.

In passing.    Francis Upritchard is currently showing at the Hammer Museum in LA while her frequent co-exhibitor Martino Gamper has just completed some very superior window dressing for Prada in Milan. And in the better-late-than-never section good news for Sarah Farrar who has finally been officially acknowledged on the Te Papa website as Senior Curator Art (strangely she is at the bottom of the art section staff list, but that's what happens when you order things alphabetically by first name #weird). 

Ouch!     “A lot of New Zealand architecture is bland and oppressive, like Te Papa. Athfield's buildings were never like that. Think what could have happened if he and the genius Frank Gehry had been chosen to design the national museum instead of failing even to make the short list. We might have had a masterpiece; we would certainly have had a building that lived in controversy. Instead, we have a giant nonentity.” That was the Dom Post rather ungraciously using Ian Athfield’s death to stick one to Te Papa. At the other end of the spectrum the Dowse probably went an appreciation too far when it tweeted "The Dowse has grown in so many ways thanks to the genius of Ian Athfield & his team." Somewhat over the top given that Athfield's Dowse build was probably one of the most incoherent refits ever done on a NZ art museum. Wellington is holding a public memorial service for Athfield in Civic Square 3pm on Sunday 1 Feb and you can see a nice doco on the young experimental Athfield here.
 

Crowing.    Art writer and critic Thomas Crow famously declared, "A major contemporary of Rothko, Newman, Pollock, Twombly and Johns - an artist at their level of achievement - is in the midst of his first major touring exhibition. The artist is Colin McCahon, and, yes, he is that good." Word is that Crow is writing another book and, yes, it is on Colin McCahon.
 
China shop.    You can read how Giovanni Intra almost single-handedly invented cool in Chinatown. The second part of Joel Mesler’s drugs and drama account of the LA art scene and its general all round insanity is in the latest Art News. And soon a chance to see a great Intra Blue of moon at Michael Lett starting 28 Feb (OK, we confess, it's ours). 

Rick Ellis, note to self: “Check this guy out”.     Remember how long it took photography and video to be acknowledged as art? Make way - Virtual Reality coming through! Artist Ziv Schneider and his Museum of Stolen Art. More here.
Number graphics: Pippin Barr

Feed me

For some reason Webb’s didn’t go with a live internet feed for its last contemporary art auction and that was a shame.  Online purchasing is getting momentum internationally and an online stream feels like a smart way to spread a brand beyond Auckland. Fortunately Art + Object are still committed to streaming so wherever you are in the world tonight at 6.30pm you can watch or join in by going here.

The A+O auction is a rare chance to pick up a terrific work by Giovanni Intra. It’s one of a set shown in Wellington at Cubewell House in March 1993 when the Teststrip headed south to show their stuff.

A+O will have fingers crossed that there won’t be any drama to upset the rhythm of their sale like the kerfuffle that punctuated Webb’s last auction. Webb’s got the word that one of the Sunday papers was going to 'out' the Colin McCahon Elias painting that was a start turn of their offering as over-cooked conservation wise. It has been owned by Canterbury painter Doris Lusk and then by members of her family so it had an impeccable provenance. When we saw it at Webb’s exhibition in Wellington we (and everyone else we talked to) thought it looked just great. But what the hell would we all know? To the surprise of everyone in the auction rooms, it was removed from sale.
 
Images: top Giovanni Intra with his work from the Teststrip exhibition and bottom, the full suite of works including the one for sale at A+O second from the left

As himself

Giovanni Intra appears as himself in Chris Kraus’s latest novel Summer of hate. Kraus, who spent time in New Zealand when her father worked here in the seventies, became a friend of Intra’s in LA around the time he and a Steve Hansen set up China Art Objects the first dealer gallery to move into LA’s Chinatown. You can read more about the book and Kraus here at GalleristNY 
Image: Giovanni Intra 2001

China Art Objects 1999-2009

It would be nice to say we check out everything that we are told. We don’t. And last week we did jump the gun. An email yesterday from Steve Hanson of China Art Objects tells us that, like Mark Twain, the news of its death has been greatly exaggerated. As Steve says, “These rumors go around pretty quickly, and having to confirm your health continuously gets a little tiresome.” Which in the circumstances was restrained (Thanks for that Steve). China Art Objects has always been special for us - we've seen some great work, had some great times and got to know a fascinating part of Los Angeles. Guess that makes us contrite and delighted at the same time.
(22 June 2009)

Sometime late in 1998, or maybe it was early 1999, Giovanni Intra emailed to say he was opening a gallery in LA with four friends (Steve Hanson, Peter Kim, Amy Yao and Mark Heffernan). It was going to be in an old shop that sold China Art Objects (hence the name) in a back alley in Chinatown. Thinking about Teststrip, another space Giovanni helped start with a bunch of friends in Auckland, we assumed it would be a small artist gallery catering for an equally small audience. Not so. China Art Objects Galleries started a rush of dealer galleries operating out of Chinatown, and for some years was the place to be on a Saturday night after an opening. The space was small but it also boasted a low-slung basement full of crates and an even smaller night club composed of a ring of bench seating and, from memory, a roulette wheel. We only visited now and then but remember some great work by Michael Stevenson, Jon Pylypchuk, Laura Owens and a full sized ass by Eric Wesley, its back legs activated via a garage door lifting mechanism. The idea was that the ass would be exhibited near a wall and it would systematically kick it to pieces during the show. Sad to hear almost exactly 10 years after it opened in March 1999, that China Art Objects Galleries is to close. It had changed over the years doubling in size and installing a fuck-off reception desk (we liked to think it was satirical), but it was still China Art Objects, and that counted for a lot.
Image: Giovanni Intra in the China Art Objects Galleries basement storeroom