Mary Newton Gallery

Denys Watkins and Cultural Diplomacy

2010-10-02T12:22:00.001+13:00

Denys Watkin's latest work 'walks some words around'. It roughly traces the progress of recent travel - both real and imagined. There's signage from Mount Eden, text from New York, the world's tallest man, names of songs, and hand-lettering that harks back to his training at Wellington Polytech in the 1960s.

don't worry, be happy

2010-09-04T15:50:00.005+12:00

We talked to Brit Bunkley recently about his latest work in don't worry, be happy.

MNG: You often include animals in your work that are distorted by human interaction - the sheep with jets under its skin, the cow with the train roller-coasting through it.

BB: These animals are the life blood of the New Zealand export economy. They are also part of my personal environment. I have lived in rural New Zealand for the last 15 years. My studio is often surrounded by sheep and cattle including our pets and those belonging to the farmer who uses our land.

These magical realist interactions that you mention, are metaphors of apocalyptic fear. The jets and trains that move under the skin of animals are darkly humorous, uncanny events that fit within the art paradigm of Maurizio Catelan. (I believe that Catelan legitimized humor in art more than any other contemporary artist.)

Apocalyptic fear has been endemic for years in film, literature and art. The traditional myth of the Apocalypse is filled with typically poetic mythic events such as water turning to blood, persecutions by dragons, and encounters with a woman clothed with the sun, the moon, and the stars. There have been plenty of quite realistic apocalyptic scenarios in my lifetime from several near misses of all-out nuclear war to the increasing possibility of scorched earth global warming.

I am an optimist and believe that human creativity, humor and rational critical thinking can improve our future as long as it is acted upon. As Noam Chomsky says, we don’t know what lies in the future or if our actions can help, but we can chose optimism. Inaction and fear will only guarantee pessimism.

MNG: In this exhibition you have used a lot of satellite images as backgrounds. Superimposed over these are a giant (if you consider them in relation to the satellite backgrounds) bridge, a cow, and a cathedral. What's your thinking about this scale relationship? It makes me think of power relationships...

BB: All the works refers to power relationships; and yes this is one method of delivery. These particular works also refer to the strange formal relationship between the two-dimensional image of the satellite photographs, and the virtual three-dimensional computer objects that I find uncanny and irrational like a Zen Koan. The ability to approach photographic realism is cut short by the obvious incongruent scale shifts.

MNG: And what about the Simpons? Why use Homer's nuclear power plant?

BB: The simply drawn cartoon of the Simpsons is transformed into the real (as is its meaning) with virtual photographic technology. A satellite photograph of a snow strewn countryside is mapped onto the surface of the 3D model providing a unique lifeless landscape. The Simpsons are seen as a form of reality by many, and many now feel they get a better grasp of current events from satirical shows such as the Daily Show or The Colbert Report (mostly in the USA, but also shown here on TV) than mainstream media news.

MNG: The granite mushroom cloud is almost a monument to nuclear energy. This work seems to walk the fine line between sinister and the celebratory... like a creepy businessman?

BB: It is. An acceptance of that which scares us provides the ability to overcome the obstacle. Finding beauty in the terrible has been a tactic in many art forms from the blues to the genre of apocalyptic films such as Mad Max or The Road, to the surreal work by David Lynch where good and evil are interchangeable and fluid. Mushroom clouds have an ominous beauty - a “terrible beauty” of Yeats.

Granite, that most monumental of materials, can capture the moment in a benign way. In this case the slim shaft (supported by a steel rod) holds a piece of granite weighing almost 50 kilos. The mysterious force of gravity is seemingly suspended. In addition all granite contains trace elements of (mostly) harmless radioactive materials.

MNG: What about the relationship between tiling in the computer graphics sense, and tiling over a computer screen, hard drive and printer?

BB: Tiling is a method of placing photographic or graphic imagery over a 3D digital model to give the appearance of realism - “virtual reality”. In this instance I tried to reverse the process by tiling hyperrealist tiles over old computers who “print out” a virtual model of themselves. The title “Existence Precedes Essence”, the famous existential quote by Sartre is meant to be ironic. Computers are the very essence of essence.

Also in a sense it is the opposite of Rachel Whiteread’s method of filling space between and within an object - instead I enclose objects.

MNG: And the bricked in television?

BB: Yes this is the same as the tiles, though the brick is far more earthy – not shiny or “pretty”. Along with the computer, TV is the main vehicle for transmitting knowledge these days. Here it is rendered inert and ironic.

MNG: The gnomes are like the everyman. They were from another project right?

BB: The sculpture project, 'Primitive Accumulation' was a 1500 mm x 1500 mm x 1500 mm cube-like structure consisting of approximately 1500 garden gnomes. It began conceptually as a reaction to the abuse of cheap labour from China - as the old joke goes, “just wait until the communists take over!”

Ironically gnomes were banned in East Germany as symbols of the bourgeoisie. Gnomes now are associated with kitsch, not at all bourgeois... whatever that means. Communism has/had as much to do with social justice and socialisms as it did with democracy in those “socialist democratic republics”.

