Social climbing

Who ever thought that fine art and exercise would find a place under the same roof? The Illoiha Fitness Club in Omotesando, Tokyo took advantage of a two-storey basement to create an art climbing frame. This fits in neatly with the gym’s theme "becoming beautiful through movement". The people at Illoiha hope that the frame climbing will “inspire newcomers to try out the sport, and start a new wave in fitness with style.” Te Papa, over to you.

The Guinness Book of Labels

Records celebrated on labels at Te Papa, the Auckland Art Gallery, TheNewDowse and the Koru Club art collection.

Aotearoa Cloud 2002 is “Gretchen Albrecht’s largest work to date”.

Tenano Tibo was “the first Samoan artist to exhibit in New Zealand”.

“Ina Te Papatahi was Goldie’s most frequently painted model.”

"Simon Ogden is one of the only artists in the world working with antique and found linoleum.”

“When Colin McCahon first exhibited the Northland Panels, nothing comparable had been seen before.”

"Colin McCahon, New Zealand’s most critically acclaimed artist.”

The fissure king

Art work of the week, this illustration showing the cracks in the Guggenheim Museum's surfaces.
Click on the image to get the full effect.

Block Lego

A frozen piece of Lego sculpture for a cold, cold day.
Click image for the full glory

Schnapps

Remember our mentioning the fantastic DIY book on Russian implements? Here’s another great example sent to us by a reader. From St. Petersburg, a homemade camera made from a match box and two film spools, complete with a photo to prove it works.

Red-Light District

Over at stimulusresponse is a comic based on Paddy O'Rourke's 6-Week Studio exhibition at rm103 in Auckland.

Spam

unvarnished facts, reckless guesswork, insinuations and possible inventions that have arrived at overthenet.blog@gmail.com: webb’s have taken up the sponsorship of the art’s foundation’s new award for art patronage; haunch of venison is out of the basel art fair because of its auction house connections; michael stevenson, on the other hand, is in the basel art fair as part of art unlimited, described as “an exhibition platform for unusual art projects”; thenewdowse is selling paintings in its shop and gavin hipkins will be heading north to be resident in the mccahon house artist studio at the end of the year. any missed details, indignant denials or additions gratefully received, and the cutest - rewarded.

Give and take

We have always been big supporters of the idea that artists get some monetary return on the resale of their work. In our experience the rising value of art has little to do with the walls it hangs on or the people who come to own it. Instead the value is a recognition of what the work means to the culture and this determination is invariably based on the growing reputation of the artist plus their ongoing production. If that's the case, it has always seemed to us only fair that the person most responsible for this rise in value should get a share when that value is realised. So we are very pleased to see the Government through the Ministry of Culture and Heritage has issued a fascinating discussion paper on resale rights for visual artists looking at many international examples. You may also be entertained by the varying estimates on the size of the NZ art market each year (from Peter Webb's $40-50 million including both first sales and resales to an $80 million punt from John Daly-Peoples).

The Ministry's paper includes a heavy duty questionnaire that you can respond to. We can't promise to answer all the questions but we certainly plan to tackle some of them. You can read the discussion paper here.

Creeping minimalism

One of our readers, commenting on our no bill boards for Auckland story, sent this link. It records that Sao Paolo has already made a start on removing billboards from their city. We have to admit, that in the rough and tumble of Sao Paolo’s architecture, the loss doesn’t seem creepy at all.
Images: Sao Paolo without billboards by Tony de Marco

Blown away

Anyone from Wellington will tell you that Aucklanders talking to you about how windy it is here, wears thin. So walking down Auckland’s High Street we were drawn to the leaflets pictured above announcing that Eve Armstrong’s Trading table - an event in conjunction with the Turbulence Triennial - had moved from High Street to outside the New Gallery. It’s probably petty of us to relate that Eve told us she had to change the venue because of the wind, but that’s how it was.
Images: Eve’s change of venue signs on the High Street, and Eve multi-tasking at the new venue.

Copy cat VII

Everyone, apart from Jeff Thompson, rush now, to Corrugated Creations for all your rippling tin solutions.

Outback

For some reason a number of people sent this plan to us at overthenet. It is the layout for the Auckland Art Fair coming next month to the Viaduct. Of course the first thing we did was to check out where the galleries we most often visit are located. As you can see from the red markings, most of them are not in the main fair ground at all but in a room out the back. Guess they’ll open the roller door shown on the plan and make some sort of a tunnel.
Marked spaces: Back room clockwise from top: Masterworks, Jonathan Smart, 64Zero3, Sue Crockford, Kaliman, Michael Lett and McNamara. Back room middle: Roger Williams and Ivan Anthony. Main hall, back wall top to bottom: Hamish McKay and Peter McLeavey. Up front: Gow Langsford.

Lett’s sign off

We don’t have to tell regular readers that we have an unhealthy obsession with art gallery signs. So, when we heard that the Michael Lett Gallery on Karangahape Road had removed all its signage and was not intending to replace it, we rushed our Auckland-based photographer there to get an image.

Toy boy

While we are on an Andy Warhol track – and to confuse everyone who has read our posts railing against art museums selling art-related gifts – consider the amazing selection of Andy Warhol toys on the market. The images above are just a sample of what’s available. It’s a range that cements what we already know: Andy Warhol will remain the dominant icon of the 20th century. Are there Joseph Beuys dolls? Does Marcel have an action figure? Will Barbie and Ken have to step aside for Cicciolina and Jeff? We think not. Please send images of any contemporary artist dolls to overthenet. Finger Puppets not accepted.

Site for sore eyes

Good bye fridge magnets, hello artist and film maker Miranda July