Tanked

News that Damien Hirst is in negotiation with Steve Cohen, the new owner of his shark work The Physical Impossibility of Death In The Mind Of Someone Living, sent us searching our picture files for the Lego sculptures above. It depict Hirst in front of the famous work. Charles Saatchi, who commissioned the pickled shark work for £50,000 in 1991, sold it three years ago to Cohen for £7 million. Now, because the formaldehyde has failed to adequately preserve the 14 foot Tiger shark, it needs repair or replacement. Hirst told writer Stuart Morgan (who visited New Zealand in the late 1980s) that he knew formaldehyde was not the perfect preservative, but that he had used it anyway because of it’s associations. The Lego Hirst has put us on the trail of other Lego works depicting contemporary art and artists which you are sure to see if you keep with us.

Travel tips

Paris, the pyramids and great ancient cities like Persepolis have been the subject of cultural pilgrimages for centuries. Now there are a new batch of must visit places, this time focussed on contemporary art sights like Walter De Maria’s The Lightning Field in New Mexico, the James Turrell installations on the Japanese island of Naoshima, the Chinati Foundation’s installation in Marfa, Texas, and The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. These extraordinary places came to mind because of a book we have been reading, well looking at really, called Spectacle by David Rockwell and designer Bruce Mau. Going far beyond static art sites, Rockwell explores spectacles that people make and people share. He helpfully groups them into six themes: Big, Bold, Brief, Connect, Transform and Immerse. So if you want to run with the bulls, swim in tomato paste, bake at Burning Man, catch the Macy’s parade or arrive in India for Holi, this is the book for you. But for those of us who still hanker for great places to see art, we asked Artspace’s Brian Butler where he would go right now to get the greatest art experiences. Brian excluded Los Angeles, London and New York (his two art immersion favourites) and proposed this list.

1 Marfa, Texas followed by driving the desert circuit to visit: The Lightning Field, Roden Crater, Double Negative, Spiral Jetty, and then on to the Pacific Ocean.
2 Syros, Greece where Martin Kippenberger built his first subway entrance in 1993
3 Tokyo
4 The Low Countries (Belgium and Holland) but especially Ghent
5 Machu Picchu

And so to bed

It was disappointing not to see the Martin Creed garden still in place in Christchurch. Creed had planted the temporary installation as his contribution to Christchurch the Garden City for Scape 2006. An eclectic variety of plants were strictly ranked in order from smallest to largest in a straight line. Given the different growth patterns of the plants, it would have been fascinating to track the idea over a longer period of time rather than revert so quickly to the predictable colour splashes that have replaced it. The Creed planting neatly matched Robert Irwin’s description of the fabulous garden he designed for the Getty Center in Los Angeles: "a sculpture in the form of a garden aspiring to be art."
Images top, from left: Martin Creed Scape, September 2006, Christchurch City Council, March 2007. Bottom: Robert Irwin’s garden at the Getty Center, Los Angeles.

Inflation

It’s just one month shy of five years since around twelve residents had their moment of outrage in the Christchurch Press (“The bunnies are absolutely revolting.” “What a load of rubbish.” etc. etc.) at Michael Parekowhai’s proposal to install two giant rabbits in Cathedral Square for Scape 2002. In the end the controversy made funding impossible and the installation never came off. On Friday Mike returned to Christchurch and installed Jim McMurtry, an inflatable version of one of the Scape bunnies, in the foyer of the Christchurch Art Gallery. This same work has also been shown in the Gwangju Biennale in Korea and its partner Cosmo featured in last year’s Melbourne Art Fair. Cosmo is now in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria.

Blur 2

We were in Christchurch over the weekend and, as the image above makes clear, down South the whole art / party thing is in safe hands.

