Practice makes perfect

Students describe the benefits of attending Auckland University’s Elam Art School on the University web site.

... to develop my artistic practice

I plan to work as a practising artist

... a rich and resourceful environment for artistic research, development and practice

I plan to articulate my practice

... enrich my work as a contemporary practitioner of painting and installation.

I plan to continue my work as a practising artist

... because it is relatively close to home, as well as the people and the content that has informed my practice

.

 SOLD! (… maybe.)

Illustration: Pippin Barr

Proud

This riff on one of OTN's Big Ears posts by the celebrated cartoon artist Pippin Barr. You can see more of Mr. Barr's work on his website stimulus/response

Mind the gap

How do we tell if an artist is regarded as important to our culture? There are a number of rules of thumb to work with: appearing on the cover of Art New Zealand, winning the Walters prize, representing us at the Venice Biennale, having a major survey show at a public museum, getting serious CNZ grants and being well represented in the National Collection held by Te Papa.

Using these as a benchmark, you’d have to wonder what’s gone wrong with et al as they tick all these boxes save one. To date there is only one significant et al. work (Object: Misguided) in Te Papa’s collection. It was purchased ten years ago before et al won the Walters Prize or went to Venice and it has never been on display. It is included in Te Papa’s online catalogue, but is not illustrated unlike most other significant works.

There is a precedent for this blindspot. Colin McCahon was not included in the collection of the National Art Gallery until he was 50 and had to wait until he was 59 before a major work was purchased. Since then the National Collection has been playing an expensive game of catch-up buying works that could have been purchased for peanuts if the curators had shown better judgement. [Disclosure: we have personally benefited from this process.]

Auckland Art Gallery gets the significance of et al. It has four major installations representing most phases of the et al. group’s work along with seven other works and a good representation via the Chartwell Collection. And it was smart about McCahon too.

Te Papa seems to have a special problem with et al. Think about it. et al. is the only New Zealand representative at Venice not to have the Venice work shown in New Zealand by the organizing gallery (Te Papa’s contemporary curator at the time, Natasha Conland, curated the Venice show). This year we have Acting CEO Michelle Hippolite being ‘delighted to have supported the staging of New Zealand at the Venice Biennale 2009 and to be able to present Judy Millar and Francis Upritchard’s installations during the New Zealand International Arts Festival'. That support has also been expressed through the purchase of the Venice works of Fraser, Stevenson, Upritchard and Millar. No Peter Robinson purchase and, you guessed it, no etal.

et al.’s work is also missing from the major publication documenting Te Papa’s collection (the only Walters Prize winner not to be included, we assume because the registration department is still unable to supply a picture of the installation ten years after it entered the collection).

While et al. might not be easy for the general public to take, fear of public criticism is no reason to ignore work that has been acknowledged as important in every other art forum we have. Key members of the collective are approaching the age of sixty. Te Papa needs to take action and start building its et al. holdings as part of its mission to tell the stories of New Zealand.

Image: Object: Misguided 1999

When good models turn bad

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.

When sea lions make art

Most animal art – as anyone who has followed this blog will know – is done by land-based mammals. Fish, who you might think would be great at watercolours, don’t really make at art all and it’s the same with the mollusc, octopus and jellyfish. Seal lions, on the other hand, expand the mammal rule and have a rich art culture. Put a sea lion together with a paint brush and the chances are very good that the result will be serious sea lion art. In aquarium retail outlets all over the world talented sea lions are selling their work and helping to create a steady income stream for their institutions. Artists like Jonao in Japan and the Americans Milo, Huck and Lea would be household names if households were up to speed on recent advances in sea lion art. Here then pictures of six pinnipeds that have stepped up (in so far as sea lions can step) and made art their vocation.

Images: clockwise from top left, artists Jonao, Magie, Morgan, Zuma, Milo and Huck

No idea

Ok it’s not a moose, but following up OTN’s research project on the history of large animal sculpture, here is a giant deer from way back.

Behind the curtain

Mad magazine often runs a gag that makes heroes of the unheralded people behind great events: the photographer who had to get to the top of Everest first to capture the climbers knocking the bastard off - that sort of thing. 

