brilliant PR capture of Te Papa. And lost too the opportunity to work with NZ’s top spies who were to 'provide the collection, expert advice, curatorial guidance (and co-curators); initiate and manage loans; manage political sensitivities etc’.

Presumably the crazy kids on the Te Papa staff (their names have been redacted from the documents) that dreamt up this wacky idea are still in the building pining over their lost opportunity to showcase the NZ intelligence community before Simon Denny sent them global. Secret Power indeed.

While we were dozing

like the rest of nz the art business shuts up shop before christmas and goes on holiday until at least early january. even so, a few things happened while we were snoozing: the govett-brewster got 75,000 plus people through the doors of its new len lye centre although no count on how many made it through to the original g-b galleries • simon denny’s serpentine exhibition was praised in the guardian and slagged off in the sunday times (waldemar januszczak started off noting “not only is simon denny not british…” so it was never going to be great) • emma bugden is off to whanganui leaving the dowse looking for a senior curator • michael stevenson flew in from berlin to discuss a project at the govett-brewster where fellow berliner ruth buchanan has also escaped the winter to take up the gb residency • the christchurch art gallery opened its doors after nearly five years of working the streets • assuming all went as planned, the australian auction firm mossgreen took over operational control of webb’s on 1 january • luke willis thompson has been slotted in for a large survey exhibition at brisbane’s ima in july • wellington’s pointy sculpture zephyromter back in action after a lightning strike last year has been temporarily reigned in after its lighter replacement swung down into traffic.

One day in the Creative NZ offices

Communications officer 1: Oh no. What a disaster!

Communications officer 2: What….has the Lotteries Commission pulled the plug?

CO1: No, I’ve just got the final attendance figures for Venice.

CO2: That’s good, isn’t it? Simon Denny was a huge success, every major curator in the world came to see it, the party was the talk of Upper Italy, we had more art world publicity than we’ve ever had, it was right up there on every don’t-miss-it list, and the work sold faster than a speeding ticket.

CO1: So?

CO2: So that’s a good thing….isn’t it?

CO1: It would be if the numbers were better. The fact is fewer people went to the Denny exhibition than the last time we went to Venice.

CO2: How many fewer?

CO1: Around three sixths of the amount it cost in dollars to get those climate change protesters off the Parliament building a few months ago.

CO2: (thinks) That means Denny got only .91743110 percent less than the time before.

CO1: People will see it as a complete disaster. We need a way to present it so it doesn’t jump out.

CO2: But it was the most spectacularly successful thing we…. have…. ever….done….

CO1: (cold, hard stare)

CO2: Oh, ok. …..I’ve got an idea, how about, 'More than half a million people attended (the Venice Biennale) this year and around two fifths of them visited the Secret Power installation….'

And that is what they did.

Close shave

Not sure if it's official yet but it seems common knowledge, well common among a pretty large group of people anyway, that Billy Apple has a solo exhibition at the Serpentine in London lined up for 2016. So some solace there for missing out with Misal Adnan Yıldız on the Venice thing. As it is he'll be the second NZer to show at the Serpentine within a year with Simon Denny opening in November. 

You can figure (not that he’ll be complaining) that Apple would have dearly loved this exhibition to have been slated for April 2014. That would have been exactly 40 years after his last Serpentine exhibition that showed 14 years of his work. Realistically though Billy Apple’s not going to wait another eight years just to land the 50th anniversary and it's pretty damn cool to be able to do a show like this at 81. Typically Apple’s birthday is said to be the last day of each year - all very tidy as you'd expect. 

The curator of the Serpentine exhibition is Hans Ulrich Obrist who has previously included Apple into one of his Museum in Agency of Unrealized Projects and has also interviewed him as part of his Interview-everyone-in-the-entire-world project a few years back. As far as we know the only other New Zealander to have had a solo exhibition at the Serpentine was the sculptor John Panting in 1975. And all this to let us get away with a dodgy lookalike between Barry Bates (pre-Apple) Lathering, Alicante Spain, April 1960 and Philip Larkin just having a shave in 1957 (from the Independent)

