Vivian Bishop and her circle

Here is the other photograph from the 1968 NZ Vogue, this time South Islanders. As far as we know there was no picture of the Wellington art scene which was described as “a disaster area in the visual arts.”
Pictured members of Christchurch’s 20/20 Vision. Left to right, at top: Michael Eaton (with beard), David Graham, Don Peebles, Carl Sydow (with beard), Derek Mitchell (with beard), Michael Kitson. Next row from extreme left: Trevor Moffit, Gavin Bishop, Ted Francis, Alan Olliver, Quentin MacFarlane, Tom Taylor. Clockwise from bottom left, inner circle: Clive Luscombe, Vivian Bishop, John Coley (with beard), Bill Sutton (with beard) and Maurice Askew. Remember a simple email to overthenet is enough to put any of them on the lost list.

Plastique

Our good friend Ivan Vartanian is an independent publisher and book producer based in Tokyo. He is the founder of Goliga Books and with a very small staff has created some fascinating books. Two favourites are Drop Dead Cute on young Japanese women artists and Setting Sun: Writings by Japanese Photographers. Ivan has just sent us his latest book which is a very different sort of treat. Full Vinyl: the Subversive World of Designer Toys comes with its own key chain, a very cool corrugated card cover and 208 pages of great illustrations of vinyl toys from all over the world. Vinyl mania has even picked up in Wellington with the launch of the store Pop-Up last year.
Left: Full Vinyl published by Goliga Books Inc, Tokyo. Right Silver Pushead by Kaws 2006 one of an edition of 500. KAWS is, in fact, a Jersey City born and Brooklyn based artist. He has his own store Original Fake in Aoyama, Tokyo.

Art Collectables I

Above: The Klimt Glory Box (spotted at Hearst Castle, California)
Below: The Klimt Dance Costume: set with single fringed appliqué for bra (Don't ask)
Click on picture to enlarge image

Forty whacks

One of our readers has filled us in on the Barry Lett sign affair and tells us that the new sign - this time for the RKS gallery - was designed by, you guessed it, Billy Apple. Thanks for that. Here though is an account by Wystan Curnow, written at the time and published in Art New Zealand Number 15, Autumn 1980 in his report The Given as an art-political statement. So thanks too to Wystan and Art NZ.

“That during the opening (ALTERATIONS: The Given as an Art-Political Statement 16 October 1979) an open letter to Rodney Kirk Smith from Barry Lett was distributed. It read, in part, as follows:
It is now over five years since I left Barry Lett Galleries and it is almost two years since I approached you with the serious proposal that you change the name of the gallery... Since then we have had numerous discussions on this subject and still nothing has been resolved. My opposition to the present situation continues to grow and intensify...Your current exhibition... offers a propitious moment for me to move from words into action... I have decided to remove and destroy the Barry Letts sign... which now hangs above the gallery entrance. I hope that this action speaks to you more powerfully than my words have.

“That muffled sounds of axe blows were to be heard. The screech of tires of - was it a getaway car? That the police arrived. That Barry Lett was subsequently charged with and convicted of wilful damage. And that Rodney Kirk Smith and Barry Lett have since come to an agreement on this matter.”

Snap

When Ronald Lauder, heir to the Este Lauder fortune first visited Serge Sabrasky, a New York dealer of Austrian and German art, he asked if he knew of any American collectors of Klimt or Schiele.
“I know of two,” Sabrasky said.
“There’s also me and my brother,” said Lauder.
“I already counted both of you,” Sabrasky replied.
Reported in Rebecca Mead’s An acquiring eye: Ronald Lauder’s career in collecting art in The New Yorker, 15 January 2007. Lauder recently paid $US 135 million for Klimt’s Adel Bloch-Bauer I

Pauline Thompson and her circle

Our ‘Where are they now?’ section begs the question, ‘Who were they then?’ Here’s one answer in two parts from a New Zealand Vogue article on the visual art scene published in 1968. Auckland, the article tells us, is “large and complex. Its centre shifts, but is mainly around the painters, sculptors, collectors and dealer galleries.” Ok, so what else has changed? “Both newspapers run regular reviews. Usually the day after an opening: Terry McNamara writes for the Herald, and Gordon H. Brown for the Star.” Right.
Pictured above: Top row left to right Michael Illingworth (with beard), Pat Hanly, Ted Smythe (with beard), Milan MrKusich, art dealers Barry Lett and Rodney Kirk Smith (with beard) Kees Hos, T J McNamara. Second rowfrom left: Pauline Thompson, Ross Ritchie, John Perry (with beard), Gordon H. Brown. Crouching and seated from left: Colin McCahon, Robert Ellis and Paul Beadle (with beard).

Sign post

Over the last few months the sign for Peter McLeavey’s Gallery in Cuba Street, Wellington has been tagged not once but four times. The first strange thing about this is that the sign has been pretty much left alone since it was put up. The second is, that although every square inch of the doorway and sign have been covered with tags, labels and posters, the small disk that displays Peter McLeavey’s hours have remained untouched. We asked Peter if he knew why, but he is as puzzled as we are. He did mention that he is getting a new sign made and that he has kept every single sign the gallery has had since it opened - tags and all.

