The S in Spam stands for Venice

reckless guesswork, insinuations and possible inventions that have arrived at overthenet.blog@gmail.com: apparently tao wells upset everyone at the fungus launch at the adam art gallery and people thought that this time he has gone tooooo far • curator conland marries painting machine guy ingram this weekend • nz trade and enterprise is paying an interior designer to deck out a bookstore in association with the biennale complete with stylish nz furniture (yes there will be wine and cheese) • the one day sculpture exhibition is having a three day symposium starting 26 march • te papa has agreed to show the venice exhibs when they return to nz • tim walker is no longer at the auckland museum and has been seen back in the halls of te papa • the venice catalogues will be sponsored by the artists’ dealer galleries • any missed details, indignant denials or additions gratefully received, and the one that has the strangest spelling mistake, rewarded with an international edition overthenet cap.

Advice to collectors

Up to a year or so ago people would visit Somerset House in the UK to view the Gilbert Collection. Arthur Gilbert put together a huge collection of stuff including enamelled portrait miniatures and one of the world’s great collections of snuff boxes including a gem-encrusted box from the collection of Frederick the Great (he paid $1,096,774 for it in 1986). Why are we telling you this? Because Sir Arthur Gilbert, who made his money in the property business in California, had an ace idea that might be of interest to other collectors. Visitors to Somerset House were often surprised to see Sir Arthur hard at work at his desk talking on the phone. Surprised, because Sir A had been dead for some years, and then possibly relieved when the life-size figure turned out to be wax. The collection and virtual Arthur have now been moved to the V&A. OTN also acknowledges Sir Arthur Gilbert as one of the great sponsors of global table tennis with the Gilbert Cup playing a key role in introducing the game to the United States.
Image: Sir Arthur Gilbert in the flesh and in wax. You be the judge.

Look alike

Images: John Reynolds, Bruce Barber and Wetex guy from Urban camouflage.

Credit crunch hits art world

The Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills has announced that this Saturday's opening of One Ton, One Kilo by Chris Burden, has been postponed indefinitely. There have been problems locating the 100 kilos (worth around $NZ6.6 million) of gold bars to create the work.

Industry ink: Number 1

Back in the eighties Hamish Keith once asked us and our son whether we’d like to see his recently inked tattoo. We were at home and on the way upstairs to look at some books. As a single person we said, “No.” But it was too late. Now, in a renewed spirit of inquiry, we are starting this series of art world tats. All contributions welcome. Absolute privacy guaranteed where absolute privacy is requested. OTN caps for the best and the brightest.

Not a girl guide

When it comes to marketing it’s usual to put one’s best foot forward. From that perspective, the promotion of Warwick Brown’s latest book is way from the far end of the left field.

Warwick Brown - Seen This Century: 100 Contemporary New Zealand Artists; A Collectors Guide
This is a natty, squat book. Absolutely not a coffee table format.
The 100 artists have come to prominence since 2000. No performance art, video art, or film art is included.

Apart from having serious reservations about whether you can actually be squat and natty at the same time, what’s with the heralding no performance, film and video as a selling point? That’s like putting out a book for collectors in the eighties and saying it won’t be featuring loose canvas, anything in black and white or cut-outs. Still one thing they would have understood in the eighties - 70 percent of the artists featured are guys.

You can get a copy of Seen this century at Parsons when it is published mid April. You can see the list of artists here on OTN Stuff

Art is where you find it

Continuing our movie theme for the day this picture of Sean Connery with his Micheline and her kinda weird portrait of the great man.
Photo: Keith Waldegrave

Spoiler

Most often when art makes it to the screen it’s only to serve as background, but occasionally it does get to play a leading role as happened in a recent episode of Bones titled ’The Skull in the Sculpture’. The show opens with the news that artist Geoffrey Thorne has been crushed in one of his own works - a cross between a John Chamberlain (vividly painted) and a César (crushed into a square). Thorne’s gallery is ‘curated’ by Helen Bridenbecker who sports full Kabuki make-up (yes it’s a clue). There’s lots of art jargon, PoMo makes an appearance and it feels as though an art consultant with a sense of humour was on set, or at least in the script meetings.

Eventually, to help solve the crime, a cool 3D hologram mimicking the crushing is created and at one stage one of the lab rats, in a Sylvie Fleury moment, manipulates it to do a reverse crush so the original shape of the car with body is revealed. (Fleury had once described how she’d like to untangle a crushed car and restore it back to its original form as a comment on the macho art of John Chamberlain and César).