Images: Left, Philip Larkin, right, Barry Bates

Distance looks our way

You can’t beat the kick of going into a large exhibition space in an international art museum as important as the Pompidou to see a work by an artist you know and admire. This time it was Oscar Enberg in the sixth edition of Un Nouveau Festival titled Air de jeu that dug into the connections between art and games. But we're not talking about some dice and arcade cabinets showcase but games in the big sense. This one's got philosophers, dancers, writers and even OuLiPo and Alighiero Boetti all ‘playing and thinking’ as the Pompidou like to put it. Yes, Enberg is in very good company and also showing alongside another favourite of ours Jonathan Monk.  
Len Lye is in the building too and Peter Robinson’s interactive felt scatter piece has just closed. Then, still hanging in the sky above the square outside Piano & Rogers iconic building, is the ghost of Neil Dawson’s Globe the star of the 1989 Pompidou exhibition Magiciens de la terre 

All this NZ-in-Paris action comes just weeks after seeing Simon Denny knock them dead in Venice.  You’d have to lay a lot of this level of exposure on Creative NZ’s simple focus on success in its international funding. The fact is those Art fairs, exchange programmes, residencies, support for exhibiting off shore and bringing interested curators, writers and bureaucrats to NZ are all starting to make a real impact.

Image: in the foreground Oscar Enberg's work in the exhibition Air de jeu

Te Papa Denny purchase on the cards?

Will Te Papa buy the Denny work shown at Venice? Chances are good, given they have purchased Biennale works by most of NZ’s representatives including Bill Culbert, Michael Parekowhai, Judy Millar, Francis Upritchard, and Michael Stevenson. Also the Te Papa collection is very light on Simon Denny (two paintings, an installation of four vitrines, and an early rug work) say compared to Auckland Art Gallery. They have 18 works including the large installation seen at the Walters Prize All You Need Is Data - The DLD 2012 Conference REDUX. 

The word floating around at Venice was that the entire work had been sold in two parts so we can probably assume that one of them is going to Wellington. Looking at Denny's Secret Power as installed at the Marciana Library, Te Papa will clearly need to do more than pick and choose from the many elements if it is to coherently present the central issues raised by Denny. In essence there are three major components: the entrance way featuring an automatic sliding door and display cases that position New Zealand and the four other members of the Five Eyes spy network. Then there is a set of computer server 'vitrines' devoted to the NSA, primed by material from the Snowden releases. The third element is  a further set of computer server 'vitrines' examining the work of David Darchicourt, a past designer for the NSA. By picking up the entrance section and making a carefully curated selection from the other two parallel themes, Te Papa should be able to represent Secret Power impressively. In fact, by adding in elements of the installation at Marco Polo airport, Te Papa could complete the package and allude to the Marciana library as well.

Images: Top Simon Denny entering the 'airlock' that opens the exhibition Secret Power. Bottom the two other main elements, left featuring the NSA and Snowden material and right designer David Darchicourt

Show and tell

The first thing to be said is that Simon Denny has put up an extraordinary show at the Marciana Library in Venice. It’s not a warm bath; some of the material is challenging and the detail is often overwhelming, but underlying it all is the strong sense that Denny may have cracked a new way of dealing with bulk information. This is not information architecture as promoted by TED founder Richard Saul Wurman, and maybe it’s even the opposite. 

To see Denny’s shiny 3D versions of PowerPoint slides is to think again about the way we have come to communicate or, as Denny suggests, come to ‘a different feel for what information means.’ All this is amplified as the exhibition is encased in a  mid sixteenth century version of the same idea, as Titian and the others figured out ways to depict knowledge in interlocking systems. 

What the art crowd will make of all this is still to come, but early indications are very positive. By boldly demonstrating how common methods of expressing power can span centuries, Denny has spoken eloquently to the spirit of our uneasy times. You can see more images from Simon Denny's installation here on OTN: STUDIO.

Images: Top, Denny in Venice, midle the entrance to the installation and Simon Denny talking to visitors. Bottom, Secret Power.

Old white men, gotta love ‘em

About once every four years or so, a magazine digs the ordinary-people-don’t-get-modern-art story out of a dusty file, smacks it around a bit, and lets it loose. This time it’s North & South’s (country folk) turn, probably to balance off Anthony Byrt’s enthusiasms in Metro (city folk). The writer is Mike White. He specializes in complex crime stories, has won truckloads of awards and studied at Cambridge, so it’s not a I-didn’t-know-any-better junior reporter at work here. 

The piece is titled … But is it art? and  here are the key points (plus - who could resist? - the odd comment).

