….and statistics

The Frances Hodgkins Fellowship is fifty years old. The fiftieth Fellow was recently announced as Campbell Patterson from Auckland. Looking back, the list of artists over those fifty years is a mix of well-known names peppered with a fair number of who-the-hell-was-that? Still it stands as a good example of how representation has changed, well for women anyway. For the first twenty years there were only five women Frances Hodgkins Fellows (so many ironies in just three words) but over the next twenty years this changed dramatically with 45 percent of the ‘Fellows’ being women and over the last ten years, 50 percent. 

For people identifying as Maori the situation has been a little less encouraging: six out of the fifty spots. This certainly makes the media release announcing Campbell Patterson’s success somewhat ingenuous. It gives examples of past celebrated winners as ‘Ralph Hotere, Grahame Sydney, Marilynn Webb, Fiona Pardington, Shane Cotton and Heather Straka’. Ok, this selection represents the 50 percent women thing (although over the full 50 years it has only been 38 percent) but to have 67 percent of the list as Maori stars is a plain misrepresentation of who have been awarded the Fellowship. And once you note that Shane Cotton was the last Maori to be awarded the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship and that was back 18 years ago, you have to wonder what’s going on. And then, boom! it comes to you. Marketing, got to love it.

Image: Campbell Patterson, 2017 Frances Hodgkins Fellow

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.

Big eyes

After a scan of some dealer galleries, a best-of show in LA and too much time on Google, here’s some of what to expect from art in the next 12 months.

• Plants in pots, in arrangements and in fragments
• Large mirrors and reflective surfaces
• Installations in stand-alone rooms
• Tiles and more tiles, on the floor, on the wall and on the ceiling
• Performances (many of them based on work by Yvonne Rainer)
• Collectives and groups
• Ceramics, ceramics and more ceramics
• Rumbling bass sound tracks
• Small abstract paintings that remind you of other paintings you've seen
• Artist statements printed onto the gallery wall
• Things made of bronze that look like they are made of something else
• Artists writing printed in handouts
• Artists curating other artists as their own work of art

Art’s white rhinos

To counter the endless ‘power’ lists Hyperallergic has published its 20 most powerless people, places and things in the art world. This line-up presents art’s threatened species. You can no doubt easily think of more verging on extinction so a prize for the best suggestions sent to OTN. In the meantime, here’s a sampler of Hyperallergic's contenders.

Critics
Identity-Politics Curators
“Modest Abstraction” Painters
Artists who aren’t Celebrities
Brick and Mortar Galleries
Political Artists
Artists Riffing on Any Decade Besides the 1970s
Negative Criticism

You can see the full list here.

Walters world

This ‘Walters’ carpet is yours if you purchase the Wellington apartment currently on sale here.

Other posts on Gorden Walters his paintings and his imitators dedicated to reader p monkey:
Fuss and bother
Hotel borrowings
Walters in Wellington
Inappropriation
Portrait
Copycat
Branded
Koru madness
Plate and chair

There’ll always be an England

As publishers scramble to bring out yet more art books featuring full page pics in all sorts of varying combinations (the alphabet being the most popular), British publisher Thames and Hudson have just announced 100 works of art that will define our age. To pump up their own picks they set the bar high. "Just as Picasso’s Guernica and Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa survive as powerful cultural documents of their time, there will be works from our own era that will endure for generations to come." OK, but which ones?
 
Before you rush out to order it, beware. Of the 100 artists who made the artworks that ‘will define our age’ 30 come from, you guessed it, the UK. And so, (not that surprisingly) does the author.

Larry’s list

Wow, that sounds interesting. Some German guy has set up a database ranking every art collector worldwide. How would you do a thing like that? Magnus Resch has done it by enlisting collector collectors. He calls them researchers and claims 25 of them in 20 countries including New Zealand (the usual OTN branded rewards for anyone who can tell us who is stalking NZ’s art owners). As you might imagine the ‘research’ comes with a large serving of random. Who knows why Magnus has called the result Larry’s List but he claims it has nothing to do with Larry G.

The list of NZ collectors (their initials anyway) is available on Larry’s List. It gives you a fairly good idea of how arbitrary and, yes let’s face it, stupid this idea is. In Auckland the two JGs are there (Gibbs and Gow) but no AG, RG or SG. You can find HD but where’s JW and AB? As for Wellington MB and JB are there (who ever the hell they are) but no sign of TF, SF or NMcG let alone AT or the other MB.