Missing

We promise (really) that this will be the last sign post (sorry) for a while. Not sure why there have been so many, but this is as good a one to end on as any. As anyone who has been to rtspace or the Anthony Gallery in Auckland recently knows, vowels are at a premium. Both signs have been plundered, and both more than once. For anyone on the lookout, Ivan Anthony has lost an ‘A’ and an ‘N’ and Artspace at least 2 ‘A’s. The remaining letters spell out Canvas Therapy Nation – for what that’s worth.

Ok, ok.. we give up

More copy cat Cattelan-type taping (Try saying that six times quickly). Believe us, if we'd known that it's practically a cult activity for students in the United States, we would never have mentioned it in the first place.

I will need words

Apparently City Councillor Christine Caughey has backed off her scheme to ban billboards in the Auckland CBD. This is a shame as the works above demonstrate. They are photographs taken in the city of Linz and have been denuded of all signage, via photoshop, by artist Gregor Graf. As you can see, Auckland is throwing away the opportunity to be the creepiest city in the South Pacific.

Bad sign

Our posting on Peter McLeavey’s new sign has prompted a Wellington designer from graphics company Experimenta to pull out some hair and, after breathing into a brown paper bag, design an alternative. You can see it here.
SMALL PRINT: Did we mention this is the same designer that did our very beautiful overthenet card? Should have.

Advice to collectors 2

“Never trust an art dealer who'll
sit in a room for more than ten
minutes with a crooked
picture.”
Brett Whiteley

Full circle

The catalogue reproduced above was printed for the first exhibition of what would become known as Gordon Walters’ koru paintings at Auckland’s New Vision Gallery - save for the painting Te Whiti which was entered in the 1966 Hay’s Prize earlier in the year. By clicking the image hopefully you can read Gordon’s statement, but in case: “my work is an investigation of positive/negative relationships within a deliberately limited range of forms. The forms I use have no descriptive value in themselves and are used solely to demonstrate relations. I believe that dynamic relations are most clearly expressed by the repetition of a few simple elements.”

Many of these paintings were created in Walters’ studio in the Rutland Flats in Brougham Street, Mt Victoria in Wellington which has a special interest for us because we used to live just down the road. Let’s Google the connections. A search on Brougham and Rutland brings up the Wordsworth poem Song at the feast of Brougham Castle. It recounts the story of Henry Lord Clifford who slew the Earl of Rutland. The poem includes the following two lines, which we think neatly bring us back to Gordon Walters. “And glancing, gleaming, dark or bright, / Moved to and fro, for his delight.”
Lower image: Rutland flats, Brougham Street, Mt Victoria, Wellington 2007

Give us a sign

Because you need to know, Peter McLeavey has just installed a new gallery sign. This time he is following the glass-covered, easy to clean policy of next door gallery Enjoy. See our previous sign stories Forty Whacks and Sign post for more on sign history and adventures.

SPAM

reckless guesswork, insinuations and possible inventions that have arrived at overthenet.blog@gmail.com: a mail tube hidden deep in a dealer gallery’s store room contains a nude portrait of an auckland art celebrity, created as part of christine webster’s carnival series. it is said to be all running mascara and long black fingernails and is not to be released into the wild until the unfortunate subject’s death. someone using a ouija board tells us that the words - savage, two, paula and rooms came up - whatever the hell that means. at least one of the cnz trip-of-a-lifetime group has upgraded to business class. cnz , fostering its interest in the hot night-spot business, helps fund club galatos off k road. any missed details, indignant denials or additions gratefully received, and some, rewarded.

Look alike VIII

On the left, art dealer Massimo De Carlo taped to the wall by one of his artists, Maurizio Cattelan in 1999. On the right, a student taped to the ceiling by his friends. These two images should clear the air on the important difference between Look Alikes and Copy Cats. In the case of Massimo De Carlo the event had to be cut short at around three hours when the dealer broke a rib and became short of breath. As far as we know the student may still be on the ceiling.

Spin us a yarn...

Over at stimulusresponse is a review of the exhibition (story)time by Stephen Cutler at the Small Red Gallery in Wellington.