A Diplomatic bag

Funding guidelines are a huge stress to artists when they try to pick up money for projects. They worry about whether they are applying in the right programme, whether their proposal fits the template and whether the outcomes they have come up with will be seen as worthwhile. There is a lot of heartache at application time in the service of strategic focus and transparency.

But when we followed the public funding trail for the recent exhibition Oceania, we discovered that large institutions and funding bodies operate by very different rules or, as it turned out, hardly any rules at all. It all begins with the Ministry of Culture and Heritage.

Via its Cultural Diplomacy International Fund, the Ministry stumped up with $600,000 for the Oceania exhibition that was mounted by the City Gallery and Te Papa in Wellington. Bear in mind that $600,000 would cover the annual exhibition budget of a big city gallery (some of them might even squeeze two years out of it). Apart from some real questions about funding a single exhibition on this scale at a time when all galleries and museums are struggling with their budgets, there are some interesting questions to ask about how allocating this large sum of money was justified and prioritised:

Where is the international Cultural Diplomatic benefit in a Wellington based exhibition? According to the Ministry the Cultural Diplomacy International Fund is focussed on “North Asia, especially the economies of China, Korea and Japan.” Say what? So tell us again how one third of this annual allocation can be given to an exhibition held in Wellington?

How do you get funding from the Cultural Diplomacy Programme? It turns out “The Programme is not a fund to which organisations and individuals can apply.” OK, so we can assume the request for funding didn’t come from either of the participating venues. So who was the instigator, where did the idea come from and what was the need?

What was the lead-time? To get funding from the Programme managers have to ensure all funded events are ”planned well in advance, possibly with two to three years lead-time.” Another rule brushed aside. It is well known that Oceania was pulled together in haste for the Rugby World Cup.

While poor attendances for Oceania (around a third of what was predicted is the word on the street) certainly can’t be giving any joy to the Ministry of Culture and Heritage, it gets weirder. The Wellington Museums Trust (and City Gallery that spearheaded the whole thing and roped Te Papa in) claim in their annual report that the $600,000 grant was “from Government to present Oceania as part of the REAL New Zealand Festival in conjunction with RWC 2011.” But hang on a minute (Smoke screen alert) Oceania doesn’t appear on the Real NZ Funding list which you can download  here (bottom of the page). In fact, none of those grants got anywhere near $600,000 (apart from the Giant Rugby Ball Homecoming to Auckland which scored a game winning $750,000).

What's going on here? More World Cup fever? The public sector insist on more accountability and transparency from artists and arts organisations, but when it comes to the inner circle, forget about it.

Image: Smoke and mirrors

This month was brought to you by the number 8

in october we: said goodbye to len castle • whinged about paying ten bucks to see te papa’s permanent collection • held a worst on display competition with ourselves • took us to the movies • coloured us mccahon • cooked the books • created a decision tree on the venice biennial selection • made fools of ourselves picking the wrong doge • went and done the headless chicken thing

Art at work

An Occupy Wall Street protester Dylan Spoelstra (described by police as ‘not the sharpest crayon in the box’) has been talked down from his perch on Mark di Suvero’s 21 meter high sculpture Joie de Vivre in New York’s Zuccotti Park. The sculpture - most often described in the New York media as a ‘statue’ - was moved to the Park from the Storm King Art Centre in 2006 and has been a focal point for Wall Street protesters. Posters and other stuff that was attached to the work during the protest was quickly removed (it probably didn’t hurt that di Suvero’s wife is NYC Department of Cultural Affairs commissioner). Spoelstra proved to be a stickier proposition staying put for a couple of hours calling for New York’s Mayor to resign. The police put air bags under the sculpture and eventually talked him down, but the general feeling is that the Mayor is not going anywhere.

Images: Left, Mark di Suvero’s Joie de Vivre. Right top, Dylan Spoelstra being talked down and bottom, protest action on di Suvero’s work

Unhappy feet

The fact is we spoil you on Saturdays, and no more so than today with this video clip of a living headless chicken. Apparently it was a big influence on an OTN regular Maurizio Cattelan. Of course we have our own chicken-influenced artist Dick Frizzell. He romanced the famous dancing chicken that appeared in Herzog’s film Stroszek when he was in the United States in 1978. If the headless chook is too much you can see the dancing one here. Be warned, the secret is electric shocks up through the floor. You can see Frizzell's DC painting here

On the other hand…

“What Auckland Museum and Auckland Art Gallery need least of all is a lavishly funded competitor arriving on their patch, stripping them of audience and reducing their visitor numbers…. A Te Papa North facility would recycle exhibitions into the larger Auckland audience from Te Papa in Wellington, and would inevitably do so at the expense of our own museums.”
Rodney Wilson ex director of the Auckland Art Gallery and Auckland Museum talking down Te Papa North in the NZH

Alterations

The massive surge of art book publishing in New Zealand feels weird in the age of the iPad and other e- readers and, let's face it, the age of the digitisation itself. Sure you can hunt and peck through any art book but the flow is generally left to right, page one to page whatever. 

