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Director: I’m getting a lot of pressure from up the line to increase attendances.
Curator: More kids
Marketing: Kids
Education: Same
D: No, no we can’t go through the 80/20 barrier we need something else to get adults in.
C: A history show?
D: (ignores her) Any ideas?
E: Free beer on tap?
D: Budget
M: Food hall?
D: Not bad but a bit too nineties RA
C: How about drawing the crowds with an extreme artwork?
M: A what? (aside “you’ve got to be kidding me”)
D: (resigned) ok, ok let’s hear what you’ve got.
C: A collective that fill the gallery with condoms inflated with laughing gas and gets the audience to burst them with pins
D: Health and safety issues
C: OK then, a guy who sands himself with an electric sander on behalf of a favourite charity inside the gallery
D: Not with the cleaners' strike we've got on he won't
C: A sniper shooting high velocity bullets across the gallery at unsuspecting visitors
D: A real sniper?
C: Sure, certified Navy SEAL
D: And the gun?
C: I’m thinking high-powered 30-caliber rifle. Maybe a Tactical 308
D: Let’s do it
M: I’m not so sure about the marketing angle
D: Huh?
M: You know … um … people getting in the way of bullets .... collateral damage .... bodies.
D: (exasperated) Ok ok then. Shoot something else then
So they did.
(Thanks for the head's up C)
Wellington musicians make off with Ralph Hotere
Three women and one guy (Tina Barton, Caterina Riva, Anna-Marie White and Peter Robinson) have selected three guys and one woman (Simon Denny, Luke Willis Thompson, Kalisolaite ‘Uhila and Maddie Leach) as finalists in the 2014 Walters Prize.
And this time the selection's not at all clubby. Only two of the four (Denny and Willis Thompson) have dealers as far as we can see and one (Maddie Leach) actually lives outside Auckland although two (Denny, Willis Thompson) in fact live in Germany. As to the other big question as to whether anyone actually saw the Denny shows in Munich and New York, well maybe, maybe not, but there won't be the fuss there was last time over one contestant. Of course Denny is up for his second nomination to go along with his outing at Venice next year. A second nomination has only happened twice before with John Reynolds and Peter Robinson. Robinson of course won it on the second go.
This time selection panel members were all from the state sector with two from the universities (Barton and Robinson) and two from public galleries (Riva and White).
Who could reasonably feel left out? Well Shane Cotton must wonder what he'd have to do to be included particularly after his IMA/City Gallery show. Fiona Pardington has probably figured out by now that photography isn’t going to do it and Rohan Wealleans is certainly having a long wait in the wings.
You can see the Auckland Art Gallery media release here with details of the selected exhibitions to give you some idea of what to expect from the Walters Prize exhibition.
COMMENTS Roger Boyce (20:03:14): As to your "Who could reasonably feel left out?" I reckon you've pointedly answered your own relatively-rhetorical question with: Fiona Pardington, Shane Cotton & Rohan Wealleans. An interesting finalist-selection query to entertain would be why these three eminent names are (as per usual) notably absent. I would suggest that "state sector" types (creatures of academy and so-called non-commercial, white-box, spaces - P. Robinson excepted from this catchall characterization) are 'religiously' (so to speak) conditioned by catechistic 'training texts' which codify 'the market' as an exclusionary shibboleth. Given all three artists (Pardington, Cotton & Weallans) enjoy robust markets for their work may be the not-quite sub-textual cause of their exclusion.
Thanks D (Badge on the way)
It’s partly concealed now by trees and stuff but when it was completed in 1954 St Mary’s church in Taihape must have been a shock. We only learnt recently that Ernst Plischke and Cedric Firth had designed this Roman Catholic church, so when we were driving through we stopped to take a look. This substantial concrete building looms on the top of a hill at the entrance to the town from the North. It was gifted to Taihape by John and Mary Bartosh which perhaps explains how building such an uncompromising structure was possible in a small country settlement in 1950s New Zealand.
Looking around the town it's pretty clear that the chilly wind of modernism never really blew through the streets of Taihape, but it certainly clipped the top of one of its hills.
"I do want museums to feel special - but I want them to feel like a special part of your everyday life, not a place where you stop being you when you visit."
