Post Len Lye

One of the great New Zealand fashion/artist combos for our money (Amour wind breaker) was when Workshop worked with John Reynolds. This time the reach is right into the grave with Lim Bowden’s Deadly Ponies taking on Len Lye. DP have looked at Lye’s Trade Tattoo from 1937 and Rainbow dance made a year earlier, ironically made for the Post Office Savings Bank - a little off brand for Deadly Ponies.  The new line of wallets, bags and scarf were produced to coincide with the opening of the Len Lye Centre. The fashion company says it has, “re-created the energy from Lye’s work” sadly something that didn’t happen with the latest iteration of Fountain. Bowden told Urbis magazine that one of his own favourite artist fashion designer combos is “Valentino’s recent collaboration with Canadian artist, Christi Belcourt. It is inspiring because neither of the participant’s work was diluted; only made more beautiful through working together”.

Images: left Len Lye and right Deadly Ponies

Peter’s place

Today we have loaded up some photos from 147 Cuba Street onto OTN STUDIO

A Requiem Mass will be held for Peter McLeavey in the Sacred Heart Cathedral, Hill Street, Wellington today at 2.00pm. It will be followed by a private interment at Taita Cemetery.

Lookalike

If you were in Sydney early in 1992, you're in for a bit of déjà vu all over again at Te Papa. As part of their new re-hang of the national collection, the curators have made an elegant homage to an earlier exhibition. This exhibition was part of their own history back when they were known as the National Art Gallery. The last time Julian Dashper’s Mural for a contemporary house and Lillian Budd’s Modern world were coupled was in Headlands. 

It was the opening exhibition for the MCA in Sydney (kinda amazing for an Australian institution to launch with NZ art, and hasn't been done again) and curated by the National Art Gallery's Robert Leonard. Ok, there was a curatorium (why don’t they use cool names like that any more? … oh, that’s right, we remember), but it was Leonard’s exhibition, and the Dashper Budd combo is about as pure Leonard as you can get. There are other more subtle echoes of Headlands in the Te Papa hang in the selection of artists (Dawson, Derek Cherrie) as well as the title of this section (Mod Cons in Headlands, Open Homes at Te Papa). So if you want to experience something with more than a bit of the flavour of Headlands, head to Te Papa, but don't expect to see that history acknowledged. Nowhere on the signage or labels is there any link back to the MCA, Leonard or Te Papa's own connections with these objects. Seems a weird way to participate in art history. Or maybe the similarity in the selections is just a coincidence and George Santayana was right, those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Images: top Headlands 1992 and bottom Te Papa 2015

Peter McLeavey 147 Cuba Street

It was never hard to find Peter McLeavey, he'd be sitting at his desk at 147 Cuba Street. If you stayed for a few minutes in the first larger room looking at the exhibition, he'd get up from his desk and come in to talk to you, whoever you were. Everyone has their own Peter McLeavey story but they usually start with one of these conversations because Peter was, before anything else, the great salesman of New Zealand art. And Peter wasn’t just selling the art works he might have in the Gallery at the time, but the whole enterprise. It included the artists he didn't represent, as well as the ones he did, the exhibitions at public institutions, the other dealers, the writers, and the wildly different audiences art attracted. When he did sell work from his own stock or exhibitions it was always with great finesse, quietly revealing to collectors (prospective and actual) the potential of their own choices. And what choices we all had from the exhibitions we saw over the decades: Colin McCahon's Walk with me, the large Woollaston landscapes painted on a full sheet of hardboard, Peter Peryer’s portraits of his wife Erika, Michael Smither’s cross-shaped homages to Rita Angus, Robin White's incisive portraits of Sam Hunt, Jacqueline Fraser's remarkable string maze, Peter Robinson’s percentage works, Julian Dashper’s deconstructed frames, Gordon Walters' Korus,  Billy Apple’s interventions .... the list is long, it is extraordinary, and it is Peter's legacy.

Openings at 147 Cuba Street were a magnet to anyone keen on contemporary art. Peter would pour famously astringent wine and on occasion step up onto a small chair to deliver a brief speech usually concluding with his familiar self-deprecating grin. But we're not talking about a man lacking in self-confidence here. For all his much-admired eccentricities, Peter ran a very tight ship indeed. When you were buying a work on time payment, monthly invoices arrived exactly on time. The envelopes were most often addressed in green ink in the well-known McLeavey hand and the accounting, even when tracing the most complex arrangements, was always 100 percent accurate. As he might have said himself, that was the McLeavey Way.

The McLeavey Way was also about creating a sense of excitement and mystery around the work in the Gallery. A painting might be tucked away in the store room, but with the door left open just enough to give a tantalising glimpse. How often were paintings left leaning face against the wall taunting you to have a look after noticing Peter was conveniently in the next room. Countless collections reflect Peter's ability to coax great works out of the studio. 'I must do more for my artists,' he'd often tell Gallery visitors and the artists, knowing they had a champion, sent great works to Wellington.