The NZ collectors, as represented by their initials, are:
Auckland: JG, RS, EC, WB, JG, JS, AS, AH, DR, RC, EC, JR, DM, CM, RH, FR, GR, NG, BP, HC and LM
Arrowtown: MH
Queenstown: SE
Wellington: MB, JB, DA, VA and PS
Canterbury: GG and LG
Nelson: KS and rather bizarrely that small suburb outside Nelson, Los Vegas: GS

You can check out the initial part of Larry’s List here or pay $10 a pop to dig deeper. 

Image: (while we’re on the subject of random) the best pic that came up when we put ‘new zealand collector’ into Google Images

This is public money and it’s none of your damn business

If you’ve followed Creative New Zealand’s handling of the Venice Biennale you'll know it's hard to keep up with how the selection of artists to represent NZ is made. Given that it costs close to a million dollars that's probably not a good thing. For the last two outings the selections seemed to be a fait accompli but the efforts to find the representative for 2015 have taken a formal line as in: send-us-an-expression-of-interest-and-if-we-think-you’re-up-to-it-we-will-call-for-a-proposal-which-our-panel-will-judge.

Now, the Venice Biennale is by far the largest single chunk of public money that goes to the Visual Arts (it's around 15 percent of the visual arts annual total) so it matters how it is spent. The only way to see what CNZ is trying to achieve at Venice is to understand the rationale for the selection so we can have an informed discussion not just a reaction. It’s a power thing. The difficulty is that even when there is a selection process in place, as there is this time around, it's impossible to judge the quality of the decision unless you know who threw which hat in the ring.

CNZ issued an 11 page call for expressions of interest (you can read it here) to be in no later than 12 August so we asked for the names of the curators who have expressed interest and the artists they want to work with. No, said CNZ. We asked again as a matter of urgency under the provisions of the Official Information Act. We got a standard go-away letter.

“Creative New Zealand is aware of a number of people who are interested in and eligible to make proposals.” Of course they are, CNZ would have had all expressions of interest since the deadline of 12 August and sent them all emails on or about 16 August. Word is that all the proposals were accepted to go through to the next stage so that’s a lot of proposal writing to be done between now and the deadline of 16 September.

More from CNZ:
“Creative New Zealand’s decision is made on the basis that all applications are submitted to us in confidence…” Say what? Confidentiality is not mentioned anywhere in the CNZ call for proposals and why would it be a problem for artists or for curators if people knew they'd applied? This is the sort of attitude that encourages an unhelpful winner-takes-all culture. As one senior curator said to us, “why not just release them. It's kudos for the artist, not a shaming.”

“Making application material available during the funding decision making process would prejudice the provision of free and frank opinions to us in applications” Hey back up the bus we didn’t ever ask for material in the applications, only the names of the people who put in proposals. And besides we would be perfectly happy to have the names after the proposals have been written and sent in to CNZ which would seem to sort out free and frank.

So there you go. What we did was to ask for a list of people that at least 50 people will know already and that most of us will have worked out in a few weeks, and that’s what you get. You can read the two CNZ responses here. 

Our next step will be to ask the Ombudsman to reverse CNZ’s decision, but having to do this for such a simple request feels like overkill and a waste of public money. Why can’t we all just get along.

Short list

In their annual 500 best galleries feature Modern Painters Magazine aka BlouinArtinfo has listed the top galleries for Australia and New Zealand. For the Australians 20 galleries are noted spread across Adelaide (1), Brisbane (1), Melbourne (8) and Sydney (11). For New Zealand they list three: Hopkinson Mossman, Michael Lett and Starkwhite.
Images: top left John Reynolds at Starkwhite, right Michael Stevenson at Michale Lett and bottom Nick Austin at Hopkinson Mossman

Multiples

For curators and art writers here, from the Venice Biennale, the ten top hot words for labels and wall texts.
Conceit
Crystalise
Deploy
Deflect
Generative
Governing
Mines
Posit
Talisman
Stratified

1978

Jim Barr (Dowse Art Gallery)

Luit Bieringa (Manawatu Art Gallery)

Pat Day (National Art Gallery)

Austin Davies (Suter Art Gallery)

Ken Gorbey (Waikato Museum of Art and History)

Rodney Wilson (Robert McDougall Art Gallery)

Les Lloyd (Dunedin Public Art Gallery)

Bill Milbank (Sarjeant Gallery)

John Perry (Rotorua Art Gallery)

Ron O’Reilly (Govett-Brewster Art Gallery)

Ernest Smith (Auckland City Art Gallery)

Direction

Christina Barton (Adam Art Gallery)

Elizabeth Caldwell (City Gallery)

