Nakaochiai

Returning to the Tokyo theme sparked by the rediscovery of Ray Castle, let’s turn to the Nakaochiai Gallery in Shinjuku. Run by New Zealander Julia Barnes and Californian artist Clint Taniguchi, the gallery is on the ground floor of a traditional shop house. This one was originally a kakigori and okashiya shop (a place that served shaved ice deserts and cake) and although most of the old buildings in the area have gone, it still feels like a real community. Even the walk from Nakai station is an eye-opener, taking you past houses, stores, workshops and a large temple complex. The gallery opens out onto the street and is often used by artists for installations. Some of the rooms upstairs (tatami, sliding doors) are also used from time to time. Julia and Clint were in New Zealand over the holidays talking about possible exchanges of artists and ideas between NZ and Tokyo. One of their projects, the Instant Drawing Machine from the San Francisco based collaborative team, Crust and Dirt, is already slated for Barcelona and Melbourne.
Pictures Left: KazumasaNoguchi-Small Impact. Right: ChrisDuncan-PlayingFields

Tipped

One of the more influential books published over the last few years has been Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point. Gladwell offers an explanation for why change often happens so quickly and unexpectedly. He calls this sudden change the Tipping Point. Gladwell describes tipping points as those “social epidemics that surround us”. Looking at the list of exhibitors, the 2007 Auckland Art Fair is turning out to be one such epidemic. From our memory of the previous fair in 2005, new exhibitors for 2007 include: Gow Langsford Gallery, Hamish McKay Gallery, Ivan Anthony, Jensen Gallery, Jonathan Smart Gallery, Michael Lett Gallery, McNamara Gallery, Peter McLeavey Gallery, Roger Williams Contemporary, Sue Crockford Gallery and from Australia, the Anna Schwartz Gallery and the Kaliman Gallery. From a Fair that was – let’s be kind - average, the Auckland Art Fair has obviously tipped and become essential.

Lost in the wilderness

Over at stimulusresponse is a new comic called KIM. It combines the layout of a junkmail flier, the text of a Jews for Jesus pamphlet, and the story of a man who died of hypothermia in the snow in Oregon while walking to find help for his family stranded in their car.

Copy cat II

Left: Pieta, by Michelangelo. Right: The statue of Returning Son, created for the movie Superman Returns by Weta Collectibles.

Frame up

This just in from one of our readers. As authentic as it seems, we are still not convinced.

Where are they now? – Ray Castle

Ray Castle ran the Closet Gallery, a dealer gallery at the top of Queen Street, in the late seventies and early eighties. Ray described himself as the gallery’s "visual arts and sound curator". His exhibitions were never less than surprising and had titles like Mixed mulch (group show), Strip show (films and animation), Art is my wife (Clairmont) and Erotic art (erotic art). The gallery was open for about five years. In the eighties he travelled extensively ending up in Tokyo, where he now lives. He now describes himself as an “Astrologer, Musician, Film Maker, DJ, Writer, currently researching the Japanese 'otaku' manga & anime scene, particularly, the Akihabara district of Tokyo.” You can read Ray’s blog here and get links from that through to his various web sites.

Gold standard

One of our readers insists that the Auckland Art Gallery took part in last year’s Santa parade. Carrying large gold frames staff members, dressed as characters from well-known paintings, offered to be photographed with people in the crowd. Anyway, that’s what we’re told. We don’t believe a word of it, but the story won’t go away. The only way out of this impasse is evidence, so we have decided to offer one of our rare overthenet artist signed table tennis balls for anyone who can come up with a photograph. Photoshop entries are not eligible for the prize (unless they're really good), but more than welcome.

The duck mouse problem

The concrete attempts to represent Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse pictured above, are familiar figures in a children’s playground in Picton. They are also the inspiration of Ronnie van Hout's installation Duck Character and Mouse Character. In the catalogue of his survey exhibition Ronnie van Hout: I have abandoned me Ronnie says. "I think I have always been drawn to the amateur aspect of art making." Justin Paton, curator of the exhibition adds, "In a culture where products (art products too) are prized for efficiency and self possession, van Hout looks instead for unlicensed franchises and knock-offs so off that they outflank the originals."
Top Ronnie van Hout, Duck Character and Mouse Character 1999. Bottom: Picton pictures- Hamish McKay

Pants on fire

“Our Marketing material is not highlighting Keku’s mummy as a main attraction”
Te Taru White, Chief Executive and Kaihautu of Te Papa – Te Papa podcast

Dead reckoning

Here’s a question for you. Given that it’s offensive to Maori and contravenes its own written policy, how does Te Papa justify its exhibition of the human remains of the Egyptian woman Keku in Egypt beyond the tomb?

