The missing link

Jar Space, Auckland’s drive-by-Dia, has had a change of installation. Stephen Bambury’s slick oil install, Room for Reflection, has vacated for a room full of polystyrene links by Peter Robinson. If Bambury’s work sought to disappear in the small glass-fronted exhibition space, Robinson’s has chosen to turn up the volume with Closed Cell Construction. We have mentioned this exhibition space before. It is as near a perfect art experience as a vitrine can give - smart, savvy, and beautifully complemented by an elegant and informative web site. We followed the Jar experience with a visit to the Auckland Museum. Boy oh boy, could those Kings and Queens of clutter do with a fact-finding trip down to 589 New North Road in Kingsland.

Value ad

We certainly wouldn’t want to encourage anyone to do this in any of our own art galleries but, you have to admit, it is a great idea.

You say artist we say artiste

This post has nothing about art, and everything to do with Ping Pong. Australian Tim Tyler, in the role of Mr P.P, “delivers a variety of astonishing feats, including his world famous oral ping pong ball juggling.” Anyone who can equal (or beat) Tim’s three-in-the-mouth record, just has to send us a pic, and we’ll send you a cap, if your an artist, we'll send you two.

On the road

On the road is an ongoing series celebrating the Ministry of Land Transport and Local Body support of New Zealand artists.

Creative

Yesterday we received an extremely formal letter from Creative New Zealand responding to our request of 16 February. We’d asked was on the Visual Arts Assessment Committee for the February round of visual arts grants. If you are still interested they were:
Ali Bramwell
Heather Galbraith
Haruhiko Sameshima
Linder Tyler
Ruth Watson
The reason CNZ has sat on this reply for 60 days is that they did not want any artist to know who these people were before their decisions were made. As CNZ staff explained to us last year, knowing this sort of thing could give artists the opportunity to lobby (read annoy) Committee members and perhaps even effect their decisions. While CNZ is itself a lobby organisation, it doesn’t believe the rest of us should share the privilege. Forget for the moment that lobbying is one of the central principles of the democratic process – haven’t these people heard of select committees? Incidentally, anyone we have spoken to who has been on one of these panels tells us that conversations with artists who have missed out are far more ‘annoying’ after the announcements than during any lobbying period.
So far every question we have asked CNZ has been refused or answers delayed beyond their use-by date. It's probably time CNZ became part of a more service-oriented organisation, with greater commitment to transparency and public accountability. Perhaps the Ministry of Culture would be the right place, where scale and breadth break down silos and stone-walling. At the moment they are just hiding in full-view.

Model behaviour

In the early 80s we worked with Marti Friedlander on her book Contemporary New Zealand Painters Volume 1 (don't ask). So it is great to see Marti's return to print in the next issue of Prix-Choc. Marti has turned out 252 images of around 50 agency models. Prix-Choc is available next week for around 1.1 cent an image.

D.I.Y

Attention Ricky Swallow fans.

Give us a sign … no, cancel that.

Someone once said that the sign of a great building was a lack of signs. Someone should mention that to Ian Athfield so he can go back and do a clean-up of the New Dowse in Lower Hutt. It’s not just the number of signs but what they are telling you to do. First up is “Main Entrance ->” in bright pink and carefully placed across what you think is the way in. The arrow points you around the corner to what can only be described as a hidden front door. On that door are the usual rash of taped notices reminding people of stuff like the shop is having a closing-down sale and just inside the door there’s a batch of don’t-do signs, no alcohol etc. The most unpromising pair, from an architectural point of view, well art museum architecture anyway, is one on an interior glass door that says “Galleries” (hey thanks for that, we were wondering) and another that, with the aid of a pictogram of a figure climbing stairs, “Upstairs Galleries”. In all we counted over 50 signs which were a mix of taped sheets of paper and the the official signage system, colour-coded on perspex. If you're off to the New Dowse, go early, and give yourself time, there’s a lot to read, .

Art follows life…or is it the other way round?

Left, publicity shot of musician Phillip 'Snakefinger' Lithman (1949 - 1987) and right, the world’s ugliest sculpture.

