Now we've built it will you come?

We’ve had such a great response to our studio photo site OTNSTUDIO that we’ve put up a set of photos of amazing buildings we’ve seen over the years. It’s in its early stages, but we’ll keep adding stuff. Haven’t got a Creative Commons license for it yet but you’re welcome to use any of the photos however you like. It’s called OTNARCHITECTURE (clever, huh) and you can get to it here or by using otnarchitecture.weebly.com in your browser. Hope you like it.

Images: Four pics taken at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Kaufmann house Fallingwater

Te Papa Denny purchase on the cards?

Will Te Papa buy the Denny work shown at Venice? Chances are good, given they have purchased Biennale works by most of NZ’s representatives including Bill Culbert, Michael Parekowhai, Judy Millar, Francis Upritchard, and Michael Stevenson. Also the Te Papa collection is very light on Simon Denny (two paintings, an installation of four vitrines, and an early rug work) say compared to Auckland Art Gallery. They have 18 works including the large installation seen at the Walters Prize All You Need Is Data - The DLD 2012 Conference REDUX. 

The word floating around at Venice was that the entire work had been sold in two parts so we can probably assume that one of them is going to Wellington. Looking at Denny's Secret Power as installed at the Marciana Library, Te Papa will clearly need to do more than pick and choose from the many elements if it is to coherently present the central issues raised by Denny. In essence there are three major components: the entrance way featuring an automatic sliding door and display cases that position New Zealand and the four other members of the Five Eyes spy network. Then there is a set of computer server 'vitrines' devoted to the NSA, primed by material from the Snowden releases. The third element is  a further set of computer server 'vitrines' examining the work of David Darchicourt, a past designer for the NSA. By picking up the entrance section and making a carefully curated selection from the other two parallel themes, Te Papa should be able to represent Secret Power impressively. In fact, by adding in elements of the installation at Marco Polo airport, Te Papa could complete the package and allude to the Marciana library as well.

Images: Top Simon Denny entering the 'airlock' that opens the exhibition Secret Power. Bottom the two other main elements, left featuring the NSA and Snowden material and right designer David Darchicourt

By the numbers

1   the average number of statements per month the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage has released relating to the arts so far this year

3  the amount in millions of dollars per year that Te Papa gets from the Government for ‘collection development’

6  the number of Billy Apple reviews in EyeContact since his survey exhibition opened at the Auckland Art Gallery

10  the number in thousands of visitors who attended the last Auckland Art Fair

12.5  the percentage of male exhibition attendants at the Simon Denny Venice Biennale exhibition

58   the percentage of women selected as finalists for the Waikato National Contemporary Art Award by Aaron Kreisler, Head of the Ilam School of Fine Arts in Christchurch

70  the percentage of Creative NZ funding that comes from money New Zealander's lose gambling

77.5  the amount in thousands of dollars that the Govett-Brewster paid Saatchi & Saatchi to deliver its new brand

143  the number in thousands of visitors to the exhibition Gottfried Lindauer. The Māori portraits at the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin this year

700 the value in thousands of dollars of the sales and commissions disputed in the Bambury / Jensen court case

1585  the number of exhibitions held at the Auckland Art Gallery since it opened on 23 June, 1927

Noticed at the Bode Museum in Berlin...

...a man admires a ring by Karl Fritsch.

Image: John Gregor van der Schardt, Bust of patrician Willibald Imhoff the elder. 1570

Stills a bargain

 

Photography is still cheap. Well if the latest Webb’s auction catalogue is anything to go by it is. For some reason, even at the highest level, photography prices remain low in New Zealand. This means that it is still possible to create a major photographic collection without having to reach for the oligarch strategy. At Webb’s for the price of a small Bill Hammond painting, we're talking 40 x 60 cms, birds on canvas, you could buy (based on the mid figure between the low and high estimates) all the following photographs:

Lot 5. Peter Peryer, Self portrait 1978 $4,000
Lot 7. Yvonne Todd, January $12,500
Lot 8. Theo Schoon, Unititled (mud pool) $750
Lot 10. Anne Noble, Swan $3,500
Lot 13. Laurence Aberhart, Taranaki (after glow into the night) 2002 $5,000
Lot 20. Glen Busch, Portfolio of five photographs $2,000
Lot 30. John S Daley, Untitled $500
Lot 31. Gillian Chaplin, Angela Maynard 1975 $400
Lot 34. Ben Cauchi, Flames (from a smoke filled room) 2005 $3,200
Lot 40. Ronnie van Hout, Untitled for Mephitis $2,000
Lot 43. Ans Westra, Untitled from Washday at the Pa $5,000
Lot 40. John B Turner, Kemp House Keri Keri 1975 $600
Lot 44. Murray Cammick, Untitled 1975 $300
Lot 49 John J Fields, Traffic officers and couple 1969 $750
Lot 58. George Leslie Adkin, Christmas picnic group Waitarere Beach, Horowhenua with wreck of Hydrabad c.1926 $500
Lot 60. James McDonald, Portrait of Rua Kenana Hepetipa, the Maori prophet 1969 reprint $250
Lot 62. Anne Noble, Water IV 1975 $1500
Lot 65. Peter Peryer, My parents $2,500
Lot 78. Bill Culbert, Bucket, Croagnes 2012 $4,000

And with this scheme you still have $18,500 to gather up more when you want them. Go.

Inside out

When New Zealand dealer galleries raised their commission from thirty-three and a third percent to forty percent there was a lot of grumbling. In most cases the change was made without discussion and the discussions that did take place were mostly announcements in disguise. The more recent increase from 40 percent to 50 percent barely caused a ripple. The unregulated New Zealand dealer system pretty much follows how it’s done in the rest of the world. The risk of this laissez-faire approach is being demonstrated right now by the ongoing case in Auckland between Stephen Bambury and Andrew Jensen. Jensen was reported as admitting, “The records were complicated by the sometimes casual nature of their financial relationship.” This “included oral agreements, payments being used to offset other expenses, and trade-ins.” Not an arrangement that would come as a big surprise to most New Zealand artists. The problem is that as prices rise and projects require more financing, these casual relationships come under far greater pressure. An interesting analysis of similar problems internationally is offered by the collector (and financier) Alain Servais. He complains that the dealer system has “no rules, no respect, no ethos, no nothing.”

You can access these three pieces here:

• Collector Alain Servais on Why the Venice Biennale Is the World's Best Art Fair 
• Collector Alain Servais on Insider Trading in the Art Market, “Blood-Sucking Leeches,” and Why We're Now Just the Fashion Industry 
• Art In The Shadow Of Art Market Industrialization 

Missing

Pippin Barr’s latest look at the art world via games is in 3D. It takes off from the FBI National stolen art file (worth a look in its own right) and where stolen art might not be found even if you found it. You can move around The stolen art gallery by going here and read some background on the game here. Maybe, while you're inside you could even try to nick one of the labels when no-one’s looking.

The space race

How big is big? Colin McCahon’s Gate III painting in Victoria Univeristy's collection is big at 3.5 x 10.7 meters. But in New Zealand terms so is Steele and Goldie’s The arrival of the Maoris in New Zealand at 1.8 x 2.8 meters. Of course McCahon's work was made for an exhibition titled Ten big paintings (there were also monsters by Hotere, Driver, Hanly and Ellis) and the Steele and Goldie effort is tiny compared to the Géricault painting it is based on, The raft of the Medusa that comes in at 4.91 x 7.16 meters. 

So to walk into Katharina Grosse's latest exhibition in Berlin and find six paintings in the 4 x 8 meter range, you can understand it was a very large space. Like many of the large exhibition spaces opening now it was part of a commercial enterprise, not a public one. This time Galerie Johann Koenig is responsible with a major redevelopment of St Agnes Church. 