Peter has been unwell for some time and we've witnessed him slowly withdraw from the world he so dominated for nearly 50 years. That his daughter Olivia has taken over the Gallery must have been a great delight to him for it was also a family affair. Anyone who visited the Peter McLeavey Gallery regularly would have come to meet his wife Hillary and his other two children Catherine and Dominic. We are thinking of them now and what never again seeing Peter at his desk at 147 Cuba Street means to us all.

1974. Peter McLeavey puts down the hammer, steps back and gives Colin McCahon's The Song of the Shining Cuckoo a long appraising look. Turning to a regular visitor watching him he says, 'Terrific isn’t it?' It was. And so was he.

Image: Peter McLeavey, September 1989. The painting is by Julian Dashper

Peter McLeavey 1936-2015

Peter McLeavey, Wellington's great art dealer has died.

Takes two to tango

It’s not too often that you walk into a public art museum and experience a bout of hyperkulturemia #stendhalsyndrome. Yet in the Dunedin Public Art Gallery last week we saw two very familiar paintings in an unexpected juxtaposition of great personal meaning. One was Julian Dashper’s large painting Rural Sheraton. As we'd lent this painting to the Gallery ourselves there were no surprises there (although we were pleased to see it hanging again) but it was the company it was keeping that caused the reaction. The last time we saw Colin McCahon’s Series D (Ahipara) it was hanging on the far wall of the smaller room at Peter McLeavey’s Gallery in Wellington. That was over 40 years ago. Back then we had placed a hopeful second option on it, but it was never going to happen. As far as we know it went overseas with its new owner who many years later put it on loan to Dunedin. 

To see these two works together showed just what public art museums can do that is so particular to them: putting great things together to create new ways of seeing and thinking. The chances that Julian’s painting would ever sit next to this great McCahon were never high and if it were to happen it could only ever be via a public collection. In a couple of weeks at Wellington's City Gallery there's going to be another pairing of McCahon and Dashper in another public institution, Wellington's City Gallery. This one will be something that Julian always hoped would happen: his Here I was given alongside Colin McCahon’s Here I give thanks to Mondrian. Now that is going to be something to see.

Images: Left  Colin McCahon’s Series D (Ahipara) and right Julian Dashper's Rural Sheraton at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery

Having a ball

Has any New Zealand sculpture become as iconic as Neil Dawson’s Ferns? Over the years we have posted a number of examples of how the work has come to symbolise Wellington. It was a bit of a shock then when it came down and it was reported that a replacement would be required rather than a fix-up. So good news when visiting Neil Dawson’s studio last week to see a small model of Ferns on his desk and Neil working on how to produce a more robust version of the sculpture. That's not going to be as easy as you might think as there's a lot of pressure to have the replacement look as much like the original as possible and Neil is determined to retain Ferns' lightness and ethereal grace. There are certainly some complicated design problems to sort out. Coincidentally, driving up the Island yesterday, we saw the original Ferns where it has been stored.  When you see it on the ground, the size and the weight are pretty dominant and the memory of it serenely hanging in space above Civic Square even more impressive.

Images: top, Neil Dawson’s studio with the original model for Ferns at the back and an experimental design model resting on the table. Bottom, the original Ferns in store in Wellington

Drawing lots

The first catalogue of the Auckland-based auction house Bowerbank Ninow is now online. It’s a small selection with some interesting finds among the 44 works as well reasonable sounding estimates. The et al. installation Mule Table (On the difficult problem in the phenomenal world) would be something of a bargain even at its top estimate of $12,000. They've winkled out some auction favourites too with three works by Shane Cotton, four by W D Hammonds and a couple by Colin McCahons. Photography has been mixed in with Peter Peryer, Yvonne Todd and Michael Parekowhai all represented. Of special interest are three photographs by Mark Adams of Tony Fomison getting his pe'a from Samoan master tattooists. Tony could only endure so much of this demanding process at a time so the full tattoo was created over many venues and many months. We were present at one of the ‘sessions’ that took place in painter Tony Lane’s Island Bay living room with Sese Lemamea in charge of the tapper and chisel. The last two lots are intriguing drawings made by Edward Bullmore for some of his Astro form paintings. This is the series that appeared in Stanley Kubrick’s film Clockwork Orange so some fascinating associations there. As we've posted before, Bowerbank Ninow intend to return a small percentage of the hammer price to the artists.

Images: left, Edward Bullmore sculpture as seen in A Clockwork Orange and right, Edward Bullmore drawing up for sale at Bowerbank Ninow’s auction.