Dowse Art Museum director Courtney Johnston on her blog Best of 3 today
The relationships between institutions, funding bodies, artists and money are now so seamless and so comfortable it’s not often that the surface is ever cracked. But that’s certainly what happened when it was revealed that the main sponsor of the Biennale of Sydney is connected to the construction and management of off shore refugee camps. Nine artists withdrew which in turn lead to The Chairman of the Sydney Biennale and Transfield Holdings, Luca Belgiorno-Nettis resigning to allow it to distance itself from Transfield’s funding. The response from the Australian Minister of the Arts Queensland’s senator Brandis was predictably brutal pulling out "disgraceful" and "shabby" and Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull dredged up ''vicious ingratitude.''
More compelling was Brandis’ threat to withdraw Government funding to punish their ungrateful response and any other arts bodies that thought they could question commercial largess in the form of sponsorship.
In fact it looks like the Biennale has kept the Transfield money for this year anyway, so much for their public announcement to “end our partnership with Transfield effective immediately.” Given that the Transfield contribution only represents just over six percent of the Biennale budget (around $634,000 a year) it is pretty hard to see the Biennale falling over through a parting of company.
But in the end there's no clean cash to be had (it is after all the main sponsors of the Biennale the Australian Government who are responsible for the camps). As one of those early Greek guys said, “There is nothing in the world so demoralizing as money.”
Images: Left Biennale sponsor Transfield's logo and right camp construction and services company Transfield Services logo
When you’re hanging about waiting for the barista to draw a fern or a love heart in the crème just be thankful they aren’t film lovers. You find out who's who and look at more here.
If you’re a lover of irony you’ll enjoy this. The Centre Pompidou is celebrating the anniversary of one of its most important exhibitions Magiciens de la Terre curated by Jean-Hubert Martin in 1989. One of the icons of that exhibition was Neil Dawson’s suspended work Globe. For this anniversary presentation of the exhibition the Pompidou made overtures to Dawson to develop a project. The idea fell through when the Pompidou couldn’t come up with funding. But an icon’s an icon, so what can a poor museum do? Feature it on the invitation.
We’ve had a great response to OTN studio photos with well over 1000 hits and around 450 individual users so far. Given that an art museum talk is often lucky to pull in more than 50 people at a time and that art books are often published in runs of less than a 1000 copies we’ll keep adding to this site with archives and other stuff we've amassed. This will include some shots of artists setting up exhibitions, more studios recent and earlier, interviews and some longer form pieces giving the stories behind some well known works and incidents in the art world.
In the meantime here is a jigsaw cut from a 1980 shot of Don Driver. He had just pulled out his Yellow tentacle pram from the clutter of his studio garage to have a last look before it went on exhibition for the first time (it is now in the DPAG's collection). And thanks to Christchurch Art Gallery's Bunker notes for showing the way to the jigsaw site.
You can do the Driver jigsaw (and make your own) by clicking ‘restart’ here.
New on OTN Studio:
et al. (Lillian Budd studio 1991)
Tony Fomison 1978
Peter Robinson February 1993
Ruth Watson 1998
The Len Lye Centre will be pleased to see that it is to be joined by another mirror surfaced museum this one in Rotterdam. The architectural firm MVRDV has just won the design competition for its for the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen's collection building.
If you’ve followed OTN over the years you'll know that we have had a bit of an obsession over dealer gallery signs. The infamous axe attack on the Barry Lett sign, the holiday Dane Mitchell awarded the sign from Artspace and the various iterations of Peter McLeavey’s shingle. So if an exhibition were ever made to feature on this blog it has got to be Fuzzy Vibe's display of 13 dealer and artist run gallery signs. The roster includes a photo of the Teststrip sign (the original must have gone walkabout – it should really be in a public collection) plus signs from Auckland spaces Ferrari, Gambia Castle, s/f and Newcall. Top billing has to go to remnants of the Snakepit sign shown back on but a work of art in any direction. Not sure if the show’s still running but if so, it’s got to be a good sign.
OTN dealer gallery sign stories
New Vision I
New Vision II
Johnathan Smart
Peter McLeavey
Peter McLeavey II
Barry Lett
Teststrip
Any of you watching the TV series True Detective will be interested in this piece. It shows how images by the American photographer Richard Misrach who had one of his early solo exhibitions at the National Art Gallery in the eighties influenced the look and feel of the series. (Thanks M)
Image: Richard Miseach from his book Petrochemical America (Aperture, 2012)
