My favourite things ...

Being earnest enough to want to do this. Thinking others might find it interesting.

Here's some favourite films, in no particular order:
Todd Solandz' Happiness
Aguirre, Wrath of God
Nashville AND The Player
Alien (the first, the only) AND Galaxy Quest
Kurosawa's Dodes Kadan (and a few others but one shall suffice here)
Full Metal Jacket as much as The Red Shoes
Diary of a Country Priest alongside Hana-Bi
Finally, Grizzly Man (most recent addition, let's see if it lasts).

As for music, some friends can't understand why I'm not "into jazz". I guess I can't listen by genre. So my iPod would include works from Bach to Beck, via Cobain and the Clean. Song-I'd-most-like-to-do-at-Karaoke is the 60s one that starts "you talk like Marlene Dietrich, you dance like Zizi Jeanmaire, your clothes are all made by Balmain, there's diamonds and pearls in your hair" etc. After using the usual search engine I've found the writer/singer to be Peter Sarstedt. This song strikes up every time I walk into an Opp Shop.

Opp Shops. In part because they offer a relief from the relentless pressure of the new; you see things that jog the memory and make the brain do other work ... just how did the category 'macramé owl' come into being? What path does a family photo album take to end up here? What is that thing?

Astanga yoga, even if I'm not so good at it. Since stories of one's own body are not gripping for others I won't elaborate here.

Being a relentless life-time learner, new loves include science and mathematics, subjects I wouldn't let myself be interested in earlier in life. Rolling ping-pong balls down inclined slopes never really did it for me. So I read The Earth: an intimate history and The Intelligibility of Nature with delight.

Heart-shaped maps of the sixteenth century. Lots of maps, really.

Overdue to let you know about the art that works for me. Like music, it doesn't fall into only one genre. I'm inclined to like Magritte and Mikala Dwyer (whose work can rearrange my neural pathways), Caspar David Friedrich, Cildo Mereiles and Claude Closky. I like Paul McCarthy as much as Mona Hatoum, or Uccello and Lari Pittman (who have enough in common). Öyvind Fahlström is an ongoing favourite. Since this is an art journal I'll elaborate on a few special cases.

Alighiero e Boetti: Obvious choice for me, I know. But I have issues with my Big Daddy, especially his use of rectangular map projections for the famous Mappa series. He did eventually move away from the Mercator's projection but not far enough, not far enough (see image below). It's my challenge to try and address this, in my own way. Big Mama I guess would be Agnes Denes, although I've yet to see any of her works in the flesh.

Alighiero e Boetti

Hans Peter Feldmann: Anyone who could put photographs of a kitten, a mountain, a sunset, couple hand-in-hand on beach into the Guggenheim Soho and pull it off has my vote. I've never tired of his little tome Voyeur and a Kunstraum München publication Bilder/Pictures is one of my prized art books, given to me by an artist friend in Berlin.

Hans Peter Feldmann

And as for the locals, they include Mary-Louise Browne - a most underrated artist, consistently making good work. I think we take her too much for granted. And what of John Hurrell - if he was a young thing in Melbourne it'd be all over the art magazines (sorry, 64zero3's website wouldn't let me copy a pic to here so Mary-Louise's work on leather gets the nod).

Mary-Louise Browne

The inevitable Billy Apple, how come he's not a Laureate yet? His version of Severe Tropical Storm at Te Tuhi earlier this year is still a highlight of 2006 for me. Of the younger artists whose work I'm catching up with I find Dane Mitchell's work most interesting, not to mention amusing (so hard to pull off without just being facile). Really, there's too much. Phil Dadson's sound/video of crunching snow underfoot makes me cross the road to listen to it (it's been showing in the Auckland City 'New' Gallery's window on Wellesley St as part of the Walters Prize).

That work of Dadson's reminds me how much I like reading mountaineering books, in which men (mostly) have to regularly discuss fear, a subject you don't read about that much elsewhere. No, it's not the extent of my favourite literature, but fearing overdoing it, time to sign off.

Ruth Watson will be exhibiting at Two Rooms Gallery, Auckland in 2007. Read more about the gallery and browse her bio and work on www.tworooms.org.nz