• First up is Simon Denny’s exhibition at the Adam Art Gallery. White plods through a relentlessly negative description before launching into the irresistible mocking of the wall texts. God only knows we’ve done it ourselves but this is six paras in so White is making his position pretty clear. The 'balance' stuff he brings up later can be put down to window dressing. So why the question mark in the title it's pretty clear from the get go that White knows exactly where he's going.
• Next is Grahame Sydney (conservative landscape painter and regular contemporary art grouch). He gets to play the elitist card. 'They appear to be talking to themselves, rather than anyone else.'
• White then drags up a few of the stock examples regularly used to beat up the 'high-brow' art world. Et al in Venice (c'mon that was 10 years ago), Dane Mitchell at Waikato (six years ago) and last year’s Walters Prize. The final flourish is a quote from another well-worn critic of contemporary art post 1990, Hamish Keith. 'I think this Walters Prize has pushed the boundaries beyond commonsense, beyond credibility, and really it has made a hoax, a joke out of the whole affair.'
• White then raises his own colours a little higher and claims the art world thinks the public is 'hopelessly stupid', even using the phrase 'The Emperor’s new clothes' (insert laugh track here).
• Enter the contemporary art defenders (aka 'balance'). Christina Barton argues that the debate over art is 'frequently oversimplified’ and that people like White 'constantly reiterate old arguments and draw those battle lines in a really unhelpful way.'
• Wystan Curnow tells White that G. Sydney is 'living in a time warp' and that 'the inevitable rumpus around our Venice exhibits is tiresome.'
• Thinking this pro-contemporary stuff is putting the balance thing out of whack, White reaches out to Vincent O’Sullivan, poet, retired academic and writer on (you guessed it) Grahame Sydney. O’Sullivan lashes out at the art establishment. 'It's a sort of priestcraft with them, that they know the words to say but everyone else doesn't.' A bit rich coming from a long term senior academic.
• White follows up with print maker and art school educated Barry Cleavin who says he doesn’t want people explaining art to him and comes up with an insult directed at Wystan Curnow that’s a bit hard to work out.
• The big gun is saved for last, a real insider ex-City Gallery curator Gregory O’Brien. He thought the art in the last Walters Prize was all old hat but is 'happy for the prize to exist' so that’s a relief. Then O’Brien, who is a painter himself, wonders why 'we always choose installation artists' for Venice and that we are “trying to put ourselves on the world stage as a young sexy creative country” in a way he finds 'fatuous'. O’Brien thinks Ralph Hotere (1931-2013) would be less fatuous.
• Next up Courtney Johnston, director of the Dowse Art Museum, says that no art gallery sets out to 'alienate the public' (not hard to imagine what sort of question White would have to ask to get that response). She makes a pitch for something for everyone and adds a reminder of the geniuses who were decried and mocked in their own time (Monet, McCahon).
• Heather Galbraith, this year’s Commissioner for Venice, makes the point that new art always takes time to fit in and that many, many loved artworks went through a phase of being reviled and that people just need to give any work that seems obscure a bit of time.'
• The last word went to Creative NZ ‘s Chief Executive Stephen Wainwright. He thought the public’s right to give feedback was essential and “Inevitably some of it won’t be what we might prefer...”  

Encouragingly the only people White could find to trash contemporary art were five white males, with an average age of 70. 

Image: art cartoon by American painter Ad Reinhardt

Floored

As of yesterday, anyone who arrives Venice via the Marco Polo airport, and that’s practically everyone (including us today), is greeted by the work of Simon Denny. The most spectacular element is the airport floor where Denny has thrown the ceiling of his other venue, the Marciana Library, at your feet and with it any certainty about how to read its famous painted allegories of knowledge. Passengers in a hurry to get to meetings, friends or hotels skimmed across the images in the way we do online.

Those who visit Denny’s other venue when it opens early May will be able to reorient themselves with a quick glace skyward before Denny’s elegant information dump throws everything into the air again.

Images: inbound passengers and part of Simon Denny’s Marco Polo airport installation

Facing up to it

Some arty pics of Simon Denny's incredible exhibition at MoMAPS1 over here on OTNFACEBOOK

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Sydney sider
Having been hammered to death from 2007 to 2009 the artist resale royalty popped up again in the Sunday Star Times. Weirdly artist Grahame Sydney came out against it calling its supporters "Greedy. Immensely greedy." He went on to say that a sale was a sale and that as such it was "A firm, final contract between two parties - the implicit agreement being 'I will give you this thing I have made in return for this amount of money I have asked for, or we have mutually agreed is fair'. At that point, as with any sale, I relinquish my ownership rights to it.” Presumably he exempts copyright payments, the other artist royalty system, from this hard line position.