Julie Catchpole (Suter Art Gallery)

Fiona Ciaran (Aigantighe Art Gallery)

Rhana Devenport (Auckland Art Gallery)

Jenny Harper (Christchurch Art Gallery)

Penelope Jackson (Tauranga Art Gallery)

Courtney Johnston (Dowse Art Museum)

Charlotte Huddleston (St Paul St Gallery)

Helen Kedgley (Pataka)

Cherie Meecham (Waikato Museum of Art and History)

Melanie Oliver (Physics Room)

Caterina Riva (Artspace)

Linda Tyler (Gus Fisher Gallery)

The top 10 percent

It’s list season again as the Northern and first off the block is Art Review with its top 100 most influential people in the art world. Well rest easy it is much the same as last year with only two changes in the critical top 10. There are three women of the eleven chosen (the Serpentine gallery gets to have both its directors in place 10 which is their first time this high) and only two artists Ai Weiwei for his politics and Gerhard Richter for his muscle in the market. Larry Gagosian is up a place from last year at two and might be on the way to the top again as he was in 2010. He is one of three dealer gallerists on the top 10.Top this year is Documenta curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargeiv who you will remember also judged one of the Walters Prize finals. Last in at 100 is eponymous Slovenian Gallery owner Gregor Podnar. You can see the full 100 here.
Image: Carolyn Christov-Bakargeiv with Francis Upritchard’s award winning work for the 2008 Walters Prize.

By the numbers

Art + Object have released some interesting numbers showing the top ten prices paid for art at auction since the early eighties. Colin McCahon takes the number one and number two spots followed by C F Goldie at three and four. McCahon then comes back at five and six while C F claims places eight and nine. Sandwiched between the price titans are Frances Hodgkins in position seven and then Gordon Walters sneaks in at spot ten. Art + Object shares the full list based on Australian Art Sales Digest here.

But hang on. Who fronted up with the most cash for acrerage? Now that is a different list altogether. Here's prices paid per square millimetre in descending order.

$7.12 Colin McCahon I considered all the acts of oppression

$3.17 Colin McCahon Let be, let be

$2.67 Gordon Walters Tirangi II

$1.60 Colin McCahon No 2

$1.04 Frances Hodgkins Still life with landscape

$0.92 Colin McCahon He calls for Elias

And then come the Goldies at $0.70, $0.51, $0.33 and $0.29 a pop.

Contemporary art: putting its money where its mouth is.

Just saying

One thing you can say about most New Zealand artists, they are generally supportive of one another. Ok you may hear the odd snipe - we remember Toss Woollaston calling Elizabeth Kelly “Pond Cream Kelly” because that's what he thought she painted with - but elsewhere artist-to-artist insults are in a whole different league

“Jackson Pollock’s paintings might be very pretty but they’re just decoration. I always think they look like old lace.”

Francis Bacon

“He finished modern art at one blow by outuglying, alone, in a single day, the ugly that all others combined turned out in several years.”

Dali on Picasso

“It’s a pity he doesn’t paint.”

Chagall on Picasso

"This man has come into the world to destroy painting.”

Poussin on Caravaggio

“Cézanne is a catastrophe of awkwardness.”

Dali

"I’d rather sit on the floor in the market of Toluca and sell tortillas, than have anything to do with those ‘artistic’ bitches of Paris.”

Frida Kahlo on the Surrealists in general

“The silence of Marcel Duchamp is overrated.”

Beuys

“He bores me.”

Renoir on da Vinci

“Oh, I think he’s great. He makes such great lunches.”

Warhol on Jasper Johns

Source: list via flavorwire, you can read more here

Says who?

Via Real Clear Arts a response to Newsweek's silly Top Ten artist list in the form of a list made by Look magazine. This 1949 list of the "Ten Best Artists," was determined by a poll of museum directors and art critics.

John Marin
Max Weber
Yasuo Kuniyoski
Stuart Davis
Ben Shahn
Charles Burchfield
George Grosz
Franklin Watkins
a tie between Lyonel Feininger and Jack Levine

The name game

As OTN readers know, we are big fans of lists and this one is right up there. It’s a list of favourite artists written by Picasso for Walt Kuhn, the artist who organised the 1913 Armory show in New York. The 27 year old Duchamp (who was to scandalise the second Armory exhibition a year later with his Nude descending the staircase) is there, which says something for Picasso’s judgement. Braque, on the other hand, appears to have been tacked on at the end as an after-thought, which probably speaks to Picasso’s acute competitiveness given that he and Braque were both on the final stretch of their shared Cubist adventure.