One day at an OTN editorial meeting

Editor 1: I’ve got a great second post for today.

Editor 2: What?

E1: It’s sort of a blurry photograph of a monkey painting something that a lookalike of a work we saw in a foyer that was named after an artist.

E 2: Brilliant.

E 1: I love doing the second post don’t you?

E 2: Highlight of my day.

E 1: But it does make you feel a bit guilty, doesn’t it?

E 2: You mean how we could be out there inventing a cure for something or other instead.

E 1: Exactly. Or just lounging around. One of the two.

E 2: We should just stick to one post a day and do the lounging thing.

And from Tuesday 12 November, they did.

Farming news

If you want to see contemporary art Auckland Art Gallery is the place to go. Three floors of it. Has the AAG ever shown as much in one hit? OK, you may not like all of it but for now anyway the contemporary rules on Kitchener Street.

Of course this comes at a cost. How is it even possible that in a brand new building the only way the AAG can put a serious contemporary foot forward is by stripping out most of its historical collections? These are the best all-purpose spaces in the Gallery so how Freedom Farmers curator Natasha Conland persuaded the history curators to let her have the run of them is anybody’s guess. Still now we know the way this is the obvious venue for big contemporary exhibitions such as the proposed Billy Apple survey.

As for the Farmers show, it's certainly a graphic demo of the magnetic attraction of Auckland. Only four of the 20 artists on show were actually born in the city (that’s only one more than the number who were born outside NZ) but 65 percent of them live there. And Elam has had nearly a clean sweep with all but three of the 20 artists having graduated from or teaching there.

Sometimes it's the public programmes that clarify an exhibition's intentions. Freedom Famers quirky title and poppy presentation come together around something called "creative living". The links back to the 1970s (the current hot curatorial decade) and guides like the Whole Earth Catalog will be made material on 1 December via an "Ideas Market" with beer brewing and composting. 

In this out pouring of utopian alternatives viewers may be surprised to find much of the actual work in the exhibition is dystopian to the point of despair. On the other hand, as writer Rose Lovejoy once dryly noted, “Every dystopia is masked by a utopia.”

Today is brought to you by the letter P

On the road to Auckland channeling the Koons Puppy and Serra's Prop

Step master

If you happen to visit the websites of art museums you'll be accustomed to those stop motion videos of exhibitions being installed. The idea is that we'll feel more engaged because we can see the exhibition emerging. In Japan we saw three of these whizzy shorts given a major promotion and be presented as part of the exhibition itself. It's all getting a bit ADD. Fun for sure but what happened to the art museums' desire to slow down and deepen the visual experience?

So here’s an art event in slow-mo. We found it on Dick Frizzell’s Facebook page. A day-by-day record (17 to 20 October) of his progress on a single painting with the last pic accompanied by a heartfelt “Finished.”

Art chart

Thanks L

Back to the future

“I dream of an art world without pointless parochialism,” was one response to our suggestion that the selection of only one artist from NZ for the Sydney Biennale was unreasonably low. That got us thinking. Just when you think the global/local argument has died, there it is, dragging itself up out of the swamp. The reason is that for all its global marketing trappings, Biennale art is surprisingly localised. Every artist bio, every catalogue entry, carefully states not only where these artists live, but also where they were born. There's perhaps an element of pay-off for national funders of specific artists but more importantly knowing where someone is from captures a whole lot of context in a single fact.

OK, back to Juliana Engberg's selections for next year's Sydney Biennale. Yes, she is one of Australia’s most dynamic curators and yes, her idea for the Biennale is global enough (“an exploration of the world and contemporary aesthetic experience”), but the artists she has selected are not born and do not live in a very large part of the globe: Russia, Africa, South America, India or China. Sorry BRIC that love affair is being left to Queensland.

This Biennale is local, it's just its local is Europe and down-under. Of the 90 artists 61 live or work in Europe (84 percent of those are from the EU) and 19 are from Australia. The rest: nine Swiss, half a dozen Norwegians, four Chinese one of whom lives in Europe, a Japanese living in New York, an Egyptian a couple of Canadians and a couple from the USA etc. In sum if they’re not in Australia (or the one artist living in NZ) they live or work in the Northern Hemisphere.

As Biennales usually do, this one also emphasises its expansiveness boasting “a vibrant list of more than 90 artists from 31 countries." To put it nicely this is blowing smoke. The closest we've seen to it is the 1979 Biennale curated by Nick Waterlow. That one was called European dialogue.

Image: countries not represented in the upcoming Biennale of Sydney in red.

A merging artist

In earlier days OTN was pretty keen on camouflage and its relationship to art. We posted on camouflaging ships and posted some incredibly beautiful pics of painted helmets. It was all kicked off by a book on camouflage that, if it is ever reprinted, should definitely consider adding the Chinese artist Liu Bolin. These photos were taken of a project he did in Venezuela. You can see more here on Artinfo.

Handy

Back in the late seventies one of the smartest people we knew was the education officer at the Dowse Art Gallery. Ian McMillan was also an artist (Te Papa has some of his work in its collection and so does the Auckland Art Gallery) but a lasting memory of him is making hand puppets for one of those school holiday programmes. For about two weeks Ian would turn up at work each day with a hand puppet made from a weird assortment of materials - toothbrushes, kitchen gear, bits of old rope, remodelled gloves - as inspiration for his groups of kids. These creatures were extraordinary, full of character and panache. We were reminded of Ian’s work when we saw a wonderful book about the eccentric puppets Paul Klee made for his daughter. Ian is now living in Queensland and has become, seriously, an international expert on moths. Art, you’ve got to love it.
 