Art chart  A couple of years ago we looked at the male/female ratio in dealer galleries. Has the situation changed at all since then? Well yes it has. It’s not mega but there has been a small increase overall in the representation of women: just one percent up to a still pretty bleak 34 percent overall. In dealer galleries run by women the percentage increase was 10 percent (to 52 percent) with galleries run by men dropping their representation of women by 5 percent. If you want to look at the representative list of galleries we based these figures on you can see it here.

Gold 
The golden trumpet for stretching description beyond recognition goes this month to New Plymouth Mayor Andrew Judd for: "The Govett-Brewster is a cornerstone of contemporary art globally.” You may smile now.

By the numbers: Venice edition

0  the number of artists who have used the Marco Polo airport as a venue

1    the number of times we didn’t go because et al. annoyed the PM

2         the number of venues being used by Simon Denny

7         the number of times NZ has been represented

41       the number of NZ at Venice patrons

44       the percentage of NZ Venice participants who have been female

45       the average age of artists representing NZ

33       the age of this year’s participant Simon Denny

56       the number of art biennales that have been held in Venice

75       the percentage of women who had to show as part of a two-hander

80       the percentage of men who had solo shows at Venice

88       the number of countries that participate at Venice

197     the days the Venice Biennale will run in 2015

Miniatures
If you haven’t seen the tiny furniture by set designer John Parker on OTN’s site, it's beyond cute. And for all miniature fanatics this great behind-the-scenes clip of tiny LA being constructed for the movie Earthquake.

All the news that fits

The news that Simon Denny is showing in not one but two Venice venues (the Marciana Library and the Marco Polo airport) was recently leaked to the Christchurch media. Creative NZ rallied after an initial omg response but if you’re interested in the whole Venice thing (news as well as PR) it’s not that easy to follow what's happening. Creative NZ has put up a dedicated website but it’s not big on news so doesn't really give the whole picture. And on Facebook and Twitter Creative NZ treats its outings at Venice as a continuous event. This means that on Facebook the doings of artists who have previously been at Venice are all interspersed among updates on what we might see in 2015. On Twitter there's been nothing since September.  So kind of confusing, especially if you hit the signature map image  for Secret Power on the NZ at Venice Facebook page. You don't go to the Secret Power site as you might expect, instead you get 25 images, 21 of them of Michael Parekowhai's work.
   
So here’s a roundup of the extensive media Secret Power has already attracted:

16 February Infurno magazine announces Denny's Venice and PS1MoMA shows.

17 January 2015 satirist Steve Braunias lines up Simon Denny as potential future business in his NZH column Steve Bruanias the secret diary of ...2015

21 December John Daly-Peoples does a follow up for the NBR 'Simon Denny expands his Venice Biennale project'

Nine to Noon's Kathryn Ryan interviews Simon Denny on 16 December

The NBR shamelessly digs into Nicky Hager’s relationship to Simon Denny’s Venice gig on 16 December in a story about Hager’s sister getting a writer’s residency in Nick Grant’s 'Hager named Waikato University’s 2015 writer in residence'

On 15 December CNZ write a press release on Denny's dual venue 2015 'Venice Biennale: Second venue secured for NZ pavilion' which is picked by Scoop

The Denny installation at the Venice airport story reported by Charlie Gates in The Press on 4 December. Along with the inevitable photograph of Nicky Hager it announces the airport installation ‘will be funded by private donors’. The following day the story is updated with a brief CNZ response as 'Kiwi art to greet Venice new arrivals'.

Kim Knight’s 23 November interview with Simon Denny in Stuff 'Biennale artist follows his love'

Kate Brettkelly-Chalmers profiles Simon Denny for Ocula

Ashton Cooper profiles Simon Denny in Blouin Artinfo on 4 November with 'Artist Simon Denny On Silicon Valley, Skeuomorphic Design, and Tech Conferences'

Henry Oliver, a Denny insider, writes 'Simon Denny; the fine art of success' that appears in the November issue of Metro and includes news of Dame Jenny Gibbs' withdrawal from the Venice Patrons

On 29 October Jenny Gibbs gives her side of her walk out from the Venice Patrons to Stuff’s Kim Knight in '"Ethics" behind patron's withdrawal of Biennale support'

Natalie Akoorie on Jenny Gibbs withdrawal from the Venice Patrons in the NZ Herald on 30 October in 'Dirty Politics author in arts funding row'

Sally Blundell profiles Simon Denny in The Listener on 9 October in 'Imagining the vastness' (behind a paywall)

The Dominion Post features Simon Denny in Diana Decker’s 29 September piece 'The power of one: The rise of Simon Denny: Tracking Simon Denny's rise in the art world'

