Jollying things along

I have been thinking how dismal my blog has got. I bit like this actually. The stresses going on in my life and the wet and cold winter have seriously impacted on me here. What I find interesting is that in times of hardship the art has almost disappeared from my life. Theoretically I would have thought it would provide some escape, but actually the last thing I want to do is look at art, especially anything challenging. Right now a large proportion of it is just making me irritated. Thankfully others are writing great entertaining stuff.

However there are some things that have been worth seeing. Firstly, Scoop’s poem of the weekagain really hits home for me and a great followup to Diana Wichtel’s excellent Sam Hunt story in the latest Listener (great photos by Jane Ussher).

Talking of the Weather by Sam Hunt

Also as usual Wooster Collective makes my day. I loved this

Bruno Taylor “Play as you go”

And to cheer things along I appear actually to be able to GO OUT to something. Martin Edmond is reading in Wellington tomorrow night as part of a NZ “tour”. That is if his voice holds out. and if things go really well I will get to see Rita too.

Art for Food

I seem to have generated some interest by mentioning my proposed chutney for poetry exchange. Really I am only honouring a long tradition of trading art for food. I believe the bards and minstrels of old would exchange their epics, stories and songs for food and lodging and there are plenty of examples including more recent ones. Many down-on-their-luck artists (and I imagine poets and writers) have exchanged their art for a crust. This Venice Beach cafe showcases “art from numerous Venice artists such as Ed Ruscha, Dennis Hopper and Robert Graham (trading art for food is a Venice tradition)” and landscape painter Jim Mott did a whole 10,000 mile road trip (which he called the Itinerant Artist Project) by exchanging paintings for room and board.

Our Daily Bread by Elizabeth Harris-Nichols

Payment in kind makes a lot of sense to me and in Mexico “in 1957, painter David Alfaro Siqueiros proposed that artists in Mexico be allowed to pay taxes with their work. Half a century later, this idea has given rise to one of the world’s most important collections of contemporary art.” Mind you I guess you’d have to be earning enough to need to pay tax in the first place!

And here in New Zealand when the Mangamahu Possum painting was listed for sale on Trademe, there was discussion in the comments about a tradition of leaving artwork in payment for lodgings (although a bit of a stretch in that case I think). I am certain there are many examples.

Tuna Can - Dick Frizzell

This talk of exchange and barter might be a sign of things to come, you know with peak oil and all. In the meantime I am calculating how many jars of preserves I will need to swap for a modest McCahon. And I promise that this will be the last of domestica for a bit.

NOTE: I have removed Sam Hunt from my linky list because I heard him (or a good mimic) doing an ad for Cobb and Co. today on TV - though maybe he got paid in steak and beer?

Poetry Break

For ages I have been trying to track down a poem I remembered by Sam Hunt about Wellington. Initially I thought it would have been in “Big Weather: Poems of Wellington” but I think that book is a bit well mannered. So I have finally found it on my book shelf (!) in “Running Scared” (1982) which I’ve had for ever.

Wellington Farewell

1.
A proper old bitch, this town. Like,
when I was young I used to hike
four hundred miles south to be with her.
Because they were hers, I liked the people here.

Like that for years, happy together.
Guests would moan over the weather
just as they would the wind rain and sleet,
our drunken friends, our steep dizzy streets.

We laughed when they left, like we had the shakes
TV news would report Wellington quakes
7.5 on the Richter Scale.
I called up heaven once, demanding bail

2.
Then she one day turned sour on me. ‘Dont ever think
love lasts forever’ said my shrink
‘To survive’ he said, ‘you must learn to hate.
learn that, boy before it’s too late.’

Friends assure, her bite’s as bad as her bark.
I stalk her streets, Sundays take my son to the park.
A northerner is urging, come on home,
return to the north, leave the old bitch her bone.

And that’s where I am, resting half way between,
looking face-down over a stream
that moves under weed, like looking for cover.
What love must be like when it’s over.

Personally I think there is a lot of “a proper old bitch” about this town, but like a distant relative I will decline to name, I quite admire that.

And in the “interesting art” basket, Belgian artist Benjamin Verdonck brings his oversized nest to the Weena in Rotterdam.

Also I have FINALLY got around to watching the first episode of New Artland online, which was about Ronnie van Hout erecting a plaque outside his childhood home. It was terrific!

Showcasing…

three New Zealand artists. All very different and only ‘showcased’ here because I have links to all three – albeit somewhat tenuous ones.

Crispin Korschen

Crispin used to weed my garden for me. I guess it was a crummy job to support her burgeoning return to art and I was most likely not a good employer. I wish I’d bought some of her art then (around 2005), but circumstances didn’t allow. Her stuff then seemed to be a little darker than the more recent works, which I liked better.
 Click for larger image

Matt Hunt

Matt is the cousin of a friend in Palmerston North where I lived for a while. I first met him when we went to his flat to pick something up – I think he was moving. He is the only person I’ve ever met whose filing system was based around the seven deadly sins. We played touch rugby together for a while. That is until I decided they were all too serious and I’d never played ANY sport before, so I sucked at it. I saw some stuff of his I really liked at Pataka in the “It’s a Small World” exhibition (2003). As an aside, I have to mention Ronnie van Hout’s McCahon works in the same exhibition are really worth a look. Matt’s work is clever. Some of it I like, some is well… meh. This one I like.

A few years ago I saw a painting very similar to Matt’s at a gallery in Eastbourne (the Rona?) I have no idea who the artist was, so if anyone knows….

John Walsh

Well John is the husband of someone I studied with. I drank wine with friends in the studio once and lurked at their place drinking coffee on occasion. I loved their house, so FULL of artworks. I miss my friend now I’ve moved away. At the time I didn’t understand the materials John was painting on and liked his older, more conventional, portraits better. Then I went to the Parihaka exhibition and changed my mind.

Relevance - well its about art and my life right?