NZ Art Monthly - Reviews

june/july 2009

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]

april 2009

Max Gimblett and 'The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989'. A review article on the first New Zealander to exhibit at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
by Ashley E. Remer
First off, it is not my usual practice to include any communication with artists in my reviews, the relations tends to affect the outcome. As well, it is also backwards for me to interview anyone before I have seen the work or the exhibition itself, so for this review, maintaining the balance between enthusiasm and objectivity has been a challenge. In an effort to experience Max Gimblett's art from a (more) pure perspective and perhaps create my own Zen approach to art criticism, I decided to go against my natural inclinations, do little to no research and empty my mind of expectations. [more]

Elam Art UpFront, The Foyer Art Project, 6 - 20 March 2009
by Sonya Korohina
Day in and day out we become accustomed to our surroundings. The guy making coffee at the local cafe, the potted plants in the foyer at work, the doors to the lift; the mundane becomes a backdrop to everyday life. So what if one day an oversized dart was fired onto the window above the stairs - would you notice? [more]

Elisabeth Condon 'This Land Was Made for You and Me' GRANTPIRRIE WINDOW.
Caroline Rothwell 'Exotopos' GRANTPIRRIE, Sydney. 5 - 28 March, 2009.
by Lionel Bawden and Nell
Sydney artists Nell and Lionel Bawden reflect on the dynamic conversation between the companion exhibitions of Condon and Rothwell. Grounded in landscape, both exhibitions engage a dialogue around lost or imagined utopias/dystopias, our sense of connection to them and our displacement from them. [more]

Ming Wong: Vain Efforts, Gallery 4A, Sydney, 6 March - 18 April 2009
by Lydia Chai
Ming Wong's solo exhibition at Gallery 4A was an excellent opportunity to view his recent video works, Angst Essen/Eat Fear (2008) and Learn German with Petra von Kant (2007), screened alongside an older video work, Four Malay Stories (2005). These works are based on the concept of remaking classic films - but on Planet Ming Wong, virtually every role is played by himself. [more]

december 2008 / january 2009

Don Quixote, Royal New Zealand Ballet, Auckland performance, December 2008
by Anne-Marie Daly-Peoples
Now as the tutu and tinsel Nutcracker season gets underway, it's exciting to see a family dance show set against a brilliant Mediterranean sky.

Whilst Gary Harris' Don Quixote may be slightly under-choreographed, its comedy is endearing and its staging is visionary.[more]

Chromatic Variations on a Theme of Glenn Gould: New Prints by Barry Cleavin
by Joanna Trezise
Having exhibited regularly throughout New Zealand since 1966 Barry Cleavin is now one of this country's most recognised and highly esteemed printmakers.

The new exhibition of aquatints and etchings, on show at Christchurch's PaperGraphica until early December, admirably, if subtly, displays the disparate blend of charm and unease for which Cleavin is renowned. [more]

Conor O'Brien, There Stands The Glass, Black and Blue Gallery, Sydney, 30 Oct-16 Nov 08
by Chris Jones
With painting, thinking builds up gradually. Out on the canvas, after hanging in the imagination it gets plied, erased, smudged, and layered, rethought even, then left a day, or a year, until the painter returns to find irrelevance discoloring the oils ... Something photography brought to flat-art production is fear of irrelevance: fear of being nowhere; not being contemporary. Fear detectable in the brisk visual thinking there in drips and splats plied fast to canvas by Rauschenberg, Twombly, Pollock and Cullen, engaged in a pace of reality capture largely un-seen in western painting before Herschel and Daguerre started, in 1839, fixing it in instants to glass. For fear they and it might disappear ... [more]

november 2008

Some futures are more equal than others, Vanilla Netto, Breenspace Gallery, Sydney, 25.09.08 - 25.10.08
by Chris Jones
On show at Breenspace in Sydney, Vanilla Netto's exhibition Some futures are more equal than others intrigues by questioning academia's talent for self-interpretation, when representing art it helps produce - like Netto's. Can it survive Some futures ... asks, when its gangs of gallery, college, and publication etc ... interpret through Cultural Theory, that nearly done vernacular, bored it seems with art today, and far more interested in the artist, and in its own gymnastics. 'Where we see unrecyclable waste, Netto sees human dimensions' that 'reclaim the uncelebrated shapes of consumer detritus' loops the exhibition essay.[more]

A passion for life, art and artworks: Jan Nigro
by Simona Albanese
I met Jan for the first time about ten years ago when I came to New Zealand for a visit; unaware that this country was going to be my home one day.

Her passion, touch, work/life experience has always fascinated me. From the first time I visited her modern apartment in Takapuna - where she used a room as her studio to paint - I have been impressed by her approach to art; to the way she paints and the passion she puts into her representations, through the use of colour and images. [more]

Morag Stokes, Mana Land Lines, NZ Academy of Fine Arts Gallery, Wellington
by Julian McKinnon
Morag Stokes' 'Mana Land Lines' was an exhibition of paintings which stemmed from her residency on Mana Island last year. The works offered a unique perspective of landscape painting. 'You get invited to view them as landscapes, but confounded in your attempts to do so,' said Stokes of her works. 'I've painted many abstract paintings that people want to read as landscapes, so I set out to create a landscape that people would want to turn on its side.' This series of work definitely pushed beyond the conventional boundaries of landscape painting. [more]

october 2008

As it was; As it is. Landscapes by Rosemary Theunissen
by Elizabeth Rankin
Landscape is a favoured subject in images of New Zealand, which customarily focus on the sublime grandeur of mountain peaks, forests and seas, or more placid pastoral panoramas of open fields and valleys. At a recent exhibition, Figuring the Landscape, at Gallery 4, Northart, Auckland (23 August-10 September), Rosemary Theunissen's work showed that there is equal interest to be found in humbler parts of the landscape, uncared for corners in semi-rural suburbia, not quite town and not quite country - common enough on the peninsula of Mangere Bridge where she lives. With free brushwork and a muted palette of blue-greens, ochres and sepias, she captures, close-up, scruffy tussock grasses and untended tracks, with the wind-swept haze of sprawling paddocks beyond. There are sometimes signs of so-called urban progress - fenced off sections; the sheds of light industry; trucks, cranes and diggers reshaping landscape for unnamed 'improvements'. Now and again there is a scenic feature we recognise, like the stunted volcanic silhouette of Mount Mangere. But only indistinctly and distantly do we glimpse views more commonly selected for scenic images, such as Manukau Harbour and the headlands. At first sight, then, Theunissen's modestly sized paintings seem to be uncomplicated records of familiar if infrequently recorded places.[more]

New Zealand Opera's production of Janácek's Jenufa
by Anne-Marie Daly-Peoples
Prague paved the way for Jenufa's international success in 1916.

Jenufa was the work that launched Leos Janácek's operatic career. Jenufa was to mark Janácek's most intensive soul searching period of this operatic genre. It follows a tradition in late 19th century Czech literature of social realism. [more]

september 2008

Sydney Biennale 2008
by Anna Briers
On viewing the Sydney Biennale of 2008; Revolutions-Forms That Turn, at the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Gallery of New South Wales, my initial response left me gagging to commandeer the nearest band of 'wanna be' revolutionary arts students and spray-paint 'Institutionalized Revolution' followed by an 'ironic' reversed question mark on the front steps of the Gallery of New South Wales. All in all it left me feeling that the Sydney Biennale was about as revolutionary as a coloring-in book in which one is allowed to graffiti within the lines of the designated frame but not to go over the edges. [more]

David Le Fleming and EllieMay Logan at DegreeArt Gallery, London 20 August to 8 September 2008
by Rachel Aitken and Christopher Harrod
David Le Fleming, resident in the UK for the last five years, grew up in Ashhurst, Manawatu before moving to the Wairarapa and then Wellington to study art and design. There he was introduced to the concept of appropriation, which characterises his current exhibition. The 14 artworks are all painted on "found objects", or recycled materials, such as car boots, fridge doors, old style tin cans and even include an old painting of Le Fleming's, which he has painted over with the original showing through. [more]

Mark Morris Dance Group - Mozart Dances, Auckland, August 2008
by Russell Finnemore
Since another contributor is commenting on the dance aspects of this production the editor has asked me to comment on the musical.

I saw the production during a week of late, work-related nights and the arrival of a cold so was wondering if I had over-stretched myself in going to this event. As soon as the first bar of the music passed I knew I was glad I was there. [more]

Mozart Dances, choreographed by Mark Morris, The Civic, Auckland 22-29 August 2008
by Anne-Marie Daly-Peoples
'La danse ... un minimum d'explications, un minimum d'anecdotes, et un maximum de sensations.' - Maurice Bejart

Mozart is known as the artless child of nature. He produced music in unconscious, effortless profusion, untrammelled by knowledge of the height and depths of human experience. [more]

august 2008

Foto: Modernity in Central Europe, 1918-1945
7 June - 31 August 2008
Dean Gallery, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
by Chante St Clair Inglis
Foto is a travelling exhibition. It has appeared at the National Gallery in Washington, the New York Guggenheim and at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Hanging now in the Dean in Edinburgh, its final installation space, it examines photography in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary and Poland between 1918 and 1945. [more]

Loop 08, the Menier Gallery, 51 Southwark Street, London, SE1 1RU, 1 - 12 July 2008
by Christopher Harrod
LOOP are a collective of print artists, this year exhibiting at the Menier Gallery (itself part of the Menier Chocolate Factory complex - once housing a chocolatier, now housing an art gallery, restaurant and theatre). While the
group concentrates on the print medium, they experiment with a range of media. [more]

july 2008

Brett a'Court: beyond the religious images
by Simona Albanese
The Waipu artist, Brett a'Court, has recently held an exhibition at the Wallace Art Gallery, in 305 Queen St, Auckland. After his last exhibition in 2005 in Parnell, a'Court has disappeared from the artistic stage to reappear in the last two weeks of May in Auckland to present his new works, Do not Fear, clearly inspired to his strong Christian belief. [more]

Nudus Calendarium of Xavier Radic
by Dr Fran Marno
"Recuperating the space of seduction" (Teresa de Lauretis, "Sexual Indifference / Lesbian representation.") If historically the dominant space of seduction is heterosexual then Radic's Nudus Calendarium challenges, reframes and claims that space for gay male representation. The images' power to seduce in Nudus Calendarium is a culmination of veiled, posed subjects, elusive, cropped landscapes and exquisitely presented prints. [more]

Visions of the Harem
by Ahdaf Soueif, The Guardian
Of all the British artists who went east in the 19th century, for Ahdaf Soueif, only John Frederick Lewis looked beyond colonial stereotypes to capture its true spirit. Cairo gave him the colours, light and architecture to become a great painter. [link to external site]

Artworks that put the public centre stage
by Laura Barton, The Guardian
Every 30 seconds they hurtle through the gallery, short, damp breath stirring the dry museum air. These are the runners who have been recruited for Work No 850, Martin Creed's latest exhibition at Tate Britain. Creed, who was awarded the Turner prize in 2001 and became notorious for exhibiting a lightbulb going on and off, was inspired to create the piece after a hurried visit to the catacombs of the Capuchin monks in Palermo. [link to external site]

june 2008

Nothing is Sacred - Ian Scott's The New Zealand Painting Series
by Kate Srzich
The New Zealand Painting Series has evolved over the past eighteen years and is by no means complete according to Scott, who earlier this year commissioned a large number of new silkscreen images to take the series to the next level. The aim of the series has always been to represent the New Zealand landscape from a contemporary context. The approach throughout has remained postmodern and personal. Scott freely appropriates images that are not his own, selecting people, places and things that he likes.[more]

Inflated phrases
by Christian Demand, sightandsound.com
Most texts which accompany contemporary art production are so twisted and woolly that they could easily pass for self-parody. Christian Demand takes up a three hundred year old lament. [link to external site]

A new dawn
by Tim Parks, The Guardian
We have made Italy, now we must make Italians,' came the demand - and the divisionist movement of painters took up the challenge. But did their depictions of community and harmony succeed in building the national culture to which they aspired, asks Tim Parks. [link to external site]

Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake
by Anne-Marie Daly-Peoples
This is a potted history of Swan Lake ...

Swan Lake borders on Füssen, a small town in Bavaria, that lies on the slopes of the Austrian border. In the Middle Ages, Bavarian minstrels proclaimed that 'Swan Knights' would perform there in the name of the Holy Grail. [more]

Angels of Revenge at Sue Crockford Gallery
by Adam Gifford, NZ Herald
To celebrate moving back to Berlin after four years in New York, Christian Jankowski lit a fire in his new apartment. Then he made a video of the flames crackling in the hearth, with a soundtrack of him singing to himself. Welcome Home is one of the works on show at the Sue Crockford Gallery, illustrating the way Jankowski can see art in any performance or chance interaction. [link to external site]

march 2008

Alison Bickmore - New Paintings, Open Studio at Acme Studios, London
by Christopher Harrod
This recent exhibition of Alison Bickmore's work features oils and acrylic on canvas, and mono prints over Japanese paper. Bickmore frequently uses tissue paper, applying it directly to drying paint on canvas or via Chine Collé on her prints.

The artist's main preoccupation seems to be the preciousness of memory, how it is preserved, how it is lost, and how it changes over time. This idea is borne out by her earlier works that include holiday-style cinematic works of cottages by the sea [more]

february 2008

All About Art Basel Miami Beach 2007
by Ashley E. Remer
I'll be the first to admit it, not being a dealer or a collector; I did not know what Art Basel was, let alone Art Basel Miami Beach. Although it takes place in my home state of Florida, I was an Art Basel Miami Beach virgin. My last lengthy visit to Miami was when I lived there for six months in 1996. I did attend the opening of the Museum Of Contemporary Art, which attempted to break the crust of the fairly traditional, hum drum Miami art scene. So what is this mad art fair called Art Basel and why is it in Miami Beach? More importantly, we have art fairs in New Zealand, so why should anyone on the other side of the world care? [more]

Middens and Marshmallows: the magical world of Steve Carr
by Chanelle Carrick
A relative newcomer to the New Zealand art scene, Steve Carr is no stranger to Dunedin. Before obtaining his Masters degree from the Auckland University Elam School of Fine Arts in 2003, he graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Otago Polytechnic. He also went on to co-found the now iconic Blue Oyster Gallery, hidden in the depths of Moray Place. Carr has had numerous shows, ranging from solo exhibitions at High Street Project in Christchurch and Sherman Galleries, Sydney, to partaking in the Busan Biennale in South Korea. Now living and working from Auckland, Carr is a multi-media artist in every sense. Alongside photography and film, he has produced sculptural forms in materials as diverse as wood, blown glass, porcelain, 18ct gold plate, spun cast alloy, popcorn and even old pizza boxes. [more]

LIGHTBOX @ Italy and Kitchens
by Kim Atherfold
Italy and Kitchens in Newmarket is an ideal venue for an exhibition of fine art with a focus on light. Curator Paul Baragwanath's Lightbox which ran from November - 14 December 2007 included work by some of New Zealand's leading artists, and his choice reminds us of the enigmatic nature of light in spite of its prosaic use in household environments. Importantly, Baragwanath's vision as a curator becomes apparent in foregrounding the relationship between the cutting edge of modern design and that of fine art. Light is integral to our lives and although it has a long art history, central to the work of Dan Flavin, Bill Culbert and Laurent Grasso, for example, increasingly artists in the first decade of the 21st century are using (or continue to use) light as their preferred medium of self expression. The artists in this exhibition idiosyncratically manipulate the medium, however, the simple fact remains that objects which emit glowing light are visually alluring on one hand and make a powerful spatial statement on the other. [more]

november 2007

L'Allegro, choreographed by Mark Morris
by Anne-Marie Daly-Peoples

Brussels is home to the European Union (EU). Brussels is not home to modern dance.

Brussels changed when Maurice Béjart quit the Belgium royal theatre, the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie due to a disagreement with the then director, Gerard Mortier. 1988 was to see an appurtenance. A young gifted American, Mark Morris had accepted the perilous position as director. Mortier was an unpopular man in Brussels and Béjart was a local hero and now a martyr. What were the chances that the Belgians would take kindly to this newcomer, who came with a reputation. [more]

october 2007

Space Waka
A review on U.F.O.B a collaborative artwork by Brett Graham and Rachael Rakena at Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts
by Daisy Jackson
Daydreams of visitors from out-of-space were something which flowed freely as a child, the story was always the same - the beings riding in the UFOs were of course the intruders, they were the one's imposing. It was a visit to U.F.O.B that encouraged me to see it the other way.[more]

Travel reveries
by Virginia Were, Art News New Zealand
Poetic narratives exploring travel, identity, memory and place are the subject of Waiheke artist Denis O’Connor’s latest body of work. [link to external site]

september 2007

Paper, Scissors, Rock
by Emma Bugden
Of all the things about New Zealand that Australians make fun of, probably the one that's hardest to refute are the jokes about our local television show Police 10/7, somewhat unfortunately screened in Australia on Foxtel's crime network. The format is a universal one - a camera crew follow cops around as they investigate law infringements, allowing you as viewer to become part of the intensity and drama of the moment. [more]

A Dilettante's Guide to Art
by Morgan Meis, The Smart Set
1001 Paintings You Should See Before You Die acknowledges the question "What is Painting?" The answer: "Who cares?" [link to external site]

Home Truths - Veronica Crockford-Pound, Stephanie O'Connor, Anna McLeod, Megan Hansen-Knarhoi, Anna Gardner, Eunice Ng, Laurelle May, Shannon Teo. Curated by Sophie Keyse
by Emma Phillipps
Typically art spaces are selected on the basis that they will offer an environment that is appropriate for exhibition purposes. Large open rooms with scrubbed white-walls have the ability to conjure up a 'gallery atmosphere'. Furthermore this has become the standardized 'exhibition' space. Even when alternative spaces are sought, performance-based and site-specific projects come to mind, much of their work is recontextualised back into a gallery/exhibition space, similar to the one previously alluded to, in a documented form such as video footage or a photograph.[more]

august 2007

From Matisse to Glass Ice - Clay Bodvin, A Brief History of Object and Desire
by Warwick Brown
What could be seen as an abrupt change in both technique and imagery in Clay Bodvin's new work can be understood, after a little digging, as a continuum. [more]

Richard Lewer: It starts as an idle thought grows into an obsession
by Katie Dyer
Richard Lewer is gaining a reputation in Australia as one of the foremost contemporary artists who has chosen drawing as his primary medium. His work does not rely on traditional notions of fine draughtsmanship or formal academic qualities and his subjects tackle the darker side of what is an easily identifiable rendering of antipodean culture[more]

july 2007

emotion
by Natasa Kruscic
emotion was a one night video art event held at the French antique store Baran de Bordeaux in Parnell, Auckland. Curated by art adviser Paul Baragwanath, the concept was to show video works outside the conventional gallery context. Although there are many artists working in this medium today and video art is seen more and more in New Zealand public and dealer galleries, the acquisition and display of video works in a domestic, everyday setting is still rare. With the support of Maserati motorcars, Baragwanath set out to promote video art to New Zealand connoisseurs and collectors of fine things, introducing the notion that video art can be collected just like sculptures and paintings, or indeed limited edition prints.. [more]

The man who sold us Damien
by Sean O'Hagan, The Observer
He started his career as an accountant in the sleazier side of London showbiz, but for years has managed the world's biggest living artist and diamond geezer, Damien Hirst, who describes him as 'irreplaceable'. The loquacious, likeable Frank Dunphy explains how it came about... [link to external site]

Richard Long at the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art
Richard Long is one of Britain's most influential living artists. Based on the artist's walks from the mid-1960s, his work takes the form of photographs, maps, drawings and sculptures (generally lines or circles constructed from natural materials). A new exhibition at the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art (June 30 - October 21 2007) will span the artist’s career and feature a number of new works created specially for the show. [link to external site]

june 2007

Party - Kim Joon at Touchart Gallery, Seoul
by Christopher Jones
After the seduction by colour, first things to see in Kim Joon's Party pictures at TOUCHART gallery are bodies: scores in a vibrant bacchanal. Then bits of bodies: Vishnu arms sprouting from backs; legs plus an arse for an erect penis. Jungles of embryonic limbs poking from torsos stood and supine. Then tattoos, serpentine and elegant, licking at the surface of each body, adjoining patterns echoing Prada, Levi's and Dior. All this before noticing, each body has skin, pocked like a Google-Earth desert. [more]

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?
Te Tuhi - The Mark
Curated by Emma Budgen and Pita Turei
by Sophie Keyse
Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? at Te Tuhi - The Mark sought to unleash the stories of myth, folklore and fairytales which have been suppressed in modern times in favour of logic and science. The two curators, Emma Bugden and Pita Turei, conceptualised their exhibition as a means to transport the unreal into the public space. The only way in which we have exposure to traditional fairytales is through the cheesy happy endings devised by large movie corporations who remove the essential morals of the story, distancing them from their original function of providing life lessons. [more]

Audio Arts: William Furlong at Tate Britain
by Chante St Clair Inglis
In 1973 sound artist William Furlong established the cassette magazine Audio Arts. Consisting primarily of recorded conversations and interviews with artists, Audio Arts has evolved into the most comprehensive archive of artists' voices, recorded discussions on contemporary art and sound based works.

Audio Arts is the result of Furlong's fascination with the artistic dialogue that was unrepresented in written art magazines. Furlong endeavoured to create a place for this dialogue using the audio medium. This medium allowed him to create a neutral space, a space free from critics and magazine editors. Allied with this space, Furlong developed an interview technique devoid of critical analysis and aimed instead at propagating spontaneous unbiased discussion. The result, as claimed by Furlong, is a continuous conversation. [more]

Manufactured Transformation: a group show of sculptural forms
by Lyndal Osborne, Black Robin
This is an exciting exhibition presented by Fine Arts students after a 10-week course at the Faculty of Extension, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. The pieces range from topographical landscapes, synthetically created natural objects, mobiles and small installations. [link to external site]

may 2007

To Say The Least
by Christopher Jones

There's a maudlin but curiously titled exhibition at Seoul's Daelim Contemporary Art Museum, showing one big picture with bite. In amongst another collection of giant, Germanic photographs, arranged this time to illustrate the effect of western spatiality on Korean interpretations of place, under that title Western Style Courtesy of Space, one picture outstands. [more]

Caroline Rothwell: The Law of Unintended Consequences
by Clare Lewis

Caroline Rothwell's latest exhibition of sculptures and wall drawings explores the uncomfortable duality of human and animal life. Rothwell sees the flora and fauna of both past and present as symptomatic of our culture. As we have discovered and intervened in the natural world, nature has come to mirror the mutations and changes of our 21st Century landscape. Sharks are getting closer, monkeys skeletons are in orbit, pigs are saving lives. [more]

april 2007

Steve Carr - Smoke and Mirrors at Michael Lett Gallery, Auckland
by David Levinson
Turning the other cheek to the sinewy wunderkind of digital video, artist Steve Carr demonstrates a still-strict reverence for the tenets of celluloid. In fact, since first showing with Michael Lett in 2003, he's consistently shot on 16mm (bar Divepool, which was 8mm), and the three films making up his latest show, Smoke and Mirrors, all appear in 35mm. [more]

500 words
by Christopher Jones
Things: The deluge of artwork filling Seoul's galleries this month can be summarised with just this word. But their effects require 500 - at least. So with 471 to go: Pleasure, big in colour photographs, tops the pile. At The Kuhmo Museum of Art, Kim, Hee Jung swells our eye-joy with pictures of ice-cream, pink lego, white dust on a girl's face. Painterly and perfectly printed, each is subtly composed, with deftly chose colours, sliced through by planes of tack-sharp photographic focus. And where we see this sharpness blur Kim says, our emotions are. [more]

march 2007

Robert Rauschenberg, Gallery Hyundai, Seoul
by Christopher Jones
Painting and writing. Writing and painting. Through history picture-makers have written with ochre figures, wild bulls on Lascaux walls, pictured crabs and bamboo poles with calligraphics in Ancient China, and rendered life in Upper Egypt with hieroglyphs on clay tablets, to overlap these prime methods of mark making. [more]

Francis Bacon in St Ives
by Chante St Clair Inglis
Between September 1959 and January 1960 Francis Bacon undertook a residency at No. 3 Porthmeor Studios in St Ives. At this time St Ives was home to a leading group of British artists, all of whom propagated non-figurative art. Bacon's choice to undertake this residency seems unusual given he was not only at the forefront of the figurative painting scene in Britain, but he also openly deplored non-figurative art, viewing it as "an illustration or accident about nothing." [more]

february 2007

Sculpture on the Gulf
by Anne-Marie Daly-Peoples
Sculptures are objects that assert an independence. Since the Renaissance there has been a shift away from tightly focused, contemplative modes of perception, to something more mobile, contingent and confrontational.

In the middle of the Hauraki Gulf you will find a slice of happiness. From Auckland City, a 35 minute ferry ride will transport you to Waiheke Island. [more]

Kim, Jung Wook - Skape Gallery, Seoul
by Christopher Jones
That telling oval shape, sometimes spotted and pocked, other times smooth, writ with lines of history, our language names a face. That confession we alter with cosmetics, and words, and the idea of a face that is for Levinas exceeded by it. That place of arcane dependability, magnet to our barest curiosity. That place artists discover the most primitive, refined answer. [more]

december 06/ january 07

Oh, the Relief! A review of the work of Alexander Bartleet
by Warwick Brown
Like many critics and dealers, I try to get to the Auckland arts graduate shows. They are an opportunity to take the pulse of the young art scene, to see what trends are taking hold, and what the general standard is. Much of the time I feel that the artists are playing around and not addressing the real challenge - to make work that will stand the test of time.[more]

An Event of One: Dick Frizzell in Antarctica
by Joanna Blaire Trezise
An Event of One: Dick Frizzell in Antarctica, currently on show at Auckland's Gow Langsford Gallery, is the result of the artist's 2005 journey to Antarctica. Since 1996, when the Artists to Antarctica Programme was first established through the partnership of Antarctica New Zealand and Creative New Zealand, dozens of artists have made similar journeys in the hope of increasing the New Zealand public's awareness of the region. [more]

Stravinsky's The Firebird Suite by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
by Anne-Marie Daly-Peoples
The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra is the country's national orchestra and the flagship of the performing arts in New Zealand. Last month for the first time they played the complete ballet score of Stravinsky's The Firebird Suite. [more]

Park, Min Joon - Happiness, Happiness, Happiness - Noam Gallery Seoul, Korea
by Christopher Jones
The Louvre has just installed a grand exhibition of paintings by Corot, Gericault and Turner, et al, into the National Museum, Seoul. As part of festivities celebrating a 120 year France-Korea relation, incorporating theatre, lectures and dance, 70 oil paintings gather under the generous title, Western Landscape Paintings from the 16th Century to the 19th Century. And if not for the realism of Corot, the resident awe in the Turner, each ploddingly hung Rubenseque belly-roll and feathery Watteauesque vista would culminate in the mere doff of a cap to western mythology. [more]

Art After Dark, 19th October 2006, Te Papa
by Dave Rehmeyer
First up was a tour by Jonathan Mane-Wheoki of his choice pieces. I'd seen him in the Auckland Koru Lounge a few weeks earlier. He spoke about circles, The Royal Academy, and Te Maori. He used a portable microphone and was followed by a black-clad Te Papa worker pushing a mobile speaker on a rolling dolly. It was typical, excellent, forward thinking on their part as the crowd for this free lecture was pushing 50 in number. He said Te Papa, Lord of the Rings, and the stadium are the three main reasons why tourists come to Wellington. [more]

EXIT Dunedin
In November 2006 EXIT Dunedin took the task of providing every graduating artist from the School of Fine Art at Otago Polytechnic with a short review of the work displayed for their final year degree show. You can read, and download these pdf reviews by visiting this link http://buro.net.nz/exitdunedin//