Walters squared

Seeing it's Walters week on OTN how about this next step in the Gordon Walters koru design redux as seen in Wellington.

Data roaming

Here’s an odd journey taken by the work of one of NZ's artists. The Pulitzer Hotel in Rome has been applauded for its savvy interiors by design magazines all over the world and the photographs certainly show how bold patterns have been used to break up spaces and lend visual punch to the public spaces.

But wait a minute. That supersize work over there behind the white couch looks familiar. Could it really be a koru painting by Gordon Walters? Well, no. For a start we reckon it's around 2.5 x 2 meters, far larger than anything Walters did (his large paintings usually being around 1.5 x 1.2 meters). And then even more tellingly it looks pretty much the same as Auckland Art Gallery’s Walters' painting from 1981 Maheno albeit slightly modified at the top. So a photo-print, possibly on canvas. Thanks internet.

If you still have any doubts check out the Hotel Pulitzer in Rome’s site where a recent “70s-style design reinterpreted with a modern twist” refurbishment by Spanish interior designer Rosa-Violan is noted. “A common thread throughout the hotel is the artwork. All works have been produced by Rosa-Violan …. Usually framed in burnished brass, the simplistic style has a largely geometric and abstract flavour following in the footsteps of the Gio Ponti school and the Futurist art of post-war Italy.” Make that post-war New Zealand too.

WTF AAG? OTY OK

Images: The lobby of the Hotel Pulitzer in Rome with the ‘Walters' painting behind the couch. (Thanks for the heads-up H)

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' on the blog search above. (Thanks S)

Dress for less

Stuck inside on a wet day with nothing to play with but your computer? What better way to while away the time than putting hipster clothing on Classical sculpture. Retoucher Alexis Persani (yes this was done with Photoshop not a run-round with clothing and Velcro) says of his work, “I discovered a whole new dimension to classical sculpture. If you dress the sculptures as hipsters it gives them an awesome new look.” Who knew.
You can see more here

Lying low

As six months have gone by we went down to see if Len Lye's Water Whirler on Wellington's waterfront was back in action. No such luck. Still, a smart move by the Wellington City Council to take down the dilapidated  ‘not working sign’. The two other people who turned up on the hour for the viewing assumed they had just missed it. Like the sound of a tree falling in the forest.

The curator director

When Peter Tomory became director of the Auckland Art Gallery back in 1956 he came to the job as a curator and exhibition maker. Tomory not only curated exhibitions he helped shape the way we see New Zealand art through his development of the Gallery’s collection. More recently the AAG directors have tended to leave curating alone with the last curatorial director being Rodney Wilson back in the eighties.

Nowadays directors of large institutions are likely to be administrators and even directors like Jenny Harper who come from a curatorial background rarely have the time to make their own exhibitions. Many others, like Cam McCracken of the Dunedin Art Gallery, see the job as creating a context in which curators can do their best work. One effect of this though is that we usually have only a vague idea of what our institutional leaders favour or value in their own collections. To address that a director’s choice show every now and then would be a great addition to any of our art museum programmes.

The new director of the Auckland Art Gallery Rhana Devenport has an interesting take on all this. We've already noted that she has two proposals in for the Venice Biennale (we understand they are for Lisa Reihana and Fiona Pardington - a couple of readers (thanks D and G) have since suggested the second proposal is for Alex Montieth who Devenport showed at the G-B - and now she has made another curatorial flourish this time on line. “To date my curatorial work has concentrated on contemporary practice, however, I have a fascination for historical art artworks and the sense of present wonder they evoke”. You can see Devenport’s selection of 23 works (from the AAG collection and elsewhere) along with her commentary here on Google Art Project.

The best art is business art

This week coming to you on video, business people pose with art number 3, Tim Bennett CEO of NZX with Tony de Lautour's NZX

Fair dealing

Here’s a riddle doing the rounds: “When is the Melbourne Art Fair not the Melbourne Art Fair?” The answer? “When it’s the Sydney Art Fair (aka Sydney Contemporary 13)." And that, after a big burst of start-up publicity linking Sydney with the Hong Kong and Basel Art Fairs, does seem to be where we've ended up.

Since it was first announced the Sydney Art Fair has had a change of venue and been delayed a few months but it now kicks off on Thursday. Those who imagined reaping the benefits of a competitive Melbourne/ Sydney tussle can settle down. The company that owns the Sydney Fair (Art Fairs Australia Pty Ltd founded by Tim Etchells) will now also be running the Melbourne event and hoping to turn it around. Last year the Melbourne Art Fair saw attendances dip 10 percent to 27,000 and, probably more alarmingly, sales drop from $12.5 million in 2010 to $10.2 million.

Despite Sydney's booth prices coming in 25 percent higher than last year in Melbourne, Tim Etchells told the Australian Financial Review Sydney Contemporary is only “anticipating an audience of up to 18,000” and, by the sound of the lavish number of VIP allowances offered to participating galleries, around 2,500 of them will be varying orders of VIPs. No surprise then that ‘Pampering VIPs’ was listed as a significant budget line in the AFA story. So expect a lot of pampering. In contrast the Basel Art Fair restricts VIP cards to just 10 per gallery.

The Sydney Contemporary venue is Carriageworks which will be familiar to visitors to the Anna Schwartz Gallery. In fact her Gallery will sit between the two Art Fair spaces prompting one wit to suggest she rename it ‘Main Entrance’.

Image: VIP card for Sydney Contemporary 13

Bacon bits

If you want to put an evil guy in front of a painting the art of the moment seems to be by Francis Bacon. We've already featured Jack Nicholson’s Bacon moment and now the eccentric British artist has been selected as backdrop in the re-hash of RoboCop. This time the evil one barks at his minions in front of Bacon’s 1981 Triptych inspired by Aeschylus's ‘Orestei’. Now why the hell would they pick that?

A clue may be in the poem Bacon tapped for his three-parter. "Black they are ... their heavy rasping breathing makes me cringe." Yes it's a tale of slaughter coupled with relentless pursuit. Rings a bell when you think back to the first RoboCop movie.

The original of the Bacon painting (one of 28 large triptychs he painted) is in the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo.  This is yet another private collection that has recently opened its own new museum, this one designed by Renzo Piano.

As to the film, it’s trailer only time at the moment so no Bacon spotting until early next year.
Image: Top, RoboCop to be released in 2014. Bottom, Bacon’s Triptych inspired by Aeschylus's 'Orestei'. You can buy a three-part Bacon lithograph based on this painting here

Images: top, still from the RoboCop remake. Bottom Bacon's Triptych inspired by Aeschylus's ‘Orestei’ (Thanks for the tip D)

Art at work

A bird completely at home on Michael Parekowhai's sculpture in Britomart

Rumble in the jungle

Usually when two competing elephants go head to head it’s all trampled grass, broken trees, flattened fauna and general bad news for anyone in the neighborhood, but when Art + Object and Webb’s go at it there's nothing but good news for us all. The latest gift from the field of action is A+O’s new publication, the large format, 52-page magazine Content.

Of course it’s a Trojan Horse to smuggle good news and convincing stats into our living rooms but it also comes with some interesting stuff on Venice, Theo Schoon and, embarrassingly, the first solid public acknowledgement of Sue Crockford that we've seen. Maybe it was the suddenness of her gallery closing or the muddle that preceded it, but as far as we've noticed Crockford’s valuable and lengthy contribution to the arts has been overlooked (including by OTN). To go some way to redressing that omission A+O presents a long interview with Sue Crockford that covers the history of the gallery.

Also included in Content, in the stats section, are the top 10 sales that have gone through A+O in the seven years they have been trading. It’s a small pool : four works by Gordon Walters, three by Colin McCahon, two by Bill Hammond and one Hotere. If you don’t already have a copy of Content our bet is that an email to A+O would score you one.

Branded: Ruth Watson

The moment when artists become brands

Art is where we found it

If you believe in the OTN rubric Art is where you find it, you can definitely find it at the Ruapeka Marae half-a-dozen kilometres or so out of Rotorua on the road to Matamata. It was certainly enough to stop us as we drove past. Stretched along the length of the marae grounds are 12 stunning carved and painted figures. One of them looks like a startling mash-up of the Hulk and Spiderman but there is also a touching painted carving commemorating the sacrifice made (we assume by people from the marae) in the armed services. You can see a photograph of that figure here.

Art at work

Art hard at work in the foyers of the world

Happy, happy joy, joy

Over the last few months we have been asking the artists we meet one simple question. Are you happy? Our findings have now been compiled and we can tell you that 7.7 percent of New Zealand artists (that’s forgetting you Mr “what’s it got to do with you? And Ms “but do you have the copyright?” and Associate Professor “well, in the final analysis, what is happiness?”) are indeed happy though only 3.24 percent were happy-go-lucky. While there might be some grumbling about OTN basing this on a sample of six artists, it is very interesting to note that the average percentage of happy artists in New Zealand exactly equates with the satisfaction rate found in artists throughout Europe. That research using a scale of one (very unhappy) to 10 (totally happy) also came up with a  7.7 percent happiness rate. How about that? It also was able to demonstrate that artists in Europe are .4 percent happier than the average non-artist. Our research question did differ from the one used in Europe. Their “Overall, how satisfied are you with your job?,” compared to our “how are things going?” and they also included a much wider range of artists, asking composers, musicians, dancers, actors, journalists, clowns, magicians, and nightclub performers some of whom, clowns for instance, were probably skewed on the happiness thing. But both coming in at 7.7 you have to admit, it’s uncanny.