Spam

unvarnished facts, reckless guesswork, insinuations and possible inventions that have arrived at overthenet: before her resignation post the chaotic unitec restructuring, head of design and contemporary arts deanne koelmeyer was holidaying on her boat the graft spee named after a german naval vessel scuttled by its captain • bambury v jensen nz’s jarndyce v jarndyce is waiting in the pen for a high court hearing in auckland • the len lye centre in new plymouth has secured full funding via another substantial grant from the lotteries board making their support a total of  almost three million of the ten million required • university of auckland's gus fisher gallery is going it alone and will not replace its sole curator • ann shelton and phil dadson have left starkwhite • te papa has begun bench marking prices paid for acquisitions after a run of record-breaking purchases • sounds like auckland art consultant trish clark has sealed the deal on the ex-hairdressing salon near the university for her new dealer gallery • a temporary installation in the auckland art gallery foyer will hold the space as negotiations with scottish artist martin creed continue • any missed details, indignant denials or additions gratefully received, and any that makes us laugh out loud will be suitably rewarded

The shining

“There should be an international moratorium on art made with mirrors, Mylar, aerosol paint, and virtually any ‘found objects’ no matter how esoteric.”
New Jersey-based art adviser Clayton Press quoted in the WSJ

Transplant

There’s a long tradition of artists putting works in retail store windows. Famously Andy Warhol did it for Bonwit Teller in New York and now in Auckland you can see a primo example by Michael Parekowhai. 

Greg Ryder’s hair salon was previously in a building close by the university (Trish Clark has her eyes on it for a new dealer gallery we’re told) and he used to show a few works by Parekowhai there from time to time. Now Ryder's downtown salon has been turned into a full-on showcase. From a life-size bull in the reception area to five orchestrated window displays (plus a few other items to surprise you) there’s a lot to see when you get yourself down there. Ryder is on the corner opposite the bottom of Anzac Ave.

Art is where you find it

Stepping out of Hopkinson Mossman and looking across the road it sure as hell looked like art. And it was. Commercial art.

The best art is business art

The OTN series where business people pose in front of art. This time it's Mark Adamson CE of Fletcher Building standing in front of a painting by Para Matchitt

Drive

Back in 1995 Michael Stevenson made an installation that included a selection of rental videos. The bogus movie titles illuminated Stevenson's perspective on the NZ art world and its idiosyncrasies. The trouble with Henry: Kissinger and the Museum of New Zealand was one and so was Curatorial protocols: who gets into exhibitions but the sharpest (at the time anyway) was Planes, trains NOT automobiles: the case of non-drivers in the art world. The work referred to the large number of art world people who didn’t drive but were driven including Robert Leonard, Hamish Keith, Wystan Curnow and Francis Pound. 

This oddity came up when we saw a Glengarry van parked inside Michael Lett's gallery unloading beer for Campbell Patterson's opening. We probably shouldn’t have been surprised as the gallery was once a drive in drive out repair shop. Then Michael told us a great story that when some Milan Mrkusich paintings were hung in the gallery Milan’s son drove the artist right through the gallery, past the paintings, and dropped him off at the office. #wishwe'dbeenthere.

Er...about those art museum attendance figures

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
Albert Einstein

Lookalike: Manet division

Seeing some people sitting under the trees by the Hutt River the other day sent us on a search for recreations of Manet’s Le déjeuner sur l'herbe lookalikes. There are thousands of them, here’s a sample.

Images: Top to bottom left to right, Hutt River, Bow Wow Wow cover, second row left H264 (check out their super-strange Lunch on the grass video here) and right boooooooom.com the home of recreating art, the New York art group 2F1K, random people on Flickr and finally, Dior

Thinking about...

...Eve Armstrong in Wellington.

What’s in that crate?

At the moment nothing is in the crate. The object that was in it (a wooden writing desk) is now sitting on top of it in the City Gallery so here is the tale of that desk (as best as we can remember) as told to us by Simon Starling.

Thinking of Australian connections for exhibitions in Melbourne and Brisbane, Starling noticed that an Australian museum had the desk of writer Patrick White in its collection. Turned out that when White was living in London he'd known Francis Bacon who was working as an interior designer.  "I got to know Francis when he designed some furniture for my Eccleston Street flat. I like to remember his beautiful pansy-shaped face, sometimes with too much lipstick on it." The furniture Bacon designed included a writing desk but White sold it and the other pieces when he returned to Australia after the war.

Almost immediately regretting the sale White tried to make amends. He gave a photograph of the Bacon-designed desk (probably the top photograph above) to an Australian cabinetmaker to make another one. Unfortunately he largely missed the spirit of the Bacon and produced a bit of a clunker.