Its very confusing. Te Taru White, Chief Executive and Kaihautu of Te Papa states on the Egypt beyond the tomb podcast, “As far as Maori are concerned, any public display of remains is inconsistent with very, very deep cultural feelings.”

Seddon Bennington, CEO of Te Papa agrees “Indigenous communities have expressed pretty consistently that they don’t think museums should hold human remains in their collections.”

OK, so if it is offensive to Maori and other indigenous people, and given that Te Papa has a written collections development and human remains policy forbidding it, how do they end up exhibiting a mummy? Simple. “We decided to make an exception to our policy.” says Bennington.
The illustration above is from the Lift the lid on Mehit web feature on Te Papa’s Egypt beyond the tomb web page. As Te Papa’s CEO also mentions on the podcast it is the responsibility of museums to be “respectful.”

Where are they now? - Ian Hunter

Ian Hunter was acting director of the National Art Gallery before the appointment of Luit Bieringa and a sculptor and curator. Along with Andrew Drummond and Nicholas Spill (Drummond and Spill also worked at the National Gallery) Ian Hunter was very active in creating opportunities for installations and exhibitions, including his own pet project ANZART. Ian was the driving force behind the F1 exhibition held in an old soft drink factory in Wellington where Moore Wilson’s is today located. During the exhibition a wit sprayed a slogan on the outside wall: “When is a factory not a factory? When it’s a closed shop.”

After leaving New Zealand he was Arts Officer at the National Council for Civil Liberties in London until 1984. Ian is currently the Artist director of LITTORAL ARTS which he started in 1989. This non-profit Arts Trust for Social and Environmental Change is based in Lancashire.
Picture: Ian Hunter (Photo © Rossendale Free Press)

Sand castle

Whenever anyone comes back from a trip out of NZ, we always ask what the best thing they saw was. It only seems fair to answer the question ourselves. The best thing was in Palm Springs: the Kaufmann house designed by Richard Neutra and built between 1946 and 1947. The house is not open to the public but you can see enough lurking around the front gate to know it is a miracle. The only quibble is that the exquisite renovations might have lurched into the too exquisite. For example, all the screws in the deck are installed so that every groove faced in the same direction. This house and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, also commissioned by Kaufmann, are considered to be two of the top five houses designed in the twentieth century. For plans and interior photographs go here. And in case you didn’t get the full weight of the power message, the trespass sign is cast in bronze.

The meanest Indian

The background. Meena Kadri worked as a designer with us on some of the exhibitions we did for the Film Archive in Wellington. She then set up shop in with the graphic design company Meanest Indian in the Land and is currently in Ahmedabad, India where she does some teaching at the National Institute of Design. And the connection? Trolling through RSS feeds recently Boing Boing pointed us to some terrific photographs of graphics painted onto the mudflaps of Indian trucks. Turned out they had been posted by Meena on Flickr along with a huge archive of other images. Big Internet, small world. When we got in touch she was just back from a trip to Pondicherry, a former French colony in southern India, where she was working on the proposal for an exhibition in Glasgow this year on vernacular typography. If you go for the vernacular, check out her flickr page here.

“Aw, c’mon Cupcake. Be nice.”

The invitation to the City Gallery’s Prospect exhibition contained a surprise: Saatchi & Saatchi were not listed as a sponsor. The word on the street (always wanted to say that) is that the agency’s campaign idea for Prospect was rejected and the City Gallery and Saatchi & Saatchi have gone their own ways. The problematic campaign was based around the phrase “Is it art?” Apparently this tag-line was to be written in icing on a cup cake, spray-painted on a wall and painted on a canvas inside a gold frame. City Gallery graphics for the Prospect show appear to have been taken on by Len Cheeseman, ex Saatchi & Saatchi and now part of parkviewmotorcamp.
Header quote from Lost series 1 episode 7, Sawyer, played by Josh Holloway

What’s a nice goal like you ...

This insightful quote arrived in response to our request for a "Where-are-they-now?" update on Cheryll Sotheran. The statement is from NZ Trade and Enterprise's own Better by Design site and comes under the modest heading: “Pearls of wisdom from a range of people who are convinced that design does matter.”
“The reality is that New Zealand must focus on design-led growth to avoid slipping further down the economic growth rankings – a key goal of Government.”
Dame Cheryll Sotheran, Sector Director, Creative Industries, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise