Jane Blackmore, Matt Guild, Anne-Marie Jean, Michael McCormack and Anna Stichbury - Five Painters, NZ Academy of Fine Arts, Wellington, 28, 29 & 30 August. This work by Jane Blackmore. [more]

In from the Garden, Objectspace, Auckland, 6 June - 18 July. This work by Renee Bevan [more]

Art buddies are doing it for each other by forming creative families, says Euan Ferguson
Courtesy of The Guardian
What strikes one most quickly about these four artists, who have been moving in circles of each other's friends for years now and don't quite know how they all graduated to more constant friendship with each other, is the utterly pleasant, down-to-earth nature of the relationships. Despite their reasonably high-flying positions - all regularly exhibit, to critical acclaim, and Goshka Macuga was shortlisted for last year's Turner, and Francis Upritchard is New Zealand's representative this year at the Venice Biennale - the talk is not about art. [link to external site]

In another country
Yoko Ono in conversation with Rirkrit Tirawanua, Courtesy of Art Forum
Among the most poignant artworks made by Yoko Ono during her fifty-year career must be White Chess Set, 1966, in which all the pieces are white: As any game progresses, players will eventually find their sides impossible to tell apart. “Ideally,” Ono says, “this leads to a shared understanding of their mutual concerns and a new relationship based on empathy rather than opposition. Peace is then attained on a small scale.” [link to external site]

Does anyone get the feeling that he's just going round in circles? Fans of Richard Long cleave to the notion that he is a wild thing. He isn't
By Rachel Cooke, Courtesy of The Observer
In contemporary art, consensus is rarer than a decent drawing by Tracey Emin. In the case of Richard Long, however, the critics seem mostly to be agreed: hard to describe their usual response to his work as anything other than a swoon. They stare at his maps, his photographs and his stone circles, and a sense of awe creeps over them. They imagine him - bandana around his head, dried foodstuffs in his rucksack - striding out alone into the wilderness, and they tremble at the sheer manliness of the enterprise. [link to external site]

Jennifer Mason's Everything You Think Is Wrong, Oedipus Rex Gallery, Auckland, 9-27 June
by Chante St Clair Inglis
Installed at the Oedipus Rex Gallery, Everything You Think is Wrong is Jennifer Mason's first solo exhibition. For this show, Mason draws on techniques used in film making, commercial photography and narrative painting. The fourteen constructed images are testament to Mason's ongoing fascination with the unsettling aspects of contemporary suburban life. [more]

Welcome to the June/July edition of www.nzartmonthly.co.nz

Please note that archived articles and reviews are not yet available to read.

There are several magazines for the arts in New Zealand that are probably known to you but I'd like to mention here - www.art-newzealand.com, www.artworldmagazine.com.au (covering both NZ and Australian art) and www.artnews.co.nz

Have you got a link or blogspot you could recommend to others? Please share it, put the link in an email to me and I'll load it up for other readers to see.

All readers are encouraged to send in your views, reviews, ideas, articles, links and events. It's too easy, just email the.editors@nzartmonthly.co.nz with the text and captioned jpgs. If you have never published your art writing before, this ezine is a good opportunity and exists as a vehicle for your reviews, essays and articles.

If you wish to list an Event, please don't send images or text in pdf format, instead send captioned jpgs and text in a Word document.

NZArtMonthly is a contributor-driven forum for the arts in New Zealand (although not strictly NZ - we also want to hear what's going on around the world). If you have an art event coming up, know of a forthcoming art competition, have a review or article you would like to have published, contact us on the.editors@nzartmonthly.co.nz

Kim Ellis, Editor

New videos by Rachael Rakena explore the art of eating, Bartley and Company Art, Wellington until 13 June. [more]