The American artist Doug Aitken has never been a great lover of linear forms and he has now taken his explorations of multi-level story telling into the free (yes, free) iPad app Altered Earth. Here you can join him on one of his meandering explorations, or you can select images, films and sounds to make your own story, installations and connections. Bolstering Reader Power, the app never seems to start you off the same way or even offer the same images all the time.

The setting is the Camargue region in Southern France, a bleak landscape of marshes, deserted salt mines and abandoned fortifications. Today its beauty is being transformed again as bird and plant life flourish. While the app can be frustrating to navigate (it was very slow to install), it does show the potential of this type of presentation. If you have an iPad, pull a copy down. You might find the future of art books in your hands.

Images: Doug Aitken’s Altered Earth commissioned by the LUMA Foundation for Parc des Ateliers in Arles

Or polish

“Art dealers, should spit on history, wipe it away and find something new.”

New York Art Dealer Mike Egan

Real good

If you come from Wellington - the home of WETA - replication doesn't surprise you so much. The workshop has become a world leader in producing replications that are totally convincing. Tough lines for any artist who is in the same game and no one is in it more than the Kaikohe based sculptor Glen Hayward. But somehow Hayward manages to bring to his life-like objects another strain of being so they flicker in and out of the real world like that Predator thing did when it was rushing through the jungle. So when we visited the McCahon House in Titirangi the other day to see Glen Hayward’s wind-up exhibition as its latest resident, it was hard to see there was an exhibition there at all until you settled into the space.

It turned out that all the works were based on details from the McCahon house itself faithfully reproduced - a clunky light switch with DIY conduit, the lid off a can, a set of washing tubs, a section of wall that looked for all the world like something from Julian Schnabel, a hump of concrete and brick. Ripped out of their homely context in the McCahon House to be live another second life in the residency studio.

Images: Top left electrics at the McCahon House, right, Glen Hayward's Seventh day (a very reasonably priced multiple in an edition of five that has been made available to help raise funds for the McCahon House). Bottom, Glen Hayward's exhibition at the McCahon House residency studio

Big ears: rabbit division

Giant Rabbit sculptures. Can't live with them, can't live without them.

Image: Florentijn Hofman‘s 13 meter high yellow rabbit in Örebro, Sweden (Thanks yet again D)

Big ears

One day at the AAG:

“Let me tell you there are Picassos and Picassos and that is a Picasso.”

“Contemporary art still completely baffles me totally.”

“Same.”

“This is incredible”

“What is?”

“……This.”

“It is isn’t it.”

“It’s called ‘Boy with ponies’.

“He doesn’t look very happy.”

“He probably had to sit like that for hours.”

“Have you seen Danny?”

“He’s behind that E”

“Here’s the gift that guy gave us.”

“ What is it?”

“A model of the gallery.”

“Good thing they didn’t build it that small.”

On the road

And still they keep on coming, another in the OTN series celebrating the Ministry of Land Transport and Local Body support of New Zealand artists. (Thanks K)

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

Fire power

Australia’s arts czar, Art Gallery of New South Wales director Edmund Capon, has come out in strong support of artist Adam Cullen. The artist is deep in it thanks to the Goulburn police arresting him with a car full of guns of varying caliber and loading abilities which will put him in court on firearm charges this week. He is quite reasonably “very, very scared” as a 14 year prison sentence may be waiting for him at the end of all this. 

Still you can’t say Capon held back. He described Cullen as “deeply thoughtful and committed“ and (maybe pushing it out a bit) “one of the “most acknowledged and recognized contemporary artists” in Australia. A while back Cullen exhibited in New Zealand most notably at Teststrip and Fiat Lux. 

It's probably not a huge help that Cullen counts Chopper Read as a good friend although to balance that off he does have work in Elton John’s collection. Cullen’s defense will be that he was using the guns to make art. We’ll let you know how that plays.

Image: drawing by Adam Cullen

Labouring

Nothing for you today, back tomorrow.

Top to tail

We’ve posted on Art Review's annual Top 100 most influential people in the art world before. This year, instead of art dealer Larry Gagosian, the number one spot is taken by an artist, the Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei. A woman takes the number two spot (Serpentine Gallery Director Julia Peyton-Jones) and 19 women are represented in the top 50. Damien Hirst, once the leader and darling of the list, continues his slide, another nine places, to number 64. And spare a thought for the bottom five. They are: Johann König, Nicolai Wallner, Franco Noero & Pierpaolo Falone, Leonid Mikhelson and Gregor Podnar.

Art in the workplace

At Tokyo airport protecting art with a bit in reserve