Enter Simon Starling.

Starling sent the photograph White had probably used of the original Bacon desk to a cabinetmaker in Berlin asking him to make a replica. The new desk was then photographed and this image sent to a cabinetmaker in Australia. He repeated the process making another desk based on a photograph of the German replica and in turn sent a photograph of his own effort to a cabinetmaker in England with the same instructions.

The three desks are exhibited on top of the crates that initially shipped two of them to Australia and now all of them to New Zealand. Chinese whispers desk style, but as the City Gallery's Robert Leonard said in his talk last week, even all that’s not the whole story. 

Starling’s ingenious and engaging exhibition is on at the City Gallery in Wellington until 18 May.

Images: Top, the crate that is used to ship the German replica. Middle, the original desk designed by Francis Bacon in Patrick White’s flat in London’s Eccleston Street. Middle, Patrick White in 1973 sitting on the replica he had made in Australia (Photo: National Library of Australia) and bottom, White at his Australian desk as painted by Brett Whitely.

Making room

• Give back some donated items back to their families
• Be choosier about items accepted for the collection in future.
• Upgrade the quality of the collection

Three genius ideas the Napier Museum has come up with to solve their storage problems as reported on TV1

Northern exposure

The business case for Te Papa of the North was due to go to Cabinet toward the end of last year so time to get ready for the promised consultations around this big culture-to-the- people idea. As Te Papa consistently gets 98 percent “good to excellent” in its audience surveys expect general support for a Te Papa to go in Manukau.  Hard to believe that questions will be test priorities. “Would you rather have a Te Papa storage facility cum display area or a swimming pool, a library or a sports stadium?” is unlikely to feature. #dontaskquestionsyoudontwantanswersto. Last year when the Stuff organization (Dominion Post etc.) went out with the bald, “Do you agree with the plans for a Manukau Te Papa?” just 750 votes were cast of which 56.7 said no.

The Minister for Arts, Culture & Heritage has certainly been touting for the Te Papa of the North concept.  It was nice to have him actually comment on something cultural. Of course he couldn't help himself and retorted to critics of the far flungness of the Manukau site that, “As the crow flies, it is but a few hundred metres from the Royal Auckland Golf Club.” Rich in sarcasm of course but digs at the hoity-toity attitudes of NZ’s 1% is a bit rich coming from a man who names Bayreuth as a personal cultural hotspot.

For the record here’s what they all said when announcing Te Papa of the North so you can compare it to what they’ll all say later.

It will “improve the accessibility of our national treasures” – Minister for Arts, Culture & Heritage

“It will enable South Auckland to have a place that has a Pacific focus, and be an invaluable resource for the area's schools”  - Mayor of Auckland

It will “create an innovative cultural hub at the heart of New Zealand’s most culturally diverse and fastest growing region” Mayor and Minister

“Manukau is not off the beaten track.” – Minister for Arts, Culture & Heritage

“Different stakeholders will be consulted at different times, and on the aspects that are relevant to them.” – Chief Executive, Te Papa

Copycart

New Zealand World Rally Championship driver Hayden Paddon channels Reuben Patterson.

Images: top, Reuben Patterson’s 2005 screen print Naturist and bottom Hayden Paddon’s WRC Hyundai. (Thanks S)

One day at the cake shop

Owner: Those Gerhard Richter cakes are slow out the door

Baker: Well don’t blame me…they started off as de Koonings. You were the one who insisted on the change

O: Well Richter is hot. A market leader

B: Sure, but smudgy cakes?

O: Yeah. Maybe we shoulda used one of those ones with all the little squares of colour

B: So where to from here? I'm liking Blinky Palermo

O: Enough with the Germans

B: German?....Blinky?

O: No. What we need is a smack-down combo, like an artist and an anniversary

B: Hey that's a great idea! How about the 39th anniversary of Joseph Beuys performing How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare?

O: Yes, like that but not a sculptor, not a German and without the hare

B: OK

O: Michelangelo. He’s having an anniversary. Perfect

B: A David cake? You want me to do extreme nude cakery?

O: No, no, I’m talking Michelangelo the painter and I know just the work for our next cake: the Sistine chapel ceiling.

B: I can’t make a cake of a painting that’s on a ceiling

But she did.

Image: Michelle Wibowo used over 10,000 marshmallows and more sprinkles than you'd see in a lifetime creating her one on one scale version of Michelangelo's 450 year old painting. More here

Fall guy

Saturday is Pull-down-a-statue-of-Lenin day. The Ukrainians have a new word for when bad sculptures turn badder Leninopad. It literally means 'Lenin fall' (combining the word for waterfall with Lenin) and fall is exactly what happens to multiple Lenin sculptures in this clip.