Some more gallery sign stories. One of the earlier sign for the Peter McLeavey Gallery that simply said GALLERY in red lettering on white, was designed by Billy Apple. From memory, putting up the Apple sign on the day of Billy’s opening, also involved the removal of the Elva Bett Gallery sign. A Neil Dawson opening was slated at Elva’s - just across the hall from McLeavey’s where Enjoy is now - for the same night. Tempers were heated as Neil took Billy to task for the removal of the Bett sign during his show. Sign rage. And wasn’t there also a sign rage incident in Auckland when someone attacked the Barry Lett Gallery, or was it RKS sign, with an axe? Sounds too good to be true. Details anybody?

Another Gallery sign, this time from Auckland’s Artspace, was kidnapped and taken for a ride to Otira by artist Dane Mitchell. The Artspace sign also attracted attention - well Billy Apple’s anyway - when, unsolicited, he cleaned a Malone tag off it during Daniel’s exhibition.

The best art gallery sign story, or useful correction and addition to the ones above, gets a overthenet table tennis ball signed by an artist of note.
CORRECTION: Billy Apple's cleaning of the Artspace sign (removing Crazy Dave's 'malone' tag) was in fact commissioned by Daniel, and documented by him as a work of his own for his Artspace show.

Copy cat IV

Bus shelter. Eastbourne, Wellington

Quick Quiz

Three of these photographs of bus shelters were photographed by Christopher Herwig, on a bike tour through the Baltic countries to St. Petersburg. One was taken by us in Wellington yesterday. Spot the odd one out. No prizes, no correspondence entered into.
For more of Christopher Herwig’s amazing Soviet shelter shots go here.

Strippers

The invitation to the opening of artist-run gallery Gambia Castle at the end of the month in Auckland, marks a good time to remember Teststrip, another artist space run on spirit and determination. Teststrip opened in Vulcan Lane in 1992 and later moved to Karangahape Road. It closed in 1997. Teststrip made a guest appearance in Wellington in March 1993 for the exhibitions Teststrip on tour at Cubewell House and Suffer in July of the same year at the Hamish McKay Gallery. For the ‘tour’, the whole team drove down and stayed in Rachel McAlpine’s Sugar Cube apartment (she was in Japan). Danny Butt has written a brief history of Teststrip which you can read here.
Photos: Top left Daniel Malone (on the left) and Giovanni Intra organise an exhibition opening and Christmas dinner in the Vulcan Lane space in December 1992. Top Right. The Vulcan Lane sign. Bottom Left: Denise Kum’s installation at Cubewell House. Bottom right: Daniel Malone preparing for his opening performance at Cubewell House.

Copy cat III

Buffalo soldier

Journey through the centre of two worlds by Rohan Wealleans is in the current group show Stolen ritual at the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in Sydney . The Gallery also shows New Zealanders Bill Culbert, Jacqueline Fraser, Rosalie Gascoigne and Michael Parekowhai. Now we see, from an invitation received this week, Rohan has been added to their list of regular artists and will have solo exhibition opening next week on 1 February. The exhibition will have the same title as his Dunedin Public Art Gallery show last year - Tatunka. For those without friends who stay up late at night to answer questions, Tatunka is the word for male bison or buffalo as used by the First Nation tribe Lakota. We are also told (why the hell didn’t we know this?) that it was the first word Kevin Costner used as he changed sides in the movie Dances with wolves. Costner on his personal web site spells the word Tatanka, but it seems both spellings work – it’s a Google world.
Picture: Rohan Wealleans Journey through the centre of two worlds on exhibition at the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery.

Dutch treat

When we were in the Hammer Museum recently, they were patching and painting the walls in the foyer. Now we discover this was in preparation for Jan van der Ploeg who has just installed two large wall paintings there. Bad timing – ours, that is.
Pictures: Jan van der Ploeg Wall Painting No.183 ‘Grip’, 2007, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles

Cloud nine

With so many artists acting as curators and a number of curators thinking they might even be artists, it was interesting to see an exhibition where artist and curator combined to present the work. We've talked before about the Magritte show, Magritte and contemporary art: the treachery of images, at the Los Angeles County Museum. It was a knock out. For a start the collection of Magrittes was incredible and unlikely to be brought together again for a long time. There was also a good attempt to place some contemporary work in the context of Magritte’s influence – not so successful, but some stunning work.

What made this exhibition so memorable was the addition of artist John Baldessari onto the exhibition team. As you can see from the photographs Baldessari carpeted the whole exhibition with a custom made cloud scape and papered the ceiling with photographs of the LA freeway system. It was the sort of bravura gesture that only a great artist could get away with. He literally turned the gallery on its head. Let’s face it, if a curator had come up with this idea all hell would have broken loose. So why don’t more curators involve artists in the display of art works? Seeing Jeff Koons bronze life raft sitting on cloud carpet is one of the most astonishingly thought provoking sights we have seen in an art gallery. It is obvious to anyone who has been going to exhibitions over the last ten years or so that most the designers (and all to often they are designers) of our exhibitions don’t have a clue how to energise an exhibition space. The fact is that artists can bring a creative approach to exhibition design that is missing from most of the exhibitions we see. At the very least it’s worth a try.
Photo: LACMA, Peter Brenner

Art is where you find it I

Koru lounge, Auckland