Clown torture

As everyone knows clowns are hilarious, until they’re not. The current ‘killer clown’ craze that has swept the United States has now reached the UK and Europe and there are even a few sightings of a try-hard clowns here in NZ. Thanks to Stephen King and a few horror movies, clowns have effortlessly eased out of kids’ parties and circuses into the scare trade. While King’s terrifying storm water drain roaming clown from his 1986 book It was probably the model for recent clown outings, if you want to get real insight into the genre you’ll have the chance when Cindy Sherman’s exhibition opens at Wellington’s City Gallery in November. Sherman started making clown portraits around 2002 as a response to 9/11. ‘The more research I did the more levels I saw. There are a lot of creepy, sad, different emotions that I really like.’ You can see Sherman talking more about the clown thing here.

Image: Cindy Sherman Untitled photographs

Clocked

‘All collections are political’. That was the American artist Fred Wilson in his exhibition Mining the museum. More contentiously, ‘Possessiveness, when it appears as a symptom, is always a secondary phenomenon of anxiety.’ That was the English psychoanalyst D W Winnicott. These thoughts are here to introduce you to a couple of startling exhibitions on the business of collecting. The first is The Keeper, curated by Massimiliano Gioni, which has just opened in New York at the New Museum. At its center is Ydessa Hendeles’s Teddy Bear project (more Teddys than you could possibly imagine). We once saw it installed alongside another artwork from her collection (not a teddy bear this time), Maurizio Cattelan’s Him, a miniature figure of Hitler at prayer. The New York Times took the opportunity offered by The Keeper to ask its readers what they collect. The responses are here including one guy who collects photographs of men in lines. And this brings us to the second exhibition and one of our favourite collectors, the artist Patrick Pound. He is showing his work Documentary Intersect at the Adam Art Gallery, opening tonight. A highlight of the show is a set of around 30 postcards of the same floral clock that Pound has patiently assembled over the years. Incredibly, each card is in fact a different photograph of the same clock and, even more remarkably, each one shows a different time. Eat your heart out Christian Marclay.

Image Pat Pound installing his exhibition at the Adam art Gallery

Breathless

If there was ever an artist whose time has come it’s got to be Patrick Pound. This New Zealand artist who has been living in Australia for many years has evolved his work into a form of idiosyncratic curation building his own (let’s collect a few E’s together ourselves) eclectic, erudite, exuberant and enigmatic museums of thematically linked objects. A museum of white, a museum of holes, a museum of darkness, and for the huge Melbourne now show that fills both venues of the National Gallery of Victoria, The gallery of air.

Pat’s long-term obsession with the power-of-things fits neatly into the current intellectual cred given to the Renaissance idea of the cabinet of curiosities, with MONA in Hobart being one poster child and the last Documenta another.  This combining of artefacts that effortlessly cater for the brainy and the bling addict at the same time is proving irresistible to art institutions on the hunt for bigger audiences.

The gallery of air has its own room in the NGV. Drawn from Pat’s own extensive collections and objects he selected from the storerooms and galleries of the NGV, the Museum elegantly presents many objects with not a label in sight. There is a booklet that helps you establish what some of the objects are and how they are related to air, but deciphering the puzzle is what it’s about. 

Some of the items in The Gallery of air are: a whoopee cushion, the air filter from a Ford Zephyr, a doll dressed as an air hostess, a small figure with its hands in the air, A F A Schenck’s melodramatic painting Anguish (reputedly the most popular work in the NGV), an air hockey puck, a photograph of someone blowing life into a lilo, an Air Force ribbon, the booklet Underwater air breathing issued by the Standards Association of Australia…you get the idea. Pat claims on the sole wall panel, “I was quite worried that the NGV’s things might not be as interesting as mine but they seem to be holding their own”. Curiously true.
 
You can see more images from The gallery of air here in the Age and a video of Pat discussing his work here on the Sydney Morning Herald.

The ring cycle

Who'd have thought a cultural smack down between two giant fashion houses would take place in Venice? 

In the left hand corner we have Prada with intellectual cred and a curatorial heavyweight. Germano Celant - a past director of the Venice Biennale and the person who first coined the term Arte Povera in 1967 - leads off for Prada. As we've already posted, Prada has filled its entire building with a highly researched recreation of the famous 1969 exhibition When attitudes become form. 

Then, in the right hand corner we have Gucci (YSL, Bottega Veneta, Sergio Rossi, Stella McCartney etc etc) for the François Pinault Foundation. Director Martin Bethenod is a journalist and previously Chief of Staff for the President of the Pompidou Centre. This might seem a little lightweight but the Pinault Foundation brings into the ring a gigantic installation by Rudolf Stingel at the Palazzo Grassi. Stingel has photographed an oriental rug, enlarged it and then had the enlarged image printed onto carpet. 

But wait, there’s more. Lots of carpet. It's been impeccably laid over the entire 5,000 square meters of the building, floors and walls. It’s about 4800 meters more than we needed.

A knock-out for Prada in the first round.

Images: Top, Rudolf Stingel at the Palazzo Grassi and bottom, a detail from Prada’s recreation of When attitudes become form. Photo: Attilio Maranzano for Fondazione Prada

Do do that Voo Doo that you do so well

As you all know OTN is always on the look out for art themes, and one you can’t avoid at the moment is the occult. Hard to find an exhibition where someone is not casting spells, telling fortunes or summoning up something or other. 

All this makes you appreciate the prescience of Auckland artist Dane Mitchell. He arranged for a witch to curse the space under the stairs of Starkwhite’s downstairs gallery in the exhibition Vanishing point back in 2005 and then went on to chat with the recalcitrant spirit of Rita Angus a year or so later. Unfortunately Dane’s escapades with Wellington’s painterly ghost did not make it into Gaylene Preston’s documentary Lovely Rita but you can catch up with them via the DVD extras. 

In summation of this recent spiritual turn by artists around the world, the Quai Branly Museum presented the exhibition Masters of chaos. The curator Kean de Loisy selected some of the Museum’s most powerful objects and placed them in dialogue with contemporary pieces that drew on transgressive ideas of shamanism (Joseph Beuys) and shape shifting (Paul McCarthy and Jonathan Meese) and spirits (Annette Messager). 

One installation that stopped most people short was a small altar that had been specifically created by the Voo Doo priest Aze Kokovivina in the exhibition. Most visitors were attracted to the motley pile of waxed objects and detritus and then on reading the description, as quickly put as much distance as they could between them and it. 

Images: Left, Dane Mitchell’s cursed space at Starkwhite and right, Voo Doo shrine at Quai Branly

Drive

If you were in Auckland last week one of the things you probably heard people talking about was Luke Willis Thompson’s taxi ride. If it had been online it would’ve gone viral. 

The ride and the experience that follows make up the work inthisholeonthisislandwhereiam that Thompson is showing at Hopkinson Cundy. At the gallery space in Cross Street you get bare white walls and a cab in the loading dock. By now (it has been going for a week) quite a few people have taken a ride, but if you haven’t you should definitely try to book a time (call +64 9 55 11 644). You need to reckon on around 45 minutes from when the taxi leaves the gallery. 

No need for a spoiler alert here because that’s all your getting.

Image: The Thompson taxi heading off

Sermon on the mount

To give his works on paper greater physical presence American artist Mark Rothko applied them to a sheet of canvas and then stretched the canvas. We remember seeing a moody 1967 untitled Rothko work presented in this way when the Thyssen Bornemisza collection toured New Zealand in 1980. As you approached the work it was certainly easy to assume it was painted on canvas. Oddly circular then to see some Rothko reproductions in an Auckland restaurant dutifully mounted on canvas to lend them added gravitas.

The sculpture’s not for kicking

Maybe Scott Eady insisted that his Kick Me sculpture was protected by a flimsy rope barrier in the City Gallery exhibition The obstinate object as added irony, but we’re pretty sure we saw it on show in Auckland with no barriers at all. The written material claims that Eady "makes disruptive and troublesome sculpture” although it's hard to imagine it causing much trouble if the audience isn't even allowed close enough to touch it. Why the caution? What’s the worst thing anyone can do? Kick it?

Other OTN stories about barriers to enjoying art:

Paying the piper in Upper Hutt

A barriers medley

Little Aussie barriers

Serra the fall guy

Soap and water

The Dowse must wonder what hit it. Maori objections to the proximity of morgue water to the pataka Nuku Tewhatewha led it to cancel the installation So It Vanishes which was to have been a star turn of the International Festival of the Arts. The work by Mexican artist Teresa Margolles would have dropped bubbles containing traces of water used to wash bodies in a morgue into the exhibition space from the ceiling. Although the Dowse has dealt with the Maori challenge in this instance by cancelling the exhibition, there are some big issues here that won’t go away, and no one wants the Dowse to end burdened by a future of avoidance, second guessing and self-censorship. 

The debate has now become about the ability of the Dowse to show all kinds of contemporary art without this kind of pressure requiring a back down. Death, sex and challenging behaviour are part of contemporary art’s package and have been for some time now. They aren’t going away any time soon.

What has complicated the situation for the Dowse is the question of its identity. Originally called the Dowse Art Gallery in the 1970s, it veered into the territory of community museum in the 1980s expanding its commitment to local taonga by taking in Nuku Tewhatewha. Now it is struggling to redevelop its role as a contemporary art museum. All these different identities and expectations make for contradictions as well as conflicts.

From outside the outcome of the present fracas is surprising and feels arbitrary. Consider that most spectacular of Museum/Maori cultural meetings -- the presentation of Te Maori at The Metropolitan Museum in New York. Here the presence of death which is central to the Met’s vast Egyptian collections butted right up against Te Maori and was accommodated by both Maori and museum. If that spirit had endured in this instance we would have seen Teresa Margolles opening at the Dowse this weekend. Perhaps it would have been introduced by signage about spiritual concerns, possibly there would have been some kind of Maori spiritual guidance, but the show would have gone on and its potential audience could each have chosen whether to interact with it or not. 

As usual in these situations what happens next is far more important than what has happened up to now. Do the Dowse’s communities agree that the presence of Nuku Tewhatewha trumps all other cultural concerns? Whatever they resolve will have a major impact on the evolving role of the Dowse as a contemporary art museum. We’re not talking theory and rhetoric here. Rightly or wrongly the Dowse has dropped the exhibition of a significant and highly respected artist and given specific cultural reasons for doing so. 

Teresa Margolle named her exhibition So It Vanishes. In its role as an independent contemporary art museum the Dowse and its supporters will be finding that title alarmingly charged. It’s now their opportunity to lead the discussion.

Image: The barrier erected to separate Te Maori from the Egyptian collections at Te Papa.

What’s in that crate?

As this photograph was taken through the closed doors of the City Gallery last weekend while they were setting up their next exhibition The Obstinate Object which opens tonight, we are picking that it was elements of Don Driver’s installation Ritual. The work consists of nine provocatively semi-clad dolls each standing on a 44 gallon oil drum that are conveyed in a wooden tumbrel resting on a bed of hay. Ritual hasn’t been seen for a while and with its flashing lights and soulful soundtrack it’s intended to be a centrepiece of the City Gallery curated exhibition. 

The last time we saw Ritual was in 1999 when Driver’s survey exhibition With Spirit toured. Hilariously, when it was first shown at the National Art Gallery in 1982 a handout was issued reassuring visitors that the work was not connected with any form of black magic.

Ritual is now owned by Te Papa, thanks to the Govett-Brewster shamefully reneging on a commitment to purchase negotiated by Director Dick Bett and later resubmitted by the new director Cheryll Sotheran. Fortunately the National Gallery stepped in and purchased Driver's controversial installation in 1989. Ironically Sotheran got to live with Ritual on the rebound when she became CEO of Te Papa. So maybe Black Magic was involved after all.

Real good

If you come from Wellington - the home of WETA - replication doesn't surprise you so much. The workshop has become a world leader in producing replications that are totally convincing. Tough lines for any artist who is in the same game and no one is in it more than the Kaikohe based sculptor Glen Hayward. But somehow Hayward manages to bring to his life-like objects another strain of being so they flicker in and out of the real world like that Predator thing did when it was rushing through the jungle. So when we visited the McCahon House in Titirangi the other day to see Glen Hayward’s wind-up exhibition as its latest resident, it was hard to see there was an exhibition there at all until you settled into the space.

It turned out that all the works were based on details from the McCahon house itself faithfully reproduced - a clunky light switch with DIY conduit, the lid off a can, a set of washing tubs, a section of wall that looked for all the world like something from Julian Schnabel, a hump of concrete and brick. Ripped out of their homely context in the McCahon House to be live another second life in the residency studio.

Images: Top left electrics at the McCahon House, right, Glen Hayward's Seventh day (a very reasonably priced multiple in an edition of five that has been made available to help raise funds for the McCahon House). Bottom, Glen Hayward's exhibition at the McCahon House residency studio

Rohan Rohan la la la

It occurs to us that we failed to mention one of the more extreme art lookalikes that happened back in 2009. Gaze in awe at this Youtube clip of Rohan Weallean’s twin brother standing in when Rohan couldn’t make it to the Queensland Art Gallery (GOMA) to give this performance in front of one of his paintings for the  exhibition Unnerved.
Later: Also forgot to mention that the real Rohan has an exhibition on at Hamish McKay Gallery in Wellington right this minute.

The real thing

First up, Auckland now has a real art gallery. It’s the kind of institution a city the size of Auckland ought to have. There’s a lot of new exhibition space, a research library that's open six days a week instead of two and the corporate entertaining foyer turns out to be far less overbearing than was feared. Given what the architects had to cope with (a restricted site, incorporation of heritage buildings, trees and height restrictions) it’s probably inevitable there’s some complicated navigation, more corridors than you’d hope for and a few odd shaped spaces here and there. Overall though Auckland has got a building of substance and quality.

The opening suite of exhibitions is about the collections. It felt as though every one of the key works that have become so familiar in the Auckland Art Gallery's telling of New Zealand's art history was on show. With the exception of firmly placing contemporary Maori art into the mainstream, the story told by Gordon Brown and Hamish Keith way back in the late sixties seemed to remain pretty much intact. The other great debt is evident in the Gallery’s reliance on the Chartwell Collection to present its three gallery survey of contemporary art. The curatorial staff must lie awake at night praying that the Trust never takes pivotal works like Hotere’s massive mural Te Aupouri away from them.

The all-the-collection-that-fits focus in the contemporary galleries on the ground floor has resulted in some unfortunate overcrowding and a number of jarring juxtapositions. Overall it’s probably best to leave skying and double hanging to experts like Peter McLeavey. On level one the early art of New Zealand and art from Europe looks terrific. There's a lot of it and while easel painting and sculptures that love the plinth are an easier hanging proposition than your more unruly contemporary works, it is still great to see them displayed with such clarity and confidence.

On level two contemporary art gets a sharp smack from the architecture. Spaces intended to accommodate the contemporary programme are dominated by a handful of over-egged designer-pillars that are doomed to be a major distraction until they are inevitably dealt to. In the opening exhibitions on this floor et al. sensibly hid their pillar by wrapping it in black polythene, Peter Robinson and Dane Mitchell took the hit.

So now Auckland has an institution which will allow them to once more be the anchor of art in New Zealand. They have the collection, they have the resources, they have the public behind them, and now they have the building.

Image: Three large galleries for contemporary art on the ground floor

Into the void

Dane Mitchell gets a full page in the May-June issue of Frieze magazine. Mercedes Vincente takes him through an interview about the recent work including his representations of the invisible via perfumes and other niceties. Says Mitchell, "For sure the notion of emptiness lends itself to be read wryly."