Anyway, as anyone who knows anything about art will have guessed, the dealer did it.

Together we stand

We found our attitude to art beautifully summed up in this exchange between Richard Dawkins and Neil deGrasse Tyson .

Dawkins: A former and highly successful editor of New Scientist magazine-- who actually built up New Scientist and took it to great new heights -- was asked, "What is your philosophy at New Scientist?" And he said, "Our philosophy at New Scientist is this: Science is interesting. And if you don't agree, you can fuck off."

Ceci n’est pas un McCahon

Lookalikes are one thing, but here on Trademe is the next big step – the direct copy. This ‘McCahon’ is the second the vendor duncstar claims to have put up on the site. The first “in a similar style” apparently “got a rapturous email from the buyer!” Of course there are copyright issues to burn here around McCahon’s 1959 work He is calling Elias. The fact that Duncstar’s version is virtually the same size counters the tradition that copies are smaller or bigger than the original. Although the Trademe McCahon appears to be unsigned and is represented as a fake, it is not hard to imagine that somewhere down the track a signature may be added and an attempt made to resell the piece as an original. Duncstar’s only other offering on Trademe is a HMV chrome 'Pancake' heater.
Thanks for the point P. Since posting this item has been withdrawn from TradeMe

Thanks

Frank Gehry turned 80 on Saturday. So happy birthday Mr. Gehry and thanks for:

Giving the Guggenheim Bilbao human scale while still making it astonishing.

Surprising the hell out of us when we first saw your home on 22nd Street in Santa Monica.

Reminding us that wire fencing was cool way back in 1978.

Even thinking that a tar sealed driveway would make a good floor for your kitchen.

Making architectural models to die for.

Keeping on keeping on.

Image: The Frank Gehry house in Santa Monica

Putting the NZ Made boot in

The Dominion Post pursued its typically stupid approach to the Venice Biennale in its Saturday editorial. The editor still can’t get past the idea that selling NZ cheese is one of the key objectives for sending artists to Venice.

“Perhaps,” grumbles the DomPost, “it is Creative NZ that should be answering the questions. Why is it spending more than half a million dollars exhibiting work overseas that says nothing about New Zealand and can be seen only by the handful of New Zealanders wealthy enough to travel to Italy?”

Probably for the same reason we spend money on scholarships to send students overseas to study mathematics (no, not NZ maths, just plain old maths) and decline to deck out the Katherine Mansfield fellows in Swanndri.

The fact is Upritchard and Millar are from New Zealand and have serious international reputations as artists. That will be enough to attract curators to visit their shows and then perhaps develop a deeper interest in them and other New Zealand artists. That’s how it works in Venice. The Biennale, believe it or not, isn’t about attracting New Zealand tourists or selling local produce.

You can see the full editorial here on OTN Stuff.

News flash

News from CNZ on Friday that Judy Millar is looking for a new venue because of delays in refurbishing the first choice Sant' Antonin. Some new possibilities are the church that Mike Stevenson used (nice building but limited because of its distance from the main action) or Chiesa di San Fantin (near St Mark's Square which appears to be great location-wise). Apparently Millar has already made provision for possible flooding (Acqua Alta) by having her work on vinyl. Huge sheets of it will be stretched on a structure being built by Bruce Edgar, NZ’s Biennale technician. As a rule, although Venice can flood any old time, it is usually in November and after the Biennale finishes. As it is rarely higher than three feet, Millar’s work is probably safe.
Image: Chiesa di San Fantin

On the road

On the road is an ongoing series celebrating the Ministry of Land Transport and Local Body support of New Zealand artists.
For others in the series search 'on the road' in the blog search box above.

Leaky building syndrome

You’ll recall how last week Te Papa had the good fortune to have the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston simply shrug its shoulders when water leaked into a gallery housing paintings by Monet, Cezanne and others indemnified by the New Zealand Government.

Now it is the Auckland Art Gallery’s turn to hope that the MCA in Sydney will feel equally sanguine about a leak that has caused at least one work to be removed from the touring show Yinka Shonibare MBE for conservation.

Two leading New Zealand art museums hosting two internationally significant exhibitions both suffering from problems with leaking roofs … what are the chances?