As if that weren't enough scaling up for one weekend, we'd just come from the recently opened KINDL - Centre for Contemporary Art. In what had been the 20 meter high distillery room of a huge brewery, the Swiss artist Roman Signer had suspended a full sized airplane and made it lazily rotate with the help of two large industrial fans. Little wonder all this largess made a big impression.
Images: left Katharina Grosse at Koenig and right Roman Signer at KINDL

Insiders

The most recent Art + Object catalogue features the Judith Binney and Sebastian Black collection and it gives you great insight into the idiosyncrasies of long-time private collectors. This is a collection with its heart in the seventies (about 40 percent of the works are from that decade) but it also tells the familiar story of long friendships between collectors and artists. Works by the same artists appear again and again, often personally inscribed: there are 14 works by Ralph Hotere, 12 by Greer Twiss, five by Pat Hanly and seven by Robert Ellis. And for all of you who, like us, enjoy peeking into other people’s houses to see how they have their art displayed, there are lots of in situ pics too.
Meanwhile, on the other side of town, more departures from Webb’s including Charles Ninow. As the Senior Specialist he seemed to be single-handedly holding the fine art department together from what we could see. It’s anybody’s guess how his departure so soon after that of Webb’s other specialist contemporary art auctioneer Sophie Copland fits in with their recently-stated objective of focusing on the visual arts. You can download the Binney/Black catalogue here

Image: Hanly, McCahon, Hooper and Albrecht

Clickbait

When the Govett-Brewster turned 40 there was a party on the street and while we all drank the health of the little theatre that could, images from its art collection were projected onto the façade in a multi-media display by Tim Gruchy. It was spectacular. Now that particular effect has been taken to its absurd extreme in an 'art' event currently on offer in Berlin via an Australian outfit called Grande Exhibitions. Much technology has been hooked up to bring van Gogh alive in a dark room. For all the fuss it’s basically IMAX for art aka "transforming every surface – walls, columns, ceilings, and even floors". If you're still with us you can see a video of the construction and end result here.

Shape shifting

So what do you get if you put the new Govett-Brewster | Len Lye Centre logo into Google and search for similar shapes? This, that's what, so in good company there with Nike and QANTAS. The closest to the G-B brand turns out to be Bare Valley Bikes. Make of that what you will.
Image: Govett-Brewster logo left hand side, second from the top

Big, bigger, biggest | small, smaller, smallest

Art has always needed copies, bigger copies and smaller ones. The recent exhibition Portable classic at the Prada Foundation in Venice demonstrates the making-small approach. It lined up an original (well, a Roman copy of a Greek original) giant sculpture of Hercules with a series of ten or so ‘copies’ of it from different periods, each one of diminishing size. To create each of them someone had to scale the original down. 

It’s a skill that has been essential since sculpture was invented although now it’s being replaced by digital tools. But not everywhere. Today we met someone who spends his time scaling objects up and he does it the old way. By measuring, looking, transferring and making subtle changes, Michael Kaul builds large sculptures from small maquettes. He told us that he can scale up a three-dimensional object for about half the cost of doing it digitally. The devil certainly is in the detail. It’s not enough to enlarge something two or three or four times. Minor imperfections that might well go unnoticed in a small-scale version can emerge as disturbing errors when they are writ large. And there’s the problem of point of view. People see large objects differently so the final enlarged  ‘copy’ cannot simply be a copy but has to be an interpretation of what the object ‘should’ look like when it is big. And that is not always the same as how it would look. It’s complicated.

Images: Left, versions of the giant Farnese Hercules at the Prada Foundation exhibition Portable classic. Left top, the traditional tool for scaling-up, the ruler. Bottom, Michael Kaul sizing up a maquette for enlargement.

Dot matrix

Sometimes ideas can careen off in very different ways depending on the artist. Campbell Patterson’s painting was made the hard way. He decided to paint the hundreds of white painted circles by hand as accurately as possible. The job took months and the painting was appropriately tiled Punishment.  At Gavin Brown’s booth at Frieze NY last week the American artist Jonathan Horowitz took another direction. He enlisted anyone willing to paint his circles and what’s more he paid them $20 each to do so. In Horowitz's case we know exactly how many circles he set out to achieve: 700. Patterson got to 990 (not that anyone is counting). The scale and impact were as different as the intention. Public performance or private penance – take your pick.
Images: top, Jonathan Horowitz 700 dots and bottom Campbell Patterson Punishment

And the winner for 'most complicated label support in a museum' is....

The Walters effect

Some of the many appearances of the Gordon Walters ‘koru’ in submissions to design a new New Zealand flag.