The news as it happens

Why are we posting this pic at 8pm on a Wednesday night? It's table tennis, it's art and it's on at Mighty Mighty, just around the corner, for another couple of hours.
Image: The art of ping pong country in action at Mighty Mighty

Fresh air

What better way to congratulate Paramount Pictures on winning two Oscars for An inconvenient truth than showing you this great sculpture called Opening Credits (New York) by Jacob Dyrenforth.

House and garden

The Colin McCahon house in French Bay is worth a visit. The house is tiny and shows starkly the primitive living conditions of an isolated bach of the 1950s. OK for a Summer holiday but life there in winter must have been tough. Tin can toilet and, downstairs crammed into a small three-walled basement area that opened straight onto the bush, Stalag 17 bunk beds for the kids. You can feel a commitment to Spartan simplicity and good health through fresh-air. It’s interesting to remember that at the time the McChons lived in this hardy style, Health Camp fever was at its height in a New Zealand that believed that children should be indoors as little as possible. No one had to tell the McCahon kids to get out of their bedroom to go outside and play, they were already there. As a side bar: maybe we should try and persuade Te Papa to lay the Northland panels out on the deck again (or platform terrace as Charles Brasch grandly called it), just for an afternoon. What a sight that would be!

Looming over the McCahon ‘bach’ is a large, architect-designed house that’s straight from the pages of Urbis magazine. High quality materials, artful views and bush bridges. It’s a purpose-built studio and accommodation for an artist in residence.

The idea of what an artist needs for work and shelter has sure come a long, long way.

The first resident was Judy Millar who will be followed in March by Andrew McLeod for three months. CNZ will no doubt be shocked to hear the selectors for the next resident are happy to be known and are listed on the McCahon House web site. They are Erika Congreve, John Daly-Peoples, Dick Frizzell, Michael Dunn and James Wallace.
Images: Top left, McCahon house. Right, children’s bedroom. Bottom: McCahon Arts residency

Copy cat VI

Private residence, Wellington (Thanks M)

Set in concrete

It's interesting talking theatre people and hearing their approach to opening nights and, even more important, the day after opening night. In their world, when the audience yawns, speak with their feet or the actors fall over the furniture it means things need to change. The morning after is the traditional time for Notes. This is when the diretcor cuts lines, changes stage directions, amends sets and even rewrites parts of the play that aren’t working. How very different from art exhibitions which perhaps model themselves more after publications than experiences. Whatever the audience reaction, from stunned incomprehension through to a general dissatisfaction, art exhibitions go on… and often, on. You're lucky to get a label adjusted and the only way to get any real action would be to call in OSH. What is it about exhibitions that makes the first presentation the finite version? Here’s a thought. How about some responsiveness – some discussion even. If the consensus is that an exhibition doesn’t work visually, why hide behind curatorial infallibility? How about closing down for a couple of days and trying something else? As John Cage advised, when things aren't working, “Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it.” With the current rigid process, all audiences can do is grumble to themselves and wait around three months for the next effort. John Cage also said, “I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.”

SPAM

received at overthenet.blog@gmail.com: ivan anthony has given up smoking… art + object have signed the lease on a space for a gallery and auctions in abbey road in Auckland …. mikala dwyer has been offered a teaching position at the auckland university art school…the city gallery has agreed to tidy up the multiple display at prospect…rohan wealleans has joined the roller door studio set…john hurrell was paid by the city gallery to attend the prospect opening and britney spears, in a blond wig, purchased an early damien hirst at the armory show.

Being Frank

Frank Lloyd Wright was once called up to give testimony at a trial as an expert witness. When asked to give his name and occupation he told the court he was “Frank Lloyd Wright, and I am the world's greatest living architect." As they were leaving the courthouse, a friend asked him, "How could you say that?" Wright replied, " I had no choice, I was under oath."

Boy am I spoilt, eh?

Over at stimulusresponse is an attempted translation of a promotional text for the exhibition "Spoilt Boy Aesthetic" by Tao Wells at Gambia Castle.

Art news

The latest issue of Art News features feminist art and illustrates one of its articles with a photograph by NZ’s Lisa Reihana. The photograph Mahnika 2001 accompanies Phoebe Hoban’s "We're Finally Infiltrating.” Hoban, a regular writer for New York Magazine, is probably best known for her book Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art. The feminist Art News issue focuses on two exhibitions of feminist art. At MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary in Los Angeles is Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution curated by Connie Butler. Now Chief Curator of Drawings at MoMA, Butler also curated Flight Patterns at the Geffen in 2000, which included work by New Zealanders Laurence Aberhart, Gavin Hipkins, Michael Parekowhai and Yuk King Tan, (it's the handshake thing again). And at the newly opened Sackler Center at the Brooklyn Museum is Global Feminisms. Curated by Sakler Center curator Maura Reilly and art historian Linda Nochlin, this exhibition includes Lisa Reihana. Every artist included was born after 1960. The Sackler Center was gifted by Elizabeth Sackler who also gave Judy Chicago's Dinner Table installation. It was also Sackler who paid for 64 of the 67 artists in the exhibition to attend the opening of Global Feminisms.

Copy-cat V

Image: Lone Star bar and grill, Manukau, Auckland

Elbow room

That everyone is only a few of handshakes away from everyone else came to mind when looking through a catalogue of the Victor and Sally Ganz collection. Two New Zealand collectors lived above the Ganzes in New York for a time (there’s your handshake) and became familiar with some of their incredible collection. Le Rêve, the Picasso 1932 portrait of his mistress Marie-Therese Walter pictured to the left, was purchased by the Ganzes in 1941, the year the couple married. They paid $7000 ($US of course) for it and hung in their dining room. After their deaths, the painting was sold by their children at Christie's, New York in 1997 for $48.4 million to Casino King, Steve Wynn. When he accidentally put his elbow through the painting late last year it made headlines around the world (and no that’s not an elbow looming over Marie-Therese’s head).

If you haven’t read the Wynn story, there is a hilarious version of it in The New Yorker, or this eye witness account by Nora Ephron in the Huffington Post. In a behind-the-bikesheds type gesture Wynn had agreed to sell the painting to Steven Cohen for $139. This would have been $4 million more than the world record paid for a painting at auction, the $135 million cosmetics magnate Ronald Lauder (an overthenet handshake) paid for Klimt's portrait Adele Bloch-Bauer I. After the elbowing the sale fell through.

“So what would a 5-centimetre elbow-sized hole like that be worth?” we hear you ask. As you can see from Mr Wynn’s insurance claim posted on thesmokinggun, around $59 million dollars. Had enough?

Rumour Mill V

No sooner did we post the Suitcase story than three of our readers sent in the same AAG rumour. Apparently the Auckland Art Gallery has asked Saatchi & Saatchi to come up with some television commercials. One concept, we are told, features a homeless Maori male morphing into a Goldie painting while in another a female K-Road professional morphs into some other painting from the collection. Living the dream. Have these ideas been accepted? As usual overthenet table tennis balls for confirmation, additions or believable denials.
Image: Early concept work for an overthenet TVC

Your questions answered II

A press release recently received from the Auckland Art Gallery tells us that they are getting into suitcase art.

What is Art in a suitcase? “It is an outreach programme that will ensure the public has continued access to art after the main gallery on Kitchener St closes for major renovations this year.”

Where will you get the art from? “Artists will be invited to create new works inside suitcases.”

Why would artists agree to make art to put in a suitcase? “The suitcase has a proud tradition in art dating back to Marcel Duchamp’s ‘portable museums’ in 1935.”
Marcel aside, has anyone else ever done this sort of thing? “Packing art into a suitcase and taking it to schools in a unique new education programme.”

For readers fascinated by the Unique Art in a Suitcase programme the following links to these other unique art in a suitcase programmes might be of interest. Yellowstone Art Museum, Ludwig Museum, Binghamton University, Seattle Art Museum, the Dickinson County LibraryRedux Center in Charleston. Private practitioners of the art in a suitcase phenomenon include Mary Tooley of Wisconsin. Other art in a suitcase information can also be found on the site Montessori Mom.

Rumour mill IV

The word is that the City Gallery in Wellington has agreed to reduce its dealer’s cut on artists’ multiple sales associated with Prospect. The cut will go from 40 percent to 33 1/3 percent. Better for the artists although it undercuts most commercial dealers who charge 40 percent. We will ask around other public art institutions and find out if this move into commercial art dealing is catching on.
Image: The 33 1/3 Gallery was a dealer gallery run by Lindsay Park in Wellington from 1987 to 1993.

Bird call

Here’s serendipity for you. Last week Nicolas Jasmin sent us an image of a new limited edition vinyl. The same morning the owner of Popup, a Wellington store that sells vinyl toys, told us he had just ordered one for us. As you can see from the image, this new vinyl is worth the attention. For the series Strangekiss has selected endangered species and equipped them with weapons of their own, plus the determination to fight back. Part of the purchase price goes to the WWF. The latest is this yellow-eyed penguin kitted out with a missile. The penguin is called Hinenuitepo and the packaging tells us that “Hinenuitepo is Makutu’s sister. Like her Maori name sake, she is the ‘goddess of death and great lady of the night’. Preferring to attack enemy ships at night when most of the crew is sleeping, she is very effective in her kill ratio and exceptional water borne combat specialist… she has her tribal face tattoo and Terminator Skull emblem proudly displayed on her body as a warning to all that cross her path.”

Hinenuitepo also brings up the perennial questions about the appropriation of moko. We rang a friend deep in one of the Maori departments of Government to test the current temperature. As you can imagine, it’s mixed from absolute opposition to an acceptance that moko has become part of the global image bank and, so long as it is done with understanding, go for it. To see a total lack of understanding (nudity alert – you have been warned – and, let’s face it, encouraged) check out this shameless Italian photographer. Maybe Hinenuitepo needs all the help she can get. Go pengui.