More good news than you can shake a stick at

We had a talk with Rose and Cath at Creative New Zealand last week. We asked again why who was on the visual arts panel was kept secret until after grants had been awarded. The bad news is that Cath didn’t think knowing who was on the panel made any difference. The good news is she agreed that CNZ “would revisit our practice of not releasing committee members' names prior to the committee meeting”. Hopefully for the next round, we should be able to let you have the names as soon as the members are decided. Rose and Cath also told us that CNZ “will keep faith with peer assessment”, so that’s good news too.

So, panel members for the last visual arts assessment were: Ann Shelton, Ali Bramwell, Denys Watkins, Simon Morris and Richard Reddaway.

But even the best laid plans… with Ann Shelton moving to Wellington and the addition of Richard Reddaway you can see in this new panel three of the five members are on the staff of Massey University's College of Creative Arts in Wellington.
Image: The stick

Twin cities

The National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne is exhibiting Michael Parekowhai’s super-sized inflatable version of Cosmo for the first time this week. The sculpture was gifted to the gallery by the Melbourne Art Fair where it had its first showing. Deputy director of the NGV, Tony Ellwood said of the blow-up bunny. “We are excited to be exhibiting this prominent New Zealand artist for the first time.” As we have already reported, the other large inflatable rabbit Jim McMurtry, is at present on display in the foyer of the Christchurch Art Gallery.
Image: Cosmo on exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria

William Hsu

One of our regular readers sent us images of this beautiful installation in the side window of Miss Crabb on Ponsonby Road. It is by William Hsu.

Sol LeWitt

The American artist Sol LeWitt died last night. He was certainly a great artist, but from what we've heard, he was a great man too. We recall his work was part of a faxed art show organised at the Sue Crockford gallery some years ago. The most memorable part of the exhibition was that LeWitt sent small drawings to all the students who helped create his work.
Image: Sol LeWitt Arcs in four directions 1999

Hard core fans

The internet is a strange place. Last week we received an email from Boris, a website administrator, asking if we were related to Alfred H Barr Jnr, the founder director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. We wish. Anyway, the email pointed us to Susie Bright’s blog. It turns out Susie is a sexologist with books to her name like The sexual state of the union, Three the hard way and How to write a dirty story. Ok, how does our namesake Alfred H Barr and Andy Warhol fit in?

Susie, it seems has just brought a second hand car and under the seat found an old (October 18, 1956) letter from MoMA rejecting an offer to gift one of his shoe drawings by Andy Warhol. As Andy Warhol is a special interest it was easy to check it out. Yes, there was a rejection letter sent at that time and, yes, it was signed by Alfred H Barr. Unfortunately we suspect that Susie’s letter is one of the facsimiles from the Andy Warhol Pop Box, published five years ago by the Andy Warhol Museum. As Andy Warhol would have said, “Gee.”
Illustration: Susie’s letter. Click on the image to read.

Advice to collectors 4

“I know that some people grumble about art fairs and biennials, but these are probably the same kind of people who would grumble about their favourite bands becoming popular.”

Matthew Higgs of the London dealer gallery White Columns in Louisa Buck and Judith Greer Owning Art: The contemporary art collector’s handbook.

The black, the red and the white

As we didn’t want to let anyone down on Easter Sunday, here are some oddly familiar contemporary designs on Easter eggs from a current exhibition at The Ukrainian Museum in New York. For Googlers, the Ukranians call the eggs Pysanky.

Question time

A reader has sent this important question to keep everyone occupied over the next few days. How many giraffes has Alan Gibbs purchased for his private sculpture park? Three or four?

Block Escher

OK, this is just about the end of our Lego art obsession, but before we stop you need to see this extraordinary rendition of Escher’s print Relativity. If you want to know the tricks behind this sculpture you can go here, but be warned, it’s like knowing how the magician does that hat thing with the rabbit.

Standing room only

Rather than have intrusive barriers protect the chairs on display at the
Dunedin Public Art Gallery, pine cones have been called in to do the job. On a study tour of country houses in the UK, a staff member apparently observed the use of pine cones as Do Not Sit signals. At first it seems rather too close for comfort, but you do get used to it. To make it even better, the conservators have put small sheets of acetate underneath the pine cones to stop them staining the fabric. We’re not sure what they have done to protect the acetate. Who knows where this cone idea came from (that’s a plea for information rather than a rhetorical question), but it sure beats stanchions and velvet ropes.

Branded

We’re not sure if Dunedin is the only city that does this sort of thing, but they certainly seem to have taken the lead in branded bronze. These two bronze sculptures – a tribute to the Yellow Eyed Penguin and The Southern Man – are branded with the sponsor’s logos, ‘Speedprint’ on the hat for Pengie and ‘Speights’ on the saddle for The Man. There are untapped dog food possibilities for Wellington’s Dog Glued To Man’s Leg on Plimmer Steps.
Images: to enlarge click on image

Caught short

Remember the wacky list to artists from TheNewDowse? Yesterday, Director Tim Walker sent another email apologising for the “unsettling” email, and “any upset” it may have caused.

“I also wanted to take this opportunity to comment on an email questionnaire that you would have received recently from Mandy Herrick at TheNewDowse. This was a case of a new member of staff's enthusiasm leading to the email going out before being discussed or approved.”

Image: Sign from President Truman's desk, made in the Federal Reformatory at El Reno, Oklahoma.

30 days in March

For newbies and fanatics, here is our pick from last month’s postings. In March we: established an archive of the lost and forgotten, a graveyard of our failure and your indifference; posted the most popular overthenet item of all time as we told readers about Reflect, the washing liquid that is kind to black clothes; rattled on about dealer gallery signs; lamented a lost opportunity in Auckland; went to Christchurch to check out Michael Parekowhai’s giant rabbit; started off on an art lego jag; noted the explosive quality of the City Gallery’s publicity and pointed to stimulusresponse’s 3D review of Anne Shelton’s Enjoy exhibition.

Art is where you find it 2

If you’re caught waiting for a plane for an hour or so at Christchurch Airport as we were in the weekend, head straight for the upstairs toilets. At the far end of the upstairs lounge down a dimly lit corridor and behind the cleaning gear and rubbish bins, is the very cool mural pictured above. It was made to commemorate the last big air race in 1953 between the RAF (the British), flying Canberras against the RAAF (the Australians). A sign of changing times; the planes stopped to refuel in Iraq, Sri Lanka, Cocos Islands and Perth before arriving in Christchurch. The RAF got there first.

The relief mural was created by Russell Clark in 1957, we assume to celebrate fifth anniversary of the air race which was held in 1953. The symbolism of the mural is much as you would expect. “The figure represents man’s ability to conquer space.” The orange sun on the left represents the time of departure, the moon “the night through which they flew” and the yellow sun on the right "the dawn into which the leading planes landed”.

Strangely enough, Colin McCahon had been commissioned in 1952 by TEAL (Tasman Empire Airways Limited) to create a painting to commemorate the great event. His painting was exhibited and toured but later was used to make a crate and destroyed. Some studies survive and you can see them on the McCahon site here. But even more strangely, McCahon did a reprise of his aviation theme in 1957. Could this have been in response to the Clark mural you can still see behind the bins in Christchurch today?

Private lives

One of our readers suggested that Creative New Zealand no longer had anyone with expertise dealing with the visual arts. That didn’t sound right, so we sent off an email asking who was “responsible for the visual arts in Creative New Zealand” and also “Could you also let us know (a brief description will be fine) what qualifications or experience they have in the fine arts?” CNZ responded with news that Kate was on maternity leave and Jude was doing her job. But nothing about their visual arts expertise.

So we sent another email: “Could you give us a brief outline of the professional or other experience Kate and Jude bring to their role of "looking after the Visual Arts portfolio." CNZ’s response? “Unfortunately we are not in a position to release specific details about individual staff members as this is a privacy issue.” The news of Kate’s pregnancy obviously falls outside CNZ’s privacy restrictions.

We have a meeting with Creative New Zealand next week. We’ll keep you posted.