Anderson Park Art Gallery, Invercargill with a Jeffrey Harris

Also I was told my children have good gallery manners

The original publication created much controversy

 ”following protests by the Maori Women Welfare League Washday at the Pa [school journal] was controversially withdrawn from circulation by the Department of Education. The League condemned Westra’s depiction of the poor, rural Maori family living in sub-standard housing as untruthful and inaccurate. ”

Interestingly the Welfare league has now withdrawn its objections.

There is a great interview with Ans Westra here [Podcast] from Radio NZ Nights with Bryan Crump

I guess this is a sort of cultural artifiact as well as an artistic one and I like to think (although I am possibly wrong) that we are mature enough now as a nation to see these photos in context. Also I’ve been thinking about women in the arts in NZ and how they had/have such a struggle and often were subject to undue criticism. Watch this space for more on that topic.

Get this book and/or see the exhibition – 26 October – 26 November 2011, Suite Gallery, Level 2, 147 Cuba Street
Wellington

Florence And Harbour Cone (1974) by Robin White
Collection of the Christchurch Art Gallery

I was reminded of another Robyn and her project and “the idea of a travel guide from the 1968 being recontextualised in 2010″. I have really enjoyed Robyn’s posts on her journeys and was lucky enough to find a copy of the 1968 guide for myself for 50c.

The fascinating thing for me about this guide is the artwork. A travel guide, illustrated with paintings by Garth Tapper,Juliet Peter, Doris Lusk and Colin McCahon! Also photographs by Brian Brake and Marti Friedlander (amongst others)

The Otago section starts with a McCahon.

[Three Otago Landscapes: Cover design for The Shell Guide to New Zealand edited by Maurice Shadbolt], (1968) Colin McCahon

I love the idea around using these paintings, although I hope people didn’t take the artists’ interpretation of the landscape too literally.

Talling is also responsible for the book/website “Derelict London“

If you Google “lost rivers of London” there are many other interesting bits and pieces, including a plan to revive these rivers.

Maybe I find it intriguing because I am currently blitzing through 13 episodes of “The Time Team” on DVD. I am history obessessed.

Ideas of good work can vary and are quite subjective. It would be judgemental to start categorising what is and isn’t ‘good’, but I guess there are some things that would spring to mind as not good. For me someone not doing good work might be …. administering leathal injections to those on death row or something.

In a less extreme sense, some might also consider artists and writers not to be doing ‘good work’ - a lovely example here. But I read this on the ‘Art, Life, TV etc”  blog recently:

“I’ve never been more aware of the importance of the humanities to people and society than in the last year. The humanities help people make sense of the great events of their own lives and times. There are stories that can only be told through mediums such as painting, or literary non-fiction, or poetry, or music…The particular frame that the artist or the writer puts on their account of life in the city after the earthquake — what they leave out, what they put in — determines how these events, and their politics, will be remembered.”

This is good work…..and I think the arts are often undervalued in this respect. I am lucky enough that in my new job I get to pass by some stunning art everyday. It makes me smile, some makes me think, but its art “hard at work“ and in my view, doing good work.

So I am awarding many gold starts to the arts and artists today and also to all those everywhere doing good work.

The cover of the exhibition catalogue for “Good Work – The Jim Barr & Mary Barr Collection” featuring a work by Mikala Dwyer Good work (1994)

Firstly, and maybe just a coincidence, but the refurbished Auckland Art Gallery has just opened in time for the cup crowds. Apparently it’s a stunner .

In Wellington there is a collaborative exhibition Oceania between the City Gallery and Te Papa. Some of the best of NZ art will be on show. I’d give A LOT  to get to this exhibition – if you can SEE IT!

In my area the Dunedin Public Art Gallery has Fiona Pardington’s The Pressure of Sunlight Falling exhibtion and also the wonderful Hotere/Culbert work Pathway to the Sea – Aramoana on show.

Ralph Hotere and Bill Culbert
Pathway to the Sea – Aramoana 1991(detail)
paua shells, rocks, flourecent tubes.
Collection Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

I think its good that these shows provide some thought-provoking material rather than the postcard tourist variety. None more so (I think) than another local exhibition – Rachael Rakena’ 3D video work Haka Peepshow situated in Dunedin’s Octagon.

“Kaupapa:- Haka Peepshow is a celebration of the diversity of contemporary haka in Maori and broader New Zealand culture. In an era, when the haka is frequently a commercial branding device, this coin-operated peepshow invites viewers to take a fresh look at the haka and to consider it in the broader context of the sexualisation and commodification of Maori sportsmen and the representation of their masculinity and culture in the media.”

OK – it’s taken rugby to get all this art out there but I hope visitors and locals alike take something deeper away from it.

NOTE: Sadly, the Christchurch Art Gallery remains closed but their blog, ‘Bunker Notes’ is very active and always worth reading.

First was the show Zero to Infinity at the Hocken Collections celebrating Hotere’s 80th birthday and described as “highlights milestones and lesser known moments in the prodigious career of Ralph Hotere“. It was a mixed bag drawn from the Hocken’s and private collections. It included some great pieces and the selection showed some of the range of his work.

A week later we were in Invercargill and took our usual look round the Southland Museum and Art Gallery. Here they had Ralph Hotere Figurative Works: Carnival, Song Cycle and the Woman Series I’d only seen these works before in the book Desire of the Line . These drawings are worth seeing as it gives a whole different aspect to Hotere’s work. One similar drawing was in the show at the Hocken.

And lastly on Sunday during a snowy drive back to Dunedin we took refuge at the Eastern Southland Gallery in Gore. This small gallery always has stunning things on and we managed to see exhibitions by Andrew Ross and Don Binney as well as works from their substantial Hotere collection. I think if I had to pick, this was my favourite Hotere show of the three, but probably because it featured one of my favourite Hotere paintings, which I can’t find an image of, but it was a black RAIN banner (inspired by Hone Tuwhare’s great poem).

Hocken Gallery exhibition assistant Jay Hutchinson hangs the 1997 Hotere work Red/Black ready
Photo by Gerard O’Brien.

NOTE: I just heard that Hotere’s Black Phoenix will be on show at Wellington’s City Gallery soon as part of the Oceania show. SEE IT – I consider it one of NZ’s best artworks.

Edmond sets out to trace the route of Colin McCahon when in 1984 on a trip to Sydney 1984, he went missing in the palm grove in Sydney’s Botanic Gardens, and was found by police early next morning in Centennial Park, kilometres away. Framing the journey in part with the stations of the cross, Edmond explores not only the city but the nature of art, faith and loss. Personal experiences and stories intertwine with the McCahon narrative and tangents led on to diverse subjects such as Carmen Rupene, John Calvin and circus elephants. A certain sadness permeated the book, and to me it read as a kind of secular requiem for McCahon.

Yet again Auckland University Press has shown faith in it’s authors with this modest and yet courageous book. I loved it.

Dark Night: Walking with McCahon by Martin Edmond
July 2011,
ISBN 978 1 86940 483 3
Paperback, 208p,
$37.99

Pie Jesu

However today I received some slightly heartening news,  if trivial in comparison.

“In terms of subject matter, most of Clairmont’s major series are implied in this set of drawings: there are chairs, tabletops, doorways, windows, a fireplace; with the exception of his nudes and self portraits, these compromise his major preoccupations. It is not an exaggeration to say that Clairmont spent the rest of his life exploring implications and possibilities he discovered in the sitting room of 26 Hereford Street“

From “The Resurrection of Philip Clairmont” by Martin Edmond, (1999), Pg 130

I had the opportunity to enquire about the post-quake status of 26 Hereford Street and was sent this photo taken just this morning (thanks N.).

A brilliant example of work done in the front downstairs room and showing the bowed windows can be found here a typical scene for Clairmont done at night, illuminated by electric light.