Image: Puppets by Paul Klee

Dozants

Video room MCA, Sydney

McLeavey sat here

A big crowd turned up at the Matterhorn in Wellington last night. They were there to be with Peter McLeavey for the launch of Jill Trevelyan’s biography of New Zealand’s longest serving art dealer published by Te Papa Press. McLeavey who started selling art in 1966 has put 47 years into the business a stretch that is unmatched in Australasia.

Trevelyan told the crowd that McLeavey had given her free rein and did not ask her to change anything substantive. This is McLeavey’s story as shaped by his relationships with artists and elaborated by Trevelyan’s meticulous research in letters and interviews. The list of artists touched by McLeavey is remarkable. Richard Killeen is there being wonderfully florid describing the artist Merit Gröting painting McLeavey’s chaise longue white as “one of those mafia type, horse-head-in-the-bed sort of situations.” The chaise longue is something of a leitmotif with many people photographed on it from McLeavey himself (both sitting and lying and standing by it with his wife Hilary) to Michael Smither and Derek Cowie.

The chaise longue also poked its nose into the artist dealer relationship when Billy Apple asked to use it in 1990. “I do not wish this piece of furniture to be touched at this stage” was McLeavey’s response. Later that year he wrote again to Apple abruptly terminating their 11-year relationship. The book is full of beginnings and endings, emotions and commitment, supreme confidence and paralysing uncertainty. Colin McCahon is there in his full emotional glory and so too are Toss Wollaston and Gordon Walters and many others.   

Peter McLeavey: the life and times of a New Zealand art dealer is not a hagiography, and more power to McLeavey for letting the cracks show and to Trevelyan for not papering them over. But enough of this, we’ve got some reading to do.

Image: Peter McLeavey and the chaise longue sometime prior to Saturday 20 June, 1922

ten down two to go

in october we announced simon denny as the next Venice artists • were first with the news that another simon (simon rees) was going to get the govett-brewster directorship • discovered the frame detective • got drawn into the naked thing • found globe in Tokyo • promoted promoting prosperity • oohed and aahed about billy apple • had our hearts stopped by a great work of art in a great work of architecture • got the low down on ches and dale and dick • found out how much the girls love the boys • wondered how te papa was ever going to change and were surprised at only one nz artists being selected for the biennale of sydney

Mini me

Te Papa is now busy socializing its Manukau ICH (Innovative Cultural Hub) to be built in Hayman Park. The project is still often referred to as Te Papa North, but it’s not. The business plan (#begging bowl) which is to be presented to the Government in December asks for a $33+ mil loan (how Te Papa intends to pay back this money is anyone’s guess as it is already struggling to find funds for the over-due re-do of its own displays).

One rather strange twist is Te Papa’s conviction that it will be able to create a genuinely New Zealand experience for New Zealanders in Manukau. Where have we heard that before? Apparently there is some concern that nearly half of the current 1.3 million visitors to the Te Papa Mothership are tourists. So it’s Our Place again only this time in an economy pack.

Is Te Papa consulting with the local community as it develops this new project? Well the original idea was certainly sprung on them as a surprise leg-up for Len ‘Manukau’ Brown, but no doubt at some stage the roads of Manukau will be clogged by streams of pizza deliveries to focus groups for local input.  As for how this new entity might collaborate with other institutions from what we hear the briefing to the museum profession was a this-is-what-we’re-doing affair rather than a got-any-thoughts-on-how-we-could-do-this-together? 

So the big question remains how will Te Papa deliver Manukau something that will be locally important and develop a presence in the wider region? And all this within a pressured budget that includes allowing for an expensive storage responsibilities.
 
Still, as everyone said back in the 1980s when the original Te Papa was being developed, “It’s no point just being critical. You have to give them a chance to show what they can do.” And that’s what we all did.

There's more than one way to copy a cat

For your Saturday entertainment the lookalike site to end all lookalike sites whoworeitbetter. Some of them are accidental, some disguised as homage, more than a few coincidental and others just good old IP theft. 
Image: left, Giancarlo Neri Table and Chair. Right, Robert Therrien No Title (Table and Four Chairs) Thanks as always H

Makes sense

“That task of the critic is to infer the best explanation of what is there, using whatever helps in arriving at an intelligible interpretation.”
Philosopher Arthur C. Danto, who died last week

Art in the movies

If you're not trapped on a plane like we were there's no reason to see Giuseppe Tornatore’s The best offer. This leaden heist movie is full of plodding art references (yes there are scenes based on Vermeer paintings) and the usual auction clichés. The plot involves Geoffrey Rush as Virgil Oldman (it’s that kind of movie) being scammed out of a creepy collection of portraits of women. 

Still there is one game to be played if you’re trapped inside on a rainy afternoon. By cutting and pasting the pictures into Google Images you can identify the originals of many of the paintings in the old man’s (for anyone who didn't get it the first time) collection. A quick session turned up Albrecht Dürer’s Portrait of Elspeth Tucher, Raphael’s Portrait of a young girl and his Portrait of a young woman, La Rêverie by Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Jeanne Samary in a Low-Necked Dress by Petrus Christus.

Many other paintings are lovingly presented to a score by Ennio Morricone, Petrus Christus’s Portrait of a young girl is restored and even a Birth of Venus turns up.

Image: top, scenes from The best offer, then cut and paste into Images – BAM - art detective.