When art goes to the movies 1

When Oliver Stone started shooting Wall Street in April 1987, he “called on friends, called on collectors to put the best paintings on the walls to evoke the era.” His friend Julian Schnabel, who published his autobiography CVJ: Nicknames of Maitre’Ds and Other Excerpts from Life the same year, acted as advisor to the film. One of his portraits on broken plates is featured in the expensive apartment purchased by young stockbroker Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) and decorated by Darien Taylor (Daryl Hannah). It was also the year Time magazine’s critic Robert Hughes wrote 'Schnabel is to painting, what Stallone is to acting - a lurching display of oily pectorals - except that Schnabel makes bigger public claims for himself.' Schnabel doesn’t appear in the Stone film but artist James Rosenquist makes a brief appearance at an auction where his work is purchased by Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) for $2.1 million. It is a spectacularly high price for a ‘normal-sized’ Rosenquist, considering that his mural-sized F1-11, (the largest painting - about 26 metres long and 3 meters high- to be sold at auction up to that time, and a record for the artist) sold at auction for $2.09 million in 1986, a year later than the date the movie is set in. As Darien Taylor says to Bud Fox, “Gordon is one of the most astute collectors around. He has a great eye and he only buys the best.” Artists whose works also make brief appearances include Jim Dine and John Chamberlain. Other art scene people to appear are Christopher Burge, Sotheby's legendary auctioneer, who gets the remarkable price for the Rosenquist, and dealer Richard Feigen whose book Tales from the Art Crypt: The Painters, the Museums, the Curators, the Collectors, the Auctions, the Art caused a brief flurry in 2000, the year it was published.
Images: Top left, Christopher Burge calls for $2.1 million for the James Rosenquist painting on display to the left of the image, right Gordon Gekko makes his final bid. Middle left, A Julian Schnabel plate painting is hung in Bud Fox’s apartment, right the Schnabel painting, this time resting on the floor between Budd and Darien. Bottom left, a couple of John Chamberlain sculptures at Gordon Gekko’s beach house, right Pop artist James Rosenquist, on the right, makes a guest appearance at the auction.

Bingo

Finalists in top art award named
10:18AM Monday April 14, 2008

Four finalists have been announced for New Zealand's most prestigious contemporary art award, the $50,000 Walters Prize.

Finalists Edith Amituanai, Lisa Reihana, John Reynolds and Peter Robinson each receive $5000.

The winner will be announced in late October.

New Zealand Herald

et tu?

There’s a Michael Frayn short story we read a few years ago. It was set in a provincial newsroom and related how the reporters had reduced their news gathering to filing cabinets full of index cards. On the cards were all the classic stories and phrases they’d used over the years. Hot day: “man cooks egg on pavement” - that sort of thing. When a story was needed one of the cards would be taken out of a drawer (often at random) and the same ideas recycled. Sounds familiar? It certainly will if you read the Sunday Times story on et al. this weekend, The Day Art Died. In a rash attempt at humour (don’t do it guys), Sunday Times reporter Kim Knight went to the Take-the-piss-out-of–a-highly-respected-New Zealand-artist cabinet and pulled out the following cards.

1 Artist makes work of art that is a braying toilet

2 Money wasted on contemporary art again

3 Creative New Zealand wastes our money sending a portaloo that brays like a donkey to Venice. (er Kim… it was different work altogether).

4 Elitist artists try to make fools of an unwitting public with in-jokes

Next week, All Black in bar brawl.

Sign of the times?

Oxford Street, Sydney April 2008

”That’s a damned talented elephant”

Can you trust, really trust, OTN? Doesn’t look like it. We promised no more animal art, and here we go again. Trunk or sock puppet? You be the judge. Thanks P.
Header quote: Willem de Kooning

LYE

"There is no doubt in my mind that Len Lye is an extraordinary artist and national icon."
Dr Seddon Bennington, Chief Executive, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa promoting the proposed Len Lye Centre on the Govett-Brewster web site.

Te Papa has only one Len Lye work in its Collection. It is a painting.