Nicky Hager is announced as a member of the Venice team in Tom Hunt’s 19 August article in Stuff 'Hager's book empowers Venice-bound artist'

E-flux announces Denny’s selection as NZ's representative in Venice on 14 August

Scoop headlines Creative NZ’s 5 August media release announcing the venue for Simon Denny’s installation in Venice with 'Spectacular venue secured for New Zealand exhibition'

Prepare for glory: 100

The Art Review 'Power 100' is out again with its list of 75 powerful men headed by Nicholas, David and Iwan. This year a woman did sneak up into  the top ten. It was Marina Abramovic of course up from possie number 11 last year and judged to be more powerful than Jeff Koons. In the top 25 there were seven women with three of them in the top 10. They included two artists with Cindy Sherman taking slot 10, up from 13 last year. The criteria may be dubious but who can resist a list? There are even some NZ connections to be made. Two Walters Prize judges made the top 100 - Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev at 19 and this year’s judge Charles Esche on the list for the first time as number 87.  A number of the 'powerful' artists have shown in NZ but the City Gallery scored two big ones Rosemarie Trockel (slot 63) and Yayoi Kusama (slot 52) who both had solo shows. And that's not to forget the National Art Gallery's solo exhibition of Cindy Sherman way back in 1989. Then, with the rise and rise of the dealers, lets give a nod to Simon Denny’s German dealer Daniel Buchholz who came in at number 67. You can study the full list here.

Image: OTN breakdown chart of the Art Review 'Power 100' occupations

Water world

What would it take to make someone who has been Commissioner, lead patron and key sponsor for New Zealand’s presence at the Venice Biennale spit the dummy? In the case of Jenny Gibbs it sounds like it was a return airfare to Venice. Oh, did we mention it was for Nicky Hager who is also an advisor for the Simon Denny project. Gibbs along with the Friedlanders has left the patrons group only months before the Denny project launches in Venice. Ironically this odd gesture comes at the same time as Charles Esche has been lecturing the Auckland art scene on the perils of mixing patronage and the public purse in art’s name. All this is hardly likely to worry Simon Denny who has just had a survey exhibition confirmed with MoMA PS1 for next year. Creative NZ seems to be taking things in its stride and the rest of the other patrons seem to be staunch. The fact is over the years the Venice boat has been rocked too many times for it to be swamped by a couple of the crew jumping overboard.
COMMENT 02:10:14 CNZ has emailed to let us know "Dame Jenny Gibbs is supporting the Assistant Curator role (Alex Davidson) for the NZ at Venice 2015 project."

The information sage

Somewhere along the way someone asked what it meant when Simon Denny was called a ‘post -internet’ artist. Now we know. The difference between artists who grew up before the internet and those who didn't is starting to become a little more apparent. It is only possible for Simon Denny, living in Berlin, to keep right up to date with NZ politics and culture post internet. Pre (say) the early nineties, when you went overseas (as we called it) NZ faded away into a few letters from the folks and out of date newspapers. Now someone like Denny can get as much information as those of us on home ground and, as we have seen, information is his stock in trade. The result of his intense curiosity and his current focus on NZ has led him into the spectacular media trifecta of Dotcom, Five Eyes and Nicky Hager. All three are intimately intertwined in ways that only digital media could deliver. The recent pic of Dotcom snapping a selfie at the Waihopai listening station only needed Hager in shot to be picture perfect. Now stir in Hager’s relationship with the hacker drip feeding #dirtypolitics emails off Dotcom’s Megaupload cloud and it's all too good to be true for any self-respecting post-internet artist. The only person not playing the game is John Key. By bringing the election forward a month, he's possibly deprived Denny’s next exhibition The Personal Effects of Kim Dotcom of some valuable publicity.

Image: Nicky Hager and Dotcom at Waihopai (thanks Photoshop)

Shhhhhhh

Creative New Zealand has just announced the venue for Simon Denny’s outing at the Venice Biennale. This time it’s a new location, the grand salon of the Marciana Library in San Marco Square. No big surprise that Denny’s work is going to be about information so expect to see a collision of the digital and analogue worlds. A clue to what Denny might be up to can be found in the name of a special consultant to the project: Nicky Hager. He’s written extensively about New Zealand’s role as one of the furtive five that controversially gather and analyse the digital communications of citizens around the world. In fact the Denny installation will take its name from Hager’s book Secret Power. So, great location, provocative idea and, knowing Simon Denny, more surprises to come.

Image: Simon Denny in his Berlin studio looking at an image of the grand salon of the Marciana Library