In the art world these hidden heroes are the fabricators –the sign writers and the cabinetmakers - the unartists who make art works. Knowing OTN this may well be the start of a series, but to kick off let’s hear it for Structurflex Ltd who operate out of Henderson in Auckland. 

Starting off as sail makers 75 years ago, the company now has offices round the world and focuses on handling specialised fabric materials. It was Structurflex Alan Gibbs and Anish Kapoor called when they wanted to construct a massive outdoor work on Gibbs’s sculpture park The Farm north of Auckland. For the record, Structurflex used 7,250 kilos of Ferrari 1302-S series PVC fabric spanning 85 meters supported by two steel ellipses each weighing 43,000 kilos.

Image: Anish Kapoor's untitled work on The Farm

lookalikes

Courier post

One of the greatest of curatorial perks is at risk, in the US anyway. Ask any curator what they dream of at night and (apart from the oddities who say art) they will tell you it’s being a courier. Now we aren’t talking bikes and shoulder bags here but air travel and hotels. For years now public museums have insisted on couriers accompanying valuable art works when they are shipped off to exhibitions in other countries, and those couriers are often curators. How much protection they could in fact afford the work is another matter. Sometimes it might sit up in business class in a seat but anecdotes abound about the fate of works relegated to the hold. Rothko crates leaking coloured water onto the tarmac as rain pelted down and the courier raced about looking for a tarp is one of the more popular. The reality is that most curators are the last people you’d put in a situation that required quick thinking and instant action.

Now, thanks to I’m-setting-fire-to-my-shoe guy and why-is-smoke -coming-out-of-his-lap person the American Aviation authorities have tightened up air cargo security. Art that in the past could be secured at the point of freighting i.e. a gallery, a collector’s home or a museum is now liable for inspection by airport security like any other luggage that goes into the hold. Given the specialist packing, high value and fragility involved this is not good. 

Big-time museums like MoMA have solved the problem with their own certificated-secure packing facilities, but that’s way beyond most institutions. Even those expensive watercolours strapped into a spare seat are now subject to official search. And of course no more running round the tarmac looking for tarps.

In Bangladesh

We were thinking about Dashper, Driver and Denny

Cloud nine

In the latest round of National Bank ads, Cody the black stallion takes a back seat to art. We’re not talking generic art lookalikes out of a design shop here, but commissioned work by John Reynolds, an artist who has work in every major art museum in the country and who represented New Zealand at the 2006 Biennale of Sydney. The paintings are in Reynolds’ signature style with small canvases, some piled on top of one another. ‘Smaller repayments’ one of them tempts. “Fix for how long?” another slyly questions. Also part of the team is Hawke’s Bay artist Martin Poppelwell. In the ad a young couple unwrap the works from their protective bubble wrap and Academy-hang them on their living room wall before stepping back to gaze lovingly at this strange poem to banking. Recessions are for babies.

Thanks for the heads up W

Lookalike

Gordon Walters photo corners

Solo show

If you believe you can find art anywhere, your conviction would have been confirmed on Friday outside Te Papa where a small blue painting was propped up against one of the mirrored sculptures by local artist Peter Trevelyan. It looked political – “I Believe IN John Key. He Wouldn’t Lie to US” – the sort of thing you might see on the end of a stick in a political rally. A half -hour later there it is again, this time under one of Judy Millar’s Giraffe-bottle-gun paintings on Te Papa’s fifth floor.

There’s a precedent for this sneaking-my-art-into-a-public-museum action. The English graffiti artist Banksy famously exhibited a fake cave painting for a few days at the British Museum and someone calling themselves Cartrain managed to insert a Damien Hirst "portrait" into a National Portrait Gallery hanging. So we hung around for 20 minutes or so to see what would happen.

The audience for Millar’s work seemed to take the addition in their stride, and the Te Papa guides either thought it was part of the work or didn’t sweep that low on their walk-throughs. As we were about to go a young guy with a camera came into the gallery, looked around and took a couple of snaps. Turned out he was an art student (not so surprising) doing a performance installation course. No one had stopped him bring his art into Te Papa and no one had tried to put an end to his short term display. Picking his art up from the floor he tucked it under his arm, gave us a smile, and wandered off down the stairs.