What is it about ‘No’ you don’t understand?

Talking around, it sounds like the Auckland Art Fair has decided to take a trade fair approach. We’re told that exhibitors will not be allowed to change the colour of walls (sorry John Reynolds), no holes will be allowed in the walls (forget it Peter Robinson) and floor coverings have to be approved (I don’t think so Hany Armanious). Sounds like even furniture and fittings have to be vetted (ah… et al. … would you get, whatever that is, the hell out of here). Unfortunately for the Auckland Art Fair much of the best art today is kind of unruly. Coming to terms with that will be the challenge that differentiates the event from your average car show.
Image: “Not at this Art Fair you don’t”

Must have

Our Viennese correspondent, Nicolas Jasmin, has pointed us to this gallery where you can purchase the multiple pictured on the left, which has been created by Gelitin, the giant rabbit people. This version is an accommodating 75 cm long.

Need to know

This was going to be another competition, with table tennis balls at stake. The challenge: When TheNewDowse, in Lower Hutt, wanted readers of their web site to get to know the artists on exhibition “a little better”, what 15 questions did they send them? But, in the end, we decided no one could come even close. So here they are.

1 How would your mother describe you?
2 What's your principal defect?
3 If you were a cooked meal what would you be?
4 What's your favourite foreign word? Why?
5 Who's your favourite fictional hero? Why?
6 What do you have at your bedside table?
7 Finish this sentence - New Zealand is a land with too few...
8 Have you ever cried at the hairdresser? Year? Cut?
9 Describe your creative side?
10 How do you overcome a creative block?
11 Do you have a muse?
12 What's the last exhibition that really made an impression on you?
13 When do you feel most inspired?
14 Describe a fashion trend/new age fad that you have fallen victim to?
15 What's a question that you would you like to be asked?
List supplied: as sent be email to artists by TheNewDowse.

Coniglio

Not to upstage Michael Parekowhai for a moment, but we knew in some file or other, we had a picture of a giant pink rabbit out on a hill somewhere in Italy. And here it is. It’s 200 feet long and is located on the side of the Colletto Fava mountain in Northern Italy. It was designed by the Viennese art group Gelitin and is supposed to stay in place until 2025. Gelitin are the same people who, early one morning, removed a window on one of the top floors of the World Trade Center, pushed out a narrow balcony and posed on it for a photographer in a helicopter. That completely unsanctioned and strangely prescient performance was called the B-Thing.

Tickle me Elmo

What is it with art museum shops? At least in New Zealand most of them manage to limit themselves to books and catalogues about local art and artists. So far, at least, we haven’t seen McCahon glasses (“with these amazing painted lenses, every landscape becomes a South Otago landscape”) or even a Len Lye rocking chair (“make every sculpture a kinetic sculpture when you do the rocking”). But when it comes to art from countries and artists a little further away, it’s no holds barred. And so, offerings like the ‘The Screaming Scream Pillow’ (“Squeeze me and I scream”) available at the Auckland Art Gallery bookshop, along with its mate the ‘Light Up Starry Night’ pillow (“Press the moon and the stars light up”). For some reason they don’t stock the Giggling Mona Lisa pillow or even the wind-up Michelangelo Pillow (the detail of God and Adam from the Sistine Chapel plays “I want to hold your hand”). We assume trivialising great art like that is, quite rightly, considered tasteless.

Stepping up

In the late seventies an artist’s career path was fairly straightforward. You emerged, vanished into mid-career, had a retrospective and then (mostly) grew old, waiting around to be rediscovered. Recently we came across two new career path milestones in a piece on the Turner Prize in The New Yorker. One of the Turner judges Andrew Renton from Goldsmiths, explained that the Turner honours artists who would be called “late emergent” or “early mid-career”.

So here, after some consultation (and thanks for the idea J), and a quick look through Adam Linderman’s Collecting Contemporary and a few magazines, we have begun to compile the possible steps in an artist’s career. They are:

unknown
recent graduate
young contemporary
emerging
late emergent
early mid-career
established
mid-career
late career
senior artist
veteran
rediscovered
iconic

An overthenet table tennis ball signed by an artist of note to the best matching of a New Zealand artist to each category. Reader's additions in red.

SPAM

unvarnished facts, reckless guesswork, insinuations and possible inventions that have arrived at overthenet.blog@gmail.com: the brett graham and and rachael rakena installation is in a shipping container en route to venice. hamish mckay has signed the lease on a new gallery space in an ex-mason’s building around the corner from peter mcleavey. a letter sent by auckland art fair honchos to dealers greeted them with the words “hello possums”. the pink frame placed on McCahon's painting tomorrow will be the same but not as this is by bruce robinson, when working at the christchurch art gallery, has been replaced by a black one. the anish kapoor being commissioned by alan gibbs for his sculpture park has come up against major technical difficulties but is on track - the piece will tunnel through a hill on the gibbs’ farm. alicia frankovich, a graduate from aut, is to be included in the latest cream series of books published by phaidon – this one to be called ice cream: contemporary art in culture. any missed details, indignant denials or additions gratefully received, and the cutest - rewarded.

Scale matters

Over at stimulusresponse is a review of Ann Shelton's exhibition A library to scale, on display at Enjoy Public Art Gallery from 8 to 24 March. The show involves to-scale photographs of 13 bookcases of books with 12 shelves in each hung on 2 walls.

Turbulent times

The most remarkable photograph we have seen this year.
Click on the image to enlarge

Advice to collectors 3

"The most important thing that a collector should do is buy."
Larry Gagosian in Collecting Contemporary by Adam Lindermann

Found – Christopher Johnstone

In all fairness, Christopher Johnstone was never really lost. He tells us that since he resigned as director of the Auckland Art Gallery he has been an art writer, consultant and has organised exhibitions including Lee Miller’s War for Monash University and the Auckland Museum. His book Landscape Painting of New Zealand: A Journey from North to South was published this year by Random House has just been reprinted.

Merry banter from this week’s artbash

“I was in the middle of having fun being trussed up and paddled by my Nazi nurse” - John Hurrell

“I'm disgusted that my parents' tax dollars paid for this patronising cow to come over. I'd have slapped her in my short pants.” - Populuxe

“shit....” - William Blake

“Have I misbehaved, PPLX? Do I get a spanking? - John Hurrell

Wanking, spanking, caning, uniforms, suspender belts and stockings, nurses, very big breasts, white walls and op art.” - Chris Taylor

“I’m stuck on the connection between Len Lye and spanking…" - alibi

Second hand

Best of 3 has joined in our happy virtual art chase and posted on Eva and Franco Mattes’ re-creation of art performances on Second Life. You can read more about what they are up to here. You can also get into Second Life to check out their store for the basalt stones that will make up their version of Beuys’ 7000 Oaks.
Images: Top left to right: Joseph Beuys 7000 Oaks and Chris Burden Shoot. Bottom left to right: Vito Acconti Seed bed and Valie Export Tapp und Taskino

Big Bang theory

“An explosion of new art by New Zealand artists. City Gallery launches its third Telecom Prospect…”

“Published on the occasion of the explosively imaginative exhibition Peter Madden: Escape from Orchid City at City Gallery …”

“Sam Taylor-Wood’s work in photography and film is distinguished by an ironic and subversive use of the media, which centre on the creation of enigmatic situations, charged with a latent but explosive energy.”

Decisive moment

In response to the Hirst posting earlier today, Grant has cranked us up to whole new level of art-inspired Lego work. This time the artist is Marcos Vilariño who lives and works in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Vilariño recreates famous photographs in the Lego spirit. You can see more of his decisive moments here.