Your tax dollar at work

Anyone looking at the latest round of general Creative NZ grants was in for a pleasant surprise. The majority of the funding for the 15 visual arts grants has been gone to women, 68.5 percent of it in fact.  And most of those grants (seven of nine) went direct to the artists concerned. That meant they received $271,965 all up plus another $25,000 to galleries for two publications. The guys got $95,680 (24 percent) although it was kind of supplemented by a separate $50,000 to the Serpentine Galleries for Simon Denny’s exhibition via Creative NZ’s International Presentation category. For some reason a similar grant of $26,160 to the IMA in Brisbane for a Luke Willis Thompson exhibition was included in the general grants.

There also seems to have been a significant rule change around the funding of university staff. Since the university art schools decided making art was ‘research’, the funding of their staff through Creative NZ was covered by a double–dipping rule (i.e. the same activity being funded by the state through both the tertiary sector and through Creative NZ) and they were specifically excluded in many circumstances by the following clause:

“employees of tertiary or other educational institutions, if the arts activity for which they are seeking funding is part of their job to include a written statement from your Head of Department, or the equivalent position, confirming that the activity is not part of your job”.
 
It was always hard to understand when their art making was not part of their research and hence their job so it will be interesting to see whether this change is bureaucratic (simplifying processes) or strategic (accepting the dominance of the tertiary sector over the contemporary art scene in NZ). While there is a case for staff at smaller educational institutions without much in the way of research resources to be funded, it's hard to understand in some other cases. In this round, for example, why couldn't a university the size of Massey stump up with $49,000 for one of its well-paid Associate Professors to prepare for a PBRF-rich public art museum exhibition?

You can see the former Creative NZ rules in full here on the Wayback machine (Let's hear it for the internet).

Painting up a storm

It’s always fun when art curators put themselves on the line and make a list of who they think are the most important in their field. It’s an old tradition. MoMA’s Dorothy Miller famously did it with her contemporary Americans series (mainly painters) although, as we once posted, these best-of-the-bunch picks are usually only good for around a decade, and sometimes less.

This year the Auckland Art Gallery has decided that 'painting has arguably never been stronger in our contemporary cultural environment’. Now that might sound pretty contentious but the Gallery is launching with rather a lot of fanfare later in November Necessary distraction: a painting show. What sort of mix has curator Natasha Conland come up with? Encouragingly, over 50 percent of the artists included are women. Interestingly, the majority of the exhibitors were born in the 1970s. Unsurprisingly, the majority make abstract paintings. And predictably, most of them studied at Elam and nearly all of them live in Auckland. For some reason the Auckland Art Gallery is describing current painting as a ‘static form’ which will come as something of a surprise to at least one of the artists, painting machine guy Simon Ingram.

Some more numbers:

20 painters are included in the show
9 are male
65 percent studied at Elam
5 were born before 1970
13 were born in the seventies (9 after 1975)
2 were born after 1980
25 percent show with Hopkinson Mossman
3 are represented by Ivan Anthony
11 are represented in the Auckland Art Gallery’s collection
2 were in Natasha Conland’s Freedom Farmers exhibition in 2013
72 is the age of the oldest artist and 29 the youngest

Image: cyclone Josh hits land

Second life

As far as we know, an invitation yesterday to Robert Leonard’s exhibition Julian Dashper and friends at the City Gallery, marks just the second effort by a public museum to present a substantial body of work by this important artist since his death over six years ago. What's exciting is that this will be a different sort of exhibition to anything that could be curated during Julian's lifetime. When artists aren't around anymore, curators can often take a freer hand in developing their own interpretations and exhibiting styles. A distinctive feature of Dashper's career was his enthusiasm for working with curators, writers and other artists. This tendency is, of course, reflected in Leonard’s title for his exhibition and it also emphasises the importance of Dashper's personal energy and relationships. And it's another good reason for us to post a few photos. Some of them already appear in OTNSTUDIO but they could do with an outing here too. You can see photos taken in Julian Dashper's studio over the years via these OTNSTUDIO links 1985 | November 1986 | May/July 1988 | 1989 | March 1989 | January 1993 | November 2011

Images: top, Julian Dashper and Robert Leonard in Shane Cotton’s studio in 1994. Middle, Julian Dashper, Peter McLeavey and Ivan Anthony hanging work in Dashper’s March ‘89 exhibition at the Peter McLeavey Gallery and bottom, Julian Dashper and Mary Barr looking at Big Bang Theory paintings in his Grey Lynn studio, January 1993

Open door policy

There must have been many, many times over the past years when the staff of the Christchurch Art Gallery wondered whether they'd ever open again. Unfortunately, although used as a time for the Civil Defense Headquarters, the building had been seriously damaged and the restoration has taken nearly five years to date to complete. On 19 and 20 December, however, the Gallery will open again, sort of. You'd never guess it looking at the construction site that is the current state of the building, but a lot of people putting in a lot of effort into a mother of all clean-ups are determined to get it done. 