The title, Primitive Accumulation is derived from both the Marxist economic term “primitive accumulation” and economist Adam Smith’s term “original accumulation”. Both terms refer to the foundation of capitalism and "the accumulation of stock" as a precondition for the division of labour. With primitive accumulation “large swaths of the population are violently divorced from their traditional means of self-sufficiency” (Robert Gehl). Essentially the economy is kick started with the aid of dispossessed and desperate labourers who may (...or may not) create enough wealth for subsequent generations to enjoy.

But basically I thought it was just weird idea that would look interesting. When the temporary sculpture was destroyed I immediately thought of a method to try to reconstruct the ruins of the old work, and resin was the ideal material since it froze the materials in time as if drooped into a vehicle for suspended animation. Ten gnomes looked as if they were drowning. I have restructured materials since art school in the late seventies.

The Big Bang at Cook & Co

2010-08-04T17:31:00.002+12:00

Double happies, a fire at sea, an assassination of the queen... what is happening at Cook & Co?


Arson at Sea 2010

Cook & Co are in the process of rebranding. In preparation for her exhibition in Amsterdam next year, Octavia is 'exploding' what we know about Cook & Co. And in 2011 she'll be unveiling the reborn identity of her global jewellery company.

Octavia in the Cook Brand Combustible Torque 2010.
Photograph by Haru Sameshima.

Anarchy at Cook & Co

2010-07-24T15:36:00.003+12:00

There's Anarchy in Avondale and a mutiny on the high seas of Cook & Co as Octavia Cook looks back to the days before the establishment of Cook & Co. In these rebellious teenage years there was the Cook brand when notions of jewellery and value were tried out and thrown in the air - like these wigs in Wig Riot 2010 (pictured).

Beneath the Blue - Joanna Langford

2010-07-07T12:25:00.007+12:00

Just fresh from the NewDowse where she has installed a work for the exhibition Under Construction, Joanna Langford moved into our space for the weekend to hang and construct Beneath the Blue.

We talked to Jo about the work and possible new directions for her 'architecture of the fantastical'.

MNG: Someone said something interesting about your work recently in the context of your use of skewers. They said that traditionally that was how sculpture and spatial relationships were taught at art schools, using skewers to delineate space and as the basis for forms. Which makes your work as much as sculpture as it does about architecture... any thoughts on that?

JL: I think of my work as installation or sculpture or paintings in real space. In a way I think it's all quite similar - there is an interest in materials, form, space and illusion.

MNG: These latest wall works also seem to be about some kind of expanded painting or drawing, would you agree?

JL: I do a lot of photoshop drawings when I am working towards an installation. This allows me to play with the materials and motifs in virtual space. The wall works that I made for Beneath the Blue originated from these drawings. I had also painted a wall in my studio blue to create a ‘blue screen’ for an animation I am making (a blue screen of green screen is often used in film so you can film action in the foreground and add a back ground later). I started to adopt this screen for the background for my drawings.

MNG: With the floor works we are back in familiar Jo Langford territory, except that the view has shifted to Iceland or the Antarctic...

JL: Imagery of Iceland has been lurking in my consciousness since I did a residency there in 2008. I am interested in landscapes that exist in the real but that have a feeling of the fantastic. Iceland is one of these places. The expansive lava fields and smoky geothermal happenings in the snow-scape makes it feel otherworldly. There is also a sense of unease in this landscape that hints at the drama that is going on beneath us - a mass that is in flux, a gurgling and surging up.

MNG: In earlier work you have used liquorcie allsorts and wafers to build your constructions and in the Any Dream series you have used icing sugar. How do you connect confectionary and the landscape/urbanscape (the delicacy seems perfect)?

JL: I am primarily interested in the formal qualities of these materials - the color and texture.

From the stairway to the heavens - Joanna Langford

2010-07-03T15:37:00.012+12:00

Joanna Langford's Beneath the Blue series moves away from her 'stairways to heavens', and finds us up above the streets amongst the clouds in an urban skyline clutterd with aerials, and cell phone towers.

Delicate threads 'draw' silhouettes of masting lit by tiny LED lights that glow from their uppermost tips.

Tom Sladden's 'Sleepers'

2010-06-19T16:09:00.011+12:00

Duck! included six new paintings by Tom Sladden. The substrates on which all of the images in this exhibition are painted have a pre-history - sometimes marks from their former lives, sometimes holes from screws and protrusions.

Charger 2002-2010 above is a good example of Tom's interest in what isn't painted, what isn't said - and the holes and marks circle the blocks of colour adding to the atmosphere around them.

Study for everything I know 2009-2010 is a whimsical painting that hints and hides. It reminds me of good poetry - open-ended and suggestive but ultimately enjoyable because it doesn't tie down meaning or answer questions.

John Roy and the art of denial

2010-06-16T15:11:00.006+12:00

John Roy is one of the three artists in Duck! currently on at the gallery. John works in ceramics and his work stands out amongst peers working in the same medium. Primarily figurative, it sets up associations between us and the things that we create - like buildings, the rabbit problem, relationships, religion .

