Applying the breaks

"The creative spirit honours tradition by breaking with tradition. Only by continuously moving away from tradition can we cultivate tradition."

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei in his recently discovered 1985 manifesto

A centre on the edge: the building

The Govett-Brewster in New Plymouth has just released plans for its new Len Lye Centre (you can see them here). This major project costing an estimated $10 million will demolish the 1997 extension and add around 25 percent of new space to the total Govett-Brewster footprint. Estimated annual running costs of the Len Lye Centre will be $311,000. So what do the people of New Plymouth (and by proxy the rest of us) get? 

First up, the space that the G-B currently uses for Len Lye and more general G-B exhibitions (it’s where the Fiona Pardington exhibit is currently on display) will be almost doubled. It will continue to be shared by the Len Lye Centre and the Govett-Brewster, so no loss of display space for the G-B. All good there then. There will also be a new space created specifically for Len Lye exhibitions and a research lounge along with replacements for the current theatre and education spaces that will be lost in the new build.

The addition will occupy the space presently taken by the little deco building on the corner of Queen and King Streets. Some NPers are not too pleased to see it demolished and they will probably be even more disappointed by the computer driven façade designed by Auckland architect Andrew Patterson. They have some reason to be so as it feels about ten years out of date as far as international architecture fashions go (the Guggenheim Bilbao was opened in 1997). 

The Len Lye committee chairman Lance Girling-Butcher told the Taranaki Daily News that 'this building will inspire people in the way that perhaps the idea of a Len Lye Centre was not able to.' That's a lot of weight to put on a façade which, while it does echo Lye’s love of shiny things, is basically an imported idea when the objectives could have been authenticity and local identity. The new visitor centre at Waitomo Caves makes a telling contrast.

You get the feeling that even Patterson is a bit nervous about the effect of imposing this Frank Gehry lookalike on New Plymouth, talking up stainless steel as a “local material” and claiming, “It’s sort of like using the local stone.” But isn't all the stainless steel used in New Zealand imported, much of it from China?

Another effect of the Patterson façade will be to physically diminish the original Govett-Brewster building. It will now, thanks to the loss of its own ’97 extension via the new build, be visually squeezed between the Len Lye Centre development and the café.

The good news is that it’s only a façade, a structural form dear to Patterson. The internal spaces look reasonably straightforward and, cross fingers, architectural flourishes will be restricted to the exterior. In plan you can see a couple of large areas that could be adjusted to suit different shows and accommodate the Len Lye Foundation's determination to create bigger and bigger versions of the work. A whopper version of Fountain is planned for the opening. 

Thursday on OTN we'll look at the Len Lye Centre's audience projections.

Images: Top, the proposed Patterson design for the Len Lye Centre c. 2013. Bottom, Frank Ghery’s Rheinhafen centre of arts and the media in Duesseldorf 1998

Heads up

For all of you who were wondering how that incredible opera-stage-set-in-a-lake we posted on in April turned out, here you go.

On the road

OTN's seemingly endless series celebrating Ministry of Land Transport and Local Body support of New Zealand artists.

For others in the series hit the 'on the road' label tag below.

Heart of stone

Yet another example of the ongoing project advertising agencies have set themselves: to convince us that cars are created by artists and not industrial designers. Last year it was Hyundai claiming that its design philosophy was one of 'fluidic sculpture' (you can stop laughing now).

This time it’s Honda’s turn with a Jennifer Beals wannabe making out with a chisel like Michelangelo’s right there chanting, “Every block of stone has a car inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.”

At least is better than their infamous advert Cog. That was the one where they lifted Peter Fischli and David Weiss’s brilliant 1987 video The Way Things Go without so much as a credit. Fischli and Weiss threatened legal action. You can judge for yourself on that one. Watch The way things go here and Cog here.

Slice of heaven

A big tempting slice of Guggenheim cake seen in a shop window in Paris.

Water, water everywhere

The City Gallery is full of surprises. For years they have restricted information about their forthcoming exhibitions like misers hoarding gold pieces so they can unleash a marketing blitz. That's changed if the up-coming exhibition Oceania is anything to go by. Not only is the web site already up and running, it includes a good range of images of items that will be on show (the exhibition is ‘shared’ with Te Papa – City Gallery new, Te Papa old) along with a blow by blow account of what you will see when you enter the galleries. Has this ever been done before? And we are talking good old fashioned narrative. “With their eyes closed, the subjects in Fiona Pardington's photographs embody the dreams, memories and imaginings of generations of Pacific peoples. … At the entrance to the gallery, Michel Tuffery's energetic O le Povi Pusa Ma'ataua … At the rear of the gallery is a different kind of group portrait. Paratene Matchitt's Taunga Waka…” OK the whole show isn’t notated like this but you can get a very good idea of what you will be spending your money on (Single adults $10, Kids under 15 are free).

The City Gallery will also be showing Ralph Hotere’s Black Phoenix. We've always thought this work should have been permanently installed when Te Papa opened (but they went with Jeff Thomson’s corrugated iron covered Holden instead.) From memory Black Phoenix has only had a couple of outings over the last 20 or so years since being purchased for the National collection back in 1988. 

For some inexplicable reason Oceania opens the same weekend as the Auckland Art Fair, 6 August.

Face off

An OTN reader sent us this Lucian Freud lookalike, Freud's portrait of QEII and the artist himself.

It’s uncanny. One minute you are looking at an old queen and suddenly it’s Lucian Freud.

Thanks S

Spaced out

Most public corporations create their art collections by buying off the top shelf. The Fletcher Trust Collection in New Zealand is a good example. Occasionally, however, corporate collections decide to push harder and theme themselves. This can result in strange and often hilarious gatherings of artworks about packaging, wine or earth moving machinery. Think of them as the corporate collection version of those 1970s themed exhibitions that always had clever titles (think Drawing the line (drawing about fishing), Animal alphabet etc) and that after a time in the post modern darkness, are once again wall fodder for the public art museums. 

In this match 'n' match category one of the oddest themed collections must be the one NASA has put together. The theme (how did you guess?) is space. You might imagine that a request from NASA to ‘do a space themed art work’ would get the short shrift from most artists and yet here we find Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol and yes, that’s one of William Wegman’s Wiemaraner dogs kitted out and floating in space. There is no shame.

Images: Top left to right, Jack Perlmutter's Liftoff, Peter Hurd's Skylab and Mitchell Jamieson's First steps. Bottom, William Wegman’s Chip and Batty Explore Space

Peace and love

Imagine it. You’re the Government. “Get me the Ministry of Culture,” you bark down the phone. “Listen, I want you to get to work on how we'll celebrate this list of anniversaries over the next five years.” “Of course, Minister. Cultural events are they?” “Don’t be stupid.”

And here is the list that has been drawn up of government-approved New Zealand's anniversary celebrations for the next five years. There are 30 of them with 11 designated as ‘major’.

In summary there are:

21 associated with war

2 inspired by exploration

3 relating to Pacific Island affairs

1 Maori related

1 educational

1 for the Queen

1 for gold rushing

Of the 11 ‘major’ events all but one (you guessed it, the Queen’s one) are war related.

Images top, Rongopai marae built 1888, National Art Gallery established 1913. Bottom, National Museum established 1865 and Auckland Art Gallery 1888.

The can't read and can't write stuff

"I think illiteracy might be the problem.” 

Art Fair boss Jennifer Buckley in the NZ Herald explaining why some dealer gallery owners couldn’t understand the entry criteria for the Auckland Art Fair.

In the cut

You don’t see a room full of Woollaston paintings very often these days. Back a while nearly every exhibition was likely to have at least one of Sir Tosswill’s works included. Things change. And yet up at Wellington's Adam Art Gallery in an exhibition based on private collections, there are over half a dozen Woollaston works including one of his large landscapes. As the label explains, this mega format was suggested by art dealer Peter McLeavey and was determined by the maximum size of a sheet of hardboard. 

Hardboard was the a very common support for many years (particularly the sixties and seventies) when canvas could only be purchased in limited widths. The big sheets of hardboard (imperial size until around late 1969 when the most favoured sheet became 1200 x 2700mm) were usually cut into two pieces, one a golden square (see paintings by Michael Smither, Toss Woollaston, Colin McCahon and Jeffrey Harris) with a left-over narrower slice. 

This in turn couldbe cut into yet smaller pieces, McCahon’s Truth from the King country: load bearing structures (see note below) and many of Jeffrey Harris's iconic paintings from 1975 probably came from this cut. Finally any off cuts could used to make small panoramic landscapes like Michael Smither’s St Bathans paintings. 

It is the inter-related scale of these different slices out of a standard sheet of hardboard is unmistakeable. It is part of what gives so many New Zealand paintings of the sixties and seventies their distinctive look.

Note: One of OTN's eagle-eyed friends has told us that these paintings were actually painted on pre-prepared canvas boards. Still, you get the picture)

Damien Hirst meets Mr Potato Head

Thanks for this P, ever vigilant.

In Berlin we were thinking about Franz West

Don’t look up

The king of giant statues of celebrities and characters torn from paintings has to be Seward Johnson. He’s the guy who has made giant replicas of the two figures from Grant Wood’s American Gothic, the famous Times Square Kiss photograph and bizarre set-ups from painters with the authority of Manet and Van Gogh. But wait, there’s more. He’s also the man who was responsible for the largest sculpture of a molar in the world. 

Last week Johnson out-grossed himself (and probably the people of Chicago) by installing a giant statue of Marilyn Monroe. And not just any statue, but 15 tons of Monroe in her famous pose in the 1955 movie The Seven Year Itch. Why the people of Chicago would want an eight metre high statue revealing Monroe’s underwear to any unfortunate who looked up from her painted toenails is anyone’s guess, but they did. This monumental up-skirt set-up will be in place until 2012.

Images: Top the new Monroe sculpture. Middle left, Seward's versions of The Kiss, American Gothic (detail) and bottom Manet’s Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe and a very big tooth.