One other bit of news is that art works are beginning to be installed. Art in an art gallery, that's got to be a good thing. Touchingly the first work to go up was a John Gibb painting of the Otira Gorge which happened to also be the first to be taken off the wall after the earthquake closed the building down. 

Then, yesterday a chilly afternoon was shattered by the shrill noise of some sort of super-saw that was separating the main body of the building from its base foundations (we kid you not) so that the whole damn structure could settle on top of its fancy base isolators. Ok, some of you may have dropped off there but it looks a lot more incredible than it sounds. Martin Creed’s work ‘Everything is going to be all right’ looks like it might be right on track.

Horsing around

Usually when you think about horse art you have in your mind the image of a horse, paintbrush in mouth, knocking up something abstract on a canvas. Not in Hamilton. Another city obsessed with celebrating the shambles that was New Zealand’s inclusion in WWI, Hamilton has reached out to the horse to side-step the not-another-dead-man option. 

And there is some reason to do this.  Of the combined 25 million deaths in that war it was horses that represented over 30 percent. So, Hamilton was on the money when The Warhorse Charitable Trust invited art consultant Paula Savage to go global. Savage homed in on Mimmo Paladino known internationally as the go-to horse guy. He even has a horse sculpture 'at the entrance to the New Town Plaza in Hong Kong' according to Savage. So with one lot of horses safely in the funding pipeline, what about all the people in Hamilton who like ‘horses that look like horses’? 

Enter the Waikato Equestrian Memorial Board. It has come up with a drawing of a horse that fills the h-t-l-l-h requirements and offers a few irresistible add ons that can prove a challenge for much contemporary art - ‘child-friendly, able to be climbed over and sat upon.’ Now it too is out there raising money. It's horse of course will be easier to source (sorry) with lots of sculpture businesses up and down the country poised to knock up a full sized bronze one for anyone with cash. Exhauted? We’ll leave you with prescient Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock who was ahead of us all: 'without thinking' Leacock wrote, 'he flung himself upon his horse and rode off madly in all directions.'

Images: top left, exploring sitting-on possibilities, top right, on the big side for a horse that looks like a horse but could be dramatic in the right place at the right time. Middle, the sort of bronze horse you can order from China at http://sculpture.en.alibaba.com if you want more than one. Bottom left, not realistic enough to fool the kid on the left and bottom right, the more abstract approach

Sannd man

New Zealand’s most incompetent art thief, Ricardo Romanov (aka Ricardo Genovese aka Anthony Ricardo Sannd), has just been served up seven years for pinching a limited edition Ducati Desmosedici motor bike. This is the same man who stole James Tissot’s painting Still on Top from the Auckland Art Gallery back in 1998. Although the crime certainly turned serious, it began comically enough with Romanov (known as Sannd at the time) reconnoitering the Gallery decked out in a false wig, fake beard and dark glasses. The following month he entered the Auckland Art Gallery wearing a motorcycle crash helmet and holding two firearms including a double barreled shotgun. After knocking a security guard to the floor he took Tissot’s painting from the wall, removed it from its frame, rolled it up and left. He made his escape on a motorbike of course but not before firing the shotgun into the air when approached outside the Gallery. It only took the Auckland police eight days to find Sannd along with the ‘dramatically damaged’ painting that had been rolled up in an old sack. And all this before he could sell it to a supposed Hong Kong business man who he claimed had ordered up the robbery offering $800,000 in $100 notes for the painting. Sannd got 16 years and nine months for his efforts and was released in March 2012.
You can see a video here on the theft and restoration work required on the Tissot

Sold to the gentleman with the tea cup

As expected, for all the talk of renewal, Webb’s has been sold subject to some details being confirmed. The new owner is Mossgreen Auctions. It's based in the Melbourne suburb of Armadale in an old movie theatre with a business model not dissimilar from that of the recently start-up Bowerbank and Ninow on K Road. That means dealer gallery exhibition functions and auctions mashed together. In Mossgreen’s case high tea has also been added to the mix for collectors who like to get close to a well-made scone. ‘It brings in the type of people we’re likely to do business with.’ Along with art Mossgreen also focuses on jewelry, oceanic and tribal art, stamps, coins and postal history. Sound familiar? Unsurprisingly, given the success such events have been over the last ten years, Mossgreen also specialises in single owner auctions in art and design. How Webb's debts were sorted out is unknown but the handover is expected on 1 January next year. LATER: Webb's is to be sold for a potential loss at $800,000 which will be half on agreement and the remaining $400,000 in quarterly instalements.