We recently talked to John about his work.

MNG: You originally wanted to call the exhibition "Head in the Sand" or something similar. Can you talk about the ideas that started this series off?

JR: It was keep your head down, I was also the one that came up with Duck! It is pretty much self-explanatory I feel, when you look at what is going on at the moment.

MNG: Lots of people have commented on the patterns in this new series of work. They seem like the patterns and colour of New Mexico. Were you looking at these?

JR: I haven’t heard that one before. They are more like an abstracted camouflage pattern breaking up the lines of the pared back forms. They have more in common with street maps or circuit boards.

MNG: Your works are always perforated in some way. Anything you want to say about that? I know sometimes it suggests architecture...

JR: The holes and cuts are like drawing with dark and light, in that a hole is the blackest black, and when viewed from another angle light come through. I also like the contradiction it creates as the forms look solid and heavy. Sometimes they are about architecture.

MNG: I'm also intrigued by the way you use the brick patterns. In this series it seems to cement the idea of head in the sand, ie. the figures are stuck. What would you say about that?

JR: It is all about the traditional associations of the terracotta clay in this country.

MNG: And then there is the large impressive work with it's head stuck up the arse of someone else. What's going on there...?

JR: I felt the need to make a large piece as I can make larger works. I felt that people in Wellington had only seen smaller pieces and assumed that that was all I did.

MNG: Your work seems to also be about an aesthetic of awkwardness. Would you agree?

JR: No I see it more as more of a transformation, turning something into something else. I also like being ambiguous. A object is more interesting if it is about more than one thing.

Stupid Stupid Stupid Stupid Stupid Daddy

2010-05-22T12:49:00.007+12:00

We talked to Scott Eady about his recent exhibition Stupid Stupid Stupid Stupid Stupid Daddy.

MNG: In the past your work has taken a humorous look at masculinity as it manifests locally. This new work seems to be about the anxieties of parenting, but there are some tongue-in-cheek references to 'child prodigies' and 'o my child could do that' attitudes to art. The humour of the small bronzes off-sets that very sad clown. What was your thinking there?

SE: Parenting has to be the toughest yet most rewarding job in the universe. But it comes with enormous responsibility – a responsibility that translates to a universal anxiety which I can only imagine all parents must experience. We want to protect our children from all dangers but realise the need to instil them with the skills and tools necessary to negotiate a not-always friendly world.

Apparently children laugh on average 300 times a day. Adults laugh on average only 15 times a day. Why is that? I guess for adults, it is RESPONSIBILITY and the knowledge that innocence is only short-lived.

Give a child a few blocks of ‘Dukit’ (bakeable modelling plastcine) and within minutes the baking tray will be full with playful, colourful forms. Give an adult the same material and they will likely over-think the process, the material and the expected outcome until the whole exercise becomes unproductive or silly.

The reference to ‘child prodigies’ is intentionally tongue-in-cheek. Yes ‘one’s child could do that’, they could make the ‘Dukit’ marquettes - they take only minutes. But to then employ the complicated and costly process of enlarging the marquettes, making silicone rubber moulds and finally casting in bronze and painting them, is just absurd, stupid even.

We are so accustomed to seeing the bronze uber-monument, so a tiny brightly painted bronze on a narrow plinth, a scaled-up figure by one of your three children - actually a whole series of painted bronzes - is quite another experience.

Why paint the bronzes? Why scale up children's marquettes? So many people seem to take offence at the idea of painted bronze. I don’t understand why. Traders of scrap metal value bronze quite differently to the art world even though many of the industrial scrap forms found at a yard could well have come from the same furnace used to produce a bronze sculpture.

Bronze is not a precious metal, yet to my children it represents treasure. They would often sift through the foundry sand in search of small bronze spills. We would polish the small pieces and they would trade them like gold at school.

The colour (paint) applied to the finished bronzes brought all the joy back to the forms. Unpainted, the sculptures were bronze forms first and foremost. They spoke of the material and it’s history. By painting the objects the material and the history remained but came second to form and colour. The glossy paint finish heightens the desire to touch and hold the objects at which point the weight also revealed the material.

The huge drawing also looked fantastic as bare aluminium, however the material once again dominated, diminishing the importance of the line. By powder coating the drawing black the line became all important and the aluminium all but disappeared. By scaling-up my children’s marquettes in bronze I was effectively monumentalising their work - making permanent things that would otherwise eventually disappear into the ether (trash).

MNG: You have written about wanting to give your children a positive experience of having an artist as a father? How did you do that in relation to this exhibition?

SE: It is really important to me that I spend loads of quality time with my family. Like most parents, this requires juggling work commitments and domestic duties in order to create that time. I want my children to remember me as a good family man. By including my children in the process of making the exhibition Stupid Stupid Stupid Stupid Stupid Daddy, we got to spend lots of time together and rather than my work be something foreign to them they took ownership of the forms, the ideas and even the titles.

MNG: Dubuffet and other Modernists were of course interested in the drawings of children, and you have mentioned Modernism in the context of the exhibition. What was your thinking there?

SE: Give a young child a pencil and paper and they will immediately produce marks/images. They do not hesitate. It was the freeing from intellectual concerns that affected Jean Dubuffet’s interest in ‘Outsider Art’ and art produced by children. He recognised in the work, an unlocking of the artists’ most basic creative instincts, a strategy he employed in the production of his own work which he chose to term “raw art”(Art Brut).

Personally I am not sure it is possible for an art-schooled adult, to free him/herself completely from intellectual concerns. I had great difficulty making and justifying the making of my own abstract clay forms as they were not honest. My children made them honest.

That said, I cannot help but be impressed by Urs Fischer’s recent hulking, lumpy cast aluminium sculptures which are simply scaled-up handfuls of squeezed clay. Despite their fully abstract forms the sculptures are still humanlike; in fact, they remind me a lot of the figurative bronzes produced by Willem de Kooning in the 1970’s. It seems it is difficult to escape the figure. Even my children found it necessary to give most the works human or animal related titles.

Lauren Lysaght and The House of Lentigo

2010-04-28T16:52:00.005+12:00

Lauren Lysaght is an artist who has found her time. For years her practice didn't seem to fit with the ideas of the times (the eighties and nineties). She made work that was sculptural (but not Sculpture) based around ideas about kitsch and craft, and low/high art amongst other things. Her work was really only shown by the risk-taking Dowse Art Museum of Lower Hutt.

But in today's contemporary art scene, her work fits perfectly with its interest in ideas and materials that amplify those ideas.

The House of Lentigo, her new exhibition which opened last night, is no exception. A series of Rococo-esque 'mirrors' contain an image of a leopard, the Leopard of Lentigo, or the Leopard of Our Old Age (not to be confused with the coogar!).

More soon.

French knitted Christianity

2010-03-23T16:57:00.007+13:00

We talked to Megan Hansen-Knarhoi recently about her latest work in Joyful, Sorrowful, Glorious.

MNG: What is the attraction of wool?

MHK: Wool, string, cotton and yarn are the materials that have a constant presence in my life. They’re the materials I’m most attracted to and enjoy working with. To me the question “What is the attraction of wool?” is difficult to answer. It would be like asking a painter “What is the attraction of paint for you?”

There is such a great variety of textures, structures and colours and they are wonderful sculptural materials. Like Christianity, the materials I use are omnipresent. Everywhere you look you will see something made with wool, string, cotton or yarn. (At the same time everywhere you look you will see something painted).

MNG: You have always crotcheted works sculpturally. How do you decide on what?

MHK: Crochet is a method of manipulating my raw materials. I continue to investigate various methods of sculpting, drawing and painting, using crochet, knitting, French knitting, stitching, knotting and starching.

I tend to think and visualise in three dimensions, so sculpture is perfect for the manifestation for my ideas.

MNG: Much of your work takes a side-ways look at Christianity - sideways but not necessarily irreverent. Want to say anything about that?

MHK: Christianity has an imperious presence throughout our national culture, society, speech and psyche. Churches and Christian iconography seem omnipresent. People consciously or unconsciously refer to god in their everyday speech, “Oh my God”, “Jesus”, “Jesus Christ” being common expletives or exclamations used to express a range of emotions including anger, surprise, disbelief, amazement, sexual excitement, sadness, enthusiasm and so on.

Christianity and Christians have made irreparable alterations to a plethora of indigenous cultures, and confused millions around issues of sex and sexuality.

On the flip-side, Christianity brings comfort to and makes sense of the world for a huge amount of people. So as confusing as I find it to worship a male god, I understand the benefits this has for many. I think my work successfully addresses satire, critique and celebration.

MNG: You talk about being compulsive obsessive - and JSG is definitely that - but there is also a sense of the meditiativeness of making that is reflected in the subject matter, especially the rosary beads. Somehow this almost aligns with 'praying', or contemplation?

MHK: I think most repetitive labour intensive activities have some sort of meditative quality. It can be a time to relax, de-stress, and centre. That’s what religion does for people too. Performing a task repeatedly brings a sense of calm to a cacophonous world.

Joyful Sorrowful Glorous

2010-03-17T12:29:00.005+13:00

Megan Hansen-Knarhoi's latest work takes a sideways look at the imagery and texts of Christianity - think flock, righteous, sorrowful, and glorious. While you might suspect that this could take an irreverent turn, the works are subtle in their subversiveness.

Take Joyful Sorrowful Glorious pictured above, an installation of 50 knotted French knitted rosary beads, each one lightly shaded like different batches of linen. It's austere and monastic yet of course made from wool it's also soft, and the crucifixes tangling from each set of beads, strangely figurative.

Making "Dark Matter Blue Noise"

2010-02-13T13:25:00.005+13:00

Sandra Schmidt's quiet assemblages in Dark Matter Blue Noise vibrate and count. They recall vibrations and musical notation, and sounds echoed while the universe was creating itself.

But there's also architecture and a feeling for transcribed music and archives of images...

Convulsive Beauty

2009-12-16T10:48:00.009+13:00

We recently talked to Andrea du Chatenier about her latest exhibition at the gallery, Earthseed.

MNG: Earthseed seems like a ground-breaking exhibition for you. It brings together a number of your interests in a really gritty way. For instance the nature/culture paradigm, most of the larger works in the exhibition express some conflict with this. How do you see it appearing in the show?

AdC: For a long time I have been interested in how we use models from nature to confirm our humanness - be it in the form of morality parables such as Aesop’s tales or in primate research such as that undertaken by Jane Goodall.

Seeking an understanding of our humanness through comparisons to the natural world can be a problem when our perception of nature is either fetishised and overly romanticized, or we seek to answer questions that are in large part cultural – such as what it is to be a citizen, to be a family, or to be female.

At the same time we must also recognize that we are natural organisms. In our Western tradition of thought, we have coded women as Nature and men as Culture, paired nature with the authentic and culture with the fake.

In Earthseed I have tried to mix these codings up. Daffnie (above) still refers to the Greek image of a woman turned into a tree but she is more Top Model culture than she is passive nature in her unnatural posing and nylon frock.

The Crushed Petal series (above) was a direct response to a recent comment on National Radio describing young men as genetically coded for violence. It interested me that this was now a common assertion when not so long ago we would have used a socio/political/economic rationale.

Ideas associated with the nature/culture paradigm are often used in conjunction with the politics of difference. I find them useful for discussing gender but I am equally interested in the politics of the human/animal divide.

Brown Bird (above) where the woman is on her back and hosting a group of small birds could be interpreted as a nest affirming biological function, or it could be read as a reversal of the human animal hierarchy.

MNG: You mentioned you had been looking at Surrealism. What interested you about that?

AdC: Recently I was in Germany, and I saw a show of Surrealist art from the Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch collection. The work was very gutsy and had none of the tweeness we often associate with Surrealism.

The works were dark and brooding, and when seen in the context of Berlin seemed highly political. The work combined a beauty and ugliness to create what was referred to by Surrealists as a “convulsive beauty”. I was interested in replicating this unease in Earthseed.

MNG: Your work often explores - as a subtext rather than overtly - notions of femininity and gender. In this exhibition the female figures actively resist stereotyping, they are hairy or flocked or lactating or bald where as the male figures are damaged as if they've been in a bad car accident or a fight. What was your thinking around this?

AdC:Having watched the art world for so many years it’s very clearly a male dominated arena. I have always wondered to what extent this is due to culture and what extent to nature. I don’t think there is a clear answer but I have always resented the gender disparity.

I think this is why I have a tendency to make my male figures vulnerable in some way: damaged, stupid or gormless. This is just another way of undoing stereotypical representations of men. After all, gender stereotypes have been as problematic for men as they have for women.

Subverting or amplifying these stereotypes are just another way of questioning the stability of what we have come to know as correct or Natural.

European Primitive with Jimmy Choo (above) is an African fertility symbol - an overt representation of female as Nature – pregnant belly, large breasts and even a piglet on her head, but she is dressed in Jimmy Choo shoes.

She is a modern day representation of femininity: flocked and hairy all over, and teetering in her fabulous shoes.

MNG: The works are all made from Polystyrene, which is quite the material of the moment. Peter Robinson's work for the Walters Prize was Polystyrene and it's generally been cropping up as a material of interest to artists. Why did you decide to use it?

AdC: I started using Polystyrene as a material when I found a few huge slabs washed up on the beach after a storm. It’s a dreadful material, toxic and inert but I can’t help but love it. It’s cheap and yet it lasts forever. It can be carved and painted. It’s brittle but tough.

Coming from a sculptural background I can’t help but enjoy the irony of approaching the material as you would marble - you select your block, draw it out and then carve into it. The way I use the Polystyrene is closer to polychrome sculpture - painted wooden sculpture often used as altarpieces.

I can understand why it’s popular. It’s a kind of miracle material of our age; it does everything from building houses to holding water and it’s very easy to get hold of. Unfortunately it’s not biodegradable which means my sculptures will be around forever.

Working with polystyrene has been useful in my work as a means of adding a “not-of-nature-ness” to the work. The concept of woman as Nature, seen in classical images such as Daphne, is nicely undone when constructed in a “human-made” material.

MNG: Do you want to say something about contemporary sculpture and where you see your work fitting?

AdC: In a recent edition of The Reading Room, Natasha Conland coined the term Transcendental Pop to describe a current interest in art that alluded to a type of visual mysticism, be it cynical or otherwise. I think my work fits nicely under this heading along with artists such as David Altmejd and Francis Upritchard.

There is also the problem of sculptural figuration which I find an interesting challenge. It’s really hard to carve out new territory when you are making figures and not be too corny. I really like the work of some one like Rebecca Warren who is using quite traditional materials and methods to create something new.

MNG: Earthseed is a great title. What's the reference there?

AdC: The title comes from an Octavia Butler science-fiction novel that tells the story of Olamina. Living in a dystopian world Olamina suffers from what is defined as hyper-empathy, a disease which causes her to share pain with all other living creatures.

I like the way good science-fiction uses an in depth understanding of contemporary life to construct fictional worlds.

MNG: The exhibition also demonstrates your skill with materials. There's taxidermy which you did yourself, the carved polystyrene, the mirror stand etc. And the exhibition is a clear move away from wool just when it looked like you might settle there awhile. What was your thinking about this?

AdC: Materials present themselves and I use them. They all say something about the site in which I live and work; in a big city you wouldn’t find the same range of dead birds on a single walk around the block!

When I lived in Auckland I scavenged materials from industrial sites and when I moved to Whanganui I shifted to op shops and garage sales. This was how I came to use wool and make carpets and felts. Wool is a wonderful material to use but I was looking for away to extend my sculptural interests in figuration. I made felt figures but I found it difficult to convey more than a certain kind of ironic humor.

Low Lifes and the Child-Jarvis connection

2009-11-25T16:00:00.007+13:00

Madeleine Child and Philip Jarvis are two artists whose primary medium is ceramics. They are also a couple who have worked together consistently since their days at art school in Camden, London.

In November 2009 they controversially won the Portage Ceramic Award with work that wasn't completely ceramic - it included foam and rubber, wire and paint. Their latest exhibition, Lower Life Forms, carries on this new stream of work and its interest in materials.

When Philip was in Wellington installing Lower Life Forms he talked about the naturalness of using the packing materials for ceramics - the foam blocks and layers - as material for the work, and the way the two materials seem to have an existing affinity.

Lower Life Forms is full of colour and texture. The wall works, the Vegetable Sheep (above), layer up ceramics in the manner of the plant after which they are named and inspired. And the Doodads and Doodahs (below) recreate a kind of rockpool with the shapes and colours of coral.

Click here to read Mark Amery's review of the exhibition.

Random Dictates and the art of the backyard

2009-11-18T12:33:00.005+13:00

Andy Irving's recent show at the gallery Random Dictates subtly rearranged the gallery space. One of the works acted as a space divider cutting the space in half.

It hinted at something we couldn't quite put our finger on. When he came in last week he described the exhibition as a backyard installation - art from the backyard, with interior touches too.

In fact he recreated the aesthetic of the home-handy person complete with saw horse, fencing, debris, as well home renovations gone wrong - the air bubbles that blew out the wall, and the painting that seems about to fall off...

There's the impression of an industrial aesthetic at work but hand-done.

Sam Mitchell's Secrets

2009-10-10T14:07:00.008+13:00

We asked Sam Mitchell this week about her work in Rulers. She talked about her favourite painting subjects and other topics...

MNG: In your new series of work in Rulers you have a mixture of contemporary and historic subject matter. How do you choose your subjects? What interests you about particular subjects?

SM: The choice of subject matter for my works comes from spending hours in libraries and secondhand bookstores, finding images that stick in my mind. The image of Abe Lincoln for example, his face in most photographs is unsettling and graphically interesting, with all his creases, and a splattering of facial hair. He is unusual looking unkempt, bedraggled and disheveled.

The images selected tie in with reoccurring themes in my works - my interest in 'place of origin', being separated from a sense of place, and the idea of an internal narrative.

MNG: Often you make similar images of your subjects, but load them with different "tatoos"? What's your thinking there?

SM: By using tattoos in my work (historically used by tribal nations as identification of place, tribe, family - a skin record/passport of who you were) I create falsehoods mixed in with little bits of truths. Personal, cultural, and historical details provided by the tatoos create the internal narrative of my chosen subject and leave the viewer with a mixed history of a real person.

MNG: Everyone marvels at the skill of the arcylic on perspex works (example pictured above) - of working from back-to-front? What do you like about this technique and media?

SM: The technique of reverse painting is not a new one (Warwick Brown told me so). I enjoy the finished plastic result - you don't actually see what you are painting on to the perspex until you turn it over. So it is not instant like usual ways of painting. The first marks are the last marks - they are not the building up of layers as with a traditional oil painting. My process is more like printmaking - the use of line then the after thought of colour and tone to describe the form.

MNG: Can you say something about your collaboration with Gavin Hurley? (See images in previous post below).

SM: This is a very easy process....Gavin provides me with a collage and I have the freedom usually unedited to add to it.

We work so differently, Gavin is tidy and organised, and his work reflects this sense of order. So I am honored to be able to disrupt the order and add some twisted sense of chaos to his so perfectly cut and neat collages.

Our collaborations I think work really well. The collage is complete in as far as Gavin is concerned when he hands it over to me. He never really knows what the original work will come back looking like, and I have no preconceived idea of what I will add to the work. So it really is a surprise to us both when the collaborative work is revealed.

Rulers

2009-09-22T14:45:00.005+12:00

Sam Mitchell and Gavin Hurley are currently showing at the gallery in their exhibition Rulers. Sam and Gavin were at art school together and have continued their association with some collaborative works (pictured: Nobody 2009 top, JFK Junior 2009 bottom).

History Painting

2009-09-15T15:18:00.003+12:00

Victor Berezovsky's paintings bear the marks of undercutting, carving, underpainting, and chiselling. The artist as archeologist digs into their surfaces to uncover their hidden layers, and create organic histories.

The surface of the paintings record this process and also respond to it.

Victor Berezovsky's "Splinter"

2009-09-01T15:31:00.009+12:00

Mary Newton Gallery recently talked to Victor Berezovsky about his latest work in Splinter. The exhibition comprises nine paintings on marine hoop pine that are painted, carved into, chiselled, cut, and drilled.

MNG: Your work used to be quite figurative but has slowly become more abstract. What interests you about abstraction?

VB: Yes it’s true that on the face of it my work has become more “abstract”. However I would say that my position has always been one of abstracting rather than heading towards the abstract. For me the term abstract is an absolute and near impossible position.

Ilam taught in a modernist tradition. Therefore underpinning all of my work are formal and plastic considerations. However in relationship to this are ‘figurative’ possibilities or dialogues. Over the years I have processed and abstracted from life. This process of drawing in and out has been cyclic.

These days the way I draw in new information has become more subtle and vague. Currently I need less concrete stimulus for the works to develop. In this sense the works are more abstract. Also I think it is easier for viewers of my current work to place the work as abstract as it definitely overlaps with visual language previously used or assigned to abstraction.

I would hope however that viewers review my current work in light of what has gone before it. It is the ability of this current work to echo and resonate with this past that interests me.

MNG: Your previous series, Dacha, incorporated drilled holes in patterns and added playful elements to the surface. This new work has a lot of cutting, drilling, chiselling and general attacking of the surfaces. The chiselling and chipping away of the wood lends texture as well as a painterly aspect to the process - is this your intent or what was your intention?

VB: When I first started the wood paintings for Dacha I initially set out to respond to the grain of the wood as it was pretty beautiful. The marks also reminded me of my visceral stained sheet works done in 2000. However I quickly found the results to be contrived and constraining in developing forms.

By chance a solution was brought about by finding a box of wooden peg board toys. I spend a period of time drawing on these objects and then set about drilling up the unresolved wood stretchers in a similar fashion. They immediately set up a modernist framework against the organic markings.

I liked the idea of subverting this framework by sticking wooden pegs into it or by painting the surface. In this sense the holes became architectural anchor points from which I set about contradicting or reinforcing. Importantly the holes also gave me a tool to refresh the surface when it became too skin-like or rigid due to using acrylic paint.

In a similar fashion the cuts of the new work have partially being used as a tool to refresh the surface. Sometimes I would erase what was there and sometimes it was used to make form directly. A similar approach was used in my “Marked” series in 2003. The use of cutting or scoring was employed at different times in the history of the work. The marks became imbedded into the surface and often these marks or colours were dug out or raised to the surface latter depending on what the works needed. A friend aptly used the word “accrued” to describe how forms are made in my works. I think this is a very good word to summarize the Splinter works.

MNG: Can you say something about the imagery? It's quite hard-edged but dissolves and becomes more organic in places?

VB: As some of the titles of the works suggest, the works contain or trace a level of struggle in achieving their shape. At times I found myself lost and then suddenly a single decision brought a clear and definite surge to a conclusion. What is it that determines this final point? I would say that is no one thing determined it. Rather it was the embodiment of all the working that had gone into making the history of the work.

History is often related by certain key images or symbols. These images sit at the surface of the event though their making is often underscored by the smaller events that have unfolded beneath its surface. I suppose I wanted my work to contain this meshing and rupturing of surface and show what lay beneath it.

In terms of the shapes that make up or comprise my work I would say they are a synthesis or echoing of prior forms - that is, the more organic Grotto series and the more structural Bobble series.

MNG: And the palate? What was your thinking behind the choice of colours, this exploration of greys?

VB: I usually work in high key colours when starting a work. However in the end I slowly introduced greys to subdue the palate and isolate areas of colour. I suppose in some ways the grey conveys a slightly industrial feel to the work which in turn is reinforced by the more structural forms and holes.

When I started this series I was reading about how the gulag system in the Soviet Union was used to mine regions. At some point I introduced gold and silver in response. I liked the idea of embedding these precious metals into the layers of the work and then at some point striping them back.

The scale of the problem

2009-08-12T16:26:00.007+12:00

Gina Matchitt's large scale fast food-shaped works in Sweet'n'Sour hint at issues. She is currently living in America where super-size is the norm for everything including the people. And of course it is impossible to walk the streets of New Zealand without seeing the impact of fast-food here, to say nothing of the health problems caused by diabetes etc etc.

The two works pictured above, Large Fries and Pipi and Marinara, feature images of fresh food and the Maori boil-up, and shell fish and pasta respectively.

Gina residency last year at Centre d’Art Marnay just outside of Paris focused on food culture. She considered the relationship that cultures (in this case French) that retain their lands have with their food culture, comparing this to the Maori experience. She found that even fast food in France is reasonably high quality.

