Post hole

For the next five or six weeks we will be out of the country so those of you who clock in at 8 am can get some rest or go for a run. The chances that we’ll post every day are not high but we will try to put something up as often as we can - there must be something outside New Zealand that's of interest.

The yellow book

Weighing in at, er… quite a bit, the Michael Lett Publishing book on Michael Parekowhai is impressive. We had a quick peek at an advance copy and managed to flick through its 600 full colour pages. With no text and no captions, the big yellow book is apparently to be packaged with a second volume that will include an essay by Justin Paton and full captioning. Still, if we believe in the picture tells a thousand words theory, this yellow doorstop is worth at least 300,000 of them. Curious that Creative New Zealand’s experts decided not to support this book when an application for funds was made – we’d have thought it set an inventive new standard for visual art publications.

His place

Image: sign from the recently opened Creation Museum in Kentucky

The shock of the new

Tonight Hamish McKay is opening his new gallery space on the first floor of 39 Ghuznee Street in Wellington. The gallery is just round the corner from Peter McLeavey and Enjoy, Mary Newton and Bowen Galleries and are on the same block. The opening exhibition is a two person show by Australians Rose Nolan and Anne-Marie May. McKay’s first exhibition in his Willis Street space was in March 1993. It was a group show with l budd, Derrick Cherrie, Shane Cotton, Barnard McIntyre, Anton Parsons, Peter Peryer, Patrick Pound, Richard Reddaway and Ronnie van Hout. Times change, four of the nine artists will be represented in the new gallery.
Image: Rose Nolan preparing her work Halfhearted for the opening exhibition

Specialists

First we introduced you to the visual arts panel. They are the people who recommend visual arts grants. Now it's time for you to meet the people they recommend the visual arts grants to: the members of Creative New Zealand’s Arts Board. They're the ones who made the final decisions about the visual arts grants that will probably be announced this week. Here are their interests and career paths.

Alastair Carruthers (Chair) is Chief Executive of the law firm Chapman Tripp. He originally trained as a classical musician.

Kate De Goldi is the author of three young adult novels, a collection of short fiction for adults and three children's picture books.

Judith Fyfe is a Wellington lawyer who lecturers in oral history and is a governor of Radio New Zealand.

Graeme Gorton has performed in more than 40 operas and is administrator of the Christchurch City Choir.

Michael Prentice is a strategist for marketing communications company Ogilvy New Zealand. He established and chaired the Black Grace dance group’s Trust.

Terry Snow is an Auckland journalist who reviewed music, theatre and dance. He is a pianist and trained music teacher.

Pele Walker is a mediator with a particular interest in community dance and theatre.

Advice to artists who collect

"I always thought you should never buy anything that costs more than your own works. I thought it was a good rule, but I broke it a few times, so I changed it. I brought a Bacon* and it became: never buy anything that costs more than your own work unless it is by a dead artist."
Damien Hirst
* Francis Bacon's A study for a figure at the base of a crucifixion 1943-44

Telling stories

On Monday in Pettersburg, Kentucky the $27 million Creation Museum opens to the public. Owned and operated by the religious group Answers in Genesis, the 60,000 square foot museum has been designed "to bring the pages of the Bible to life". To do this it promises “A fully engaging, sensory experience for guests. Murals and realistic scenery, computer-generated visual effects, and a special-effects theatre complete with misty sea breezes and rumbling seats.” The Museum has already attracted a lot of media coverage focused on dinosaurs being created on the Sixth Day along with Adam and Eve etc, but probably of more interest is how perfectly contemporary museum methods take on the task of telling this version of the story of stories. From our experience, when museums set out to tell stories – whether of science, art, the Bible or of nations – not all the tech bells and whistles in the world are going to make them come true.

In a familiar refrain, Ken Ham, president of the Answers in Genesis ministry, (who incidentally developed his ideas in Australia before moving to the U.S. in 1987) reminded everyone: “Critics need to tour the museum before making judgments.” Sure. But by then, of course, it is too late.
Image: A museum preparator creating a display showing a dinosaur attempting to eat a giant golf ball after stepping off the Ark.

Advice to collectors 6

“The best art is the most expensive, because the market
is so smart.”
Tobias Meyer, Sotheby's Worldwide Head of contemporary art

Pretty as a picture

Sometime last year we had a visit from Orlando Clairmont who is making a film on his father Phil. The project was put to one side while Orlando and his partner went overseas, but now an email tells us he is back and ready to start again. This news sent us scurrying to our files, as we had promised to look up any photos or other information we had. There we found this image of one of Phil’s painting taken in his studio. It is of his daughter Melissa who now lives in Melbourne. We have a special affection for it as we knew Melissa as a child and had borrowed it for a few months back in the late 1970s. Unfortunately Alan Maddox slashed the painting in half. We don’t know what became of it.

T riff

To help celebrate CNZ’s inaugural Trip of a Lifetime Tour overthenet is offering this classy TLTT T. All orders should be sent to overthenet.blog@gmail.com. Sold at cost with a price still to be finalised, one size will fit all. These classy overthenet shirts are produced in an incredibly soft, smooth, high-quality fabric made exclusively with 100% combed cotton crafted from 30-singles yarn woven on 28-gauge knitting machines and using biodegradable inks in an academic sweatshop-free, ecologically committed workplace by p mule. The Ts are available in the complete Trip of a Lifetime colour range which comes in Marshfield, Conland, Langsford, Reihana and Hipkins. Click on image for the full splender of the unique p mule design.

Just the ear would have be fine

Inflatable art, you can’t get past it or, in this case, over it. Paul McCarthy may well have an exhibition of his inflatables later this year in Antwerp, but for general weirdness we reckon this Vincent van Gogh balloon takes a lot of beating. It appears to be based on the painting Self-portrait with felt hat that is in the Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh in Amsterdam. The balloon was made in 2003 for the 150th anniversary of Van Gogh's birth and these photos were taken a year later in Canberra.

Art Fair kicker

For anyone who has always wanted to see a short movie of art dealer Hamish McKay kick a pot of yellow paint over a drum kit, but never had the chance ...

The shape of things to come

Who would have thought that the battle of the auction houses would bring us such variety in catalogues? To us it began with Webb’s standalone photographic auction last year followed by the Jim Fraser collection sale and then Art + Object’s first auction catalogue with the stunning Peter Robinson glass work on the cover. Now in the mail a large format catalogue from Art +Object and a compact new photography offering from Webb’s. We remember years ago talking to Peter Webb and complaining that some of their catalogues were slightly larger or smaller than others (it created problems if you wanted to bind them together). Times change. Now we all expect auction catalogues to surprise and delight us as much as the events themselves.

Fair go

Was there another artist with more representation at the Auckland Art Fair than Julian Dashper? If there was, we didn’t pick it up. His drum kit at Hamish McKay’s came at the cost of a jacket as McKay, on instruction from the artist, kicked a can of paint to make a bright yellow spill over the skin, cymbals and stands. Julian also showed new prints with Sue Crockford and a hardboard multiple and a drum skin with Vasili Kaliman.
Images: Dashper times three in his Gus McKay suit

Going to Helvetica in a hand-basket

Speculate no more. These images in from the folk at Clouds who are designing the Butler edited book for Venice. Quite rightly we were taken to task for our clumsy rendition of their cover and in particular our use of Helvetica (50 years old this year). What is it with Helvetica? Half the designers we know (young ones) use it all the time, the other half hate it.
Images: Top the real front and back cover and two of the artist spreads, middle Peter Robinson, bottom Sriwhana Spong. Click on the image for the full glory.