In Happy Meal pictured below, Gina weaves together these two food cultures into the shape of a Happy Meal container. The imagery of kumara blends with a vegetable dish in half the work, and a boil-up with cherries in the other half. The boil-up and kumara become fragmented by the weaving but the cherries and vegetables hold their own.

But then I have been sitting opposite the work for the past month considering its meaning, and dreaming of summer fruits... food imagery is potent overall.

Dying for a feed

2009-08-01T12:48:00.007+12:00

Gina Matchitt's latest exhibition at the gallery Sweet'n'Sour includes some of her trademark techniques - componentry arranged in traditional Maori patterns - but also branches off in new directions.

Works like Fries Template and Cheese Royale take the shape of flattened fast food packages. Fries Template (pictured above) weaves together pasta labels and images of cherries, shell fish, and Maori potatoes using a template for a fries package as its title suggests.

It brings together these ingredients in a metaphor for cooking itself. But the overall impression is of a shroud - a reminder of the double-edged sword that eating has become.

Cheese Royale on the other hand (pictured below) engages with magazine food imagery. There's fancy French cheeses and salami and terrines woven together with images of the boil-up - not often seen in Vogue entertaining.

Sealed in a bell jar

2009-07-11T15:15:00.009+12:00

Areta Wilkinson's Poi Girl series features silhouettes of the artist - notionally brooches - presented in bell jars. Poi Girl VIII (pictured above) sees Areta in profile tending a campfire. The metaphor of the campfire has appeared in a number of works, and her latest exhibition Waka Huia features the one pictured below as a brooch.

Called Areta's ahi kaa this work references the Maori metaphor of ahi kaa or keeping the home fires burning, the cultural fires fed, and the ancestral lands cared for.

Poi Girl VIII see Areta's literally tending the ahi kaa - maintaining and acknowledging her Ngai Tahu ancestry, but also her artistic heritage as a jeweller.

"I am telling you the things of old and smoking while I talk"

2009-07-08T11:40:00.007+12:00

Included in Waka Huia is this cameo brooch work that features the head of Teone Taare Tikao (1850-1927), Areta Wilkinson's grandmother's granfather.

Around 1920 Herries Beattie interviewed Tikao about local knowledge and published the stories in "Tikao Talks: Treasures from the ancient world of the Maori" in 1939. From this we know that Tikao was taught that the world is round like a plate - flat and thick, and that the ancient songs say that the world is circular rimmed by sand, and outside and beyond this is space.

Areta explains "Poua Tikao may have understood the world as flat but by no means two dimensional - it was flat and thick and full. His world understood walking and talking flora and fauna, red sky portents, recited ancient whakapapa and karakia, interpreted dreams, understood seasons and preparations for survival, and politically advocated for Maori rangatiratanga.

He worked with poeople like Temaiharoa to prepare the world for modern Moari so his great great grandchildren could dwell in peace and security. How can I put my Poua's silhouette on a plate you ask? You may see a plate but I see a world."

Areta Wilkinson and the Contemporary Waka Huia

2009-06-24T15:41:00.007+12:00

Areta Wilkinson is known for her exquisitely crafted jewellery. More recently she has blown out notions of jewellery as something wearable. Still under the guise of jewellery, the works have become the emblems of her own story as well as a wider narrative about contemporary Maori.

Her exhibition Waka Huia includes a gorgeous piece of colonial cabinetry - pictured above - and this acts as a contemporary (ironically) waka huia (treasure chest) and a display case. Inside are her collected stories emblemised as objects - the cowboy hat, the moa catcher, the wedding ring to name a few examples.

Interventions at Freyberg Pool

2009-05-30T15:59:00.008+12:00

Victor Berezovsky's Portal intervention can now be seen on the facade of the Freyberg Pool in Wellington (pictured above). And what a journey to get it there!

Portal draws on the simplicity of the building’s design. It takes a key design element – the portal windows in the façade – and reactivates them to ensure the viewer reconsiders this aspect of the building’s design.

Portal is a temporary installation intended to complement and highlight the lines of the Freyberg building design - still fresh in the twenty-first century. But it also draws attention to the many signs, renovations and commercial add-ons that have marred its facade for some years.

Lonnie Hutchinson in silhouette

2009-05-30T15:36:00.007+12:00

Lonnie Hutchinson's Can you see what I see opened this week at the gallery. The show get its title from one of the show's key works (pictured above with visiting celeb, Carmen).

The work, made from 20mm thick acrylic, seems to cross over into some new ground. We recognise Lonnie's language - the black and white, the silhouette - but here it's has become a screen reminiscent of Islamic architecture. It's a framed view into or out of a window that obscures and reveals...

... and Carmen was the perfect person to show this off.

Gary Freemantle and mud

2009-05-16T12:34:00.005+12:00

Gary's new show Mud Monster literally uses mud as its primary medium. Gary started experimenting with mud in 2003 when it turned up on his doorstep after a flood in the town where he lived.

He started with landscapes (see below) but this new work deals with the figure, and includes a series of portraits that seems to disintegrate or fade out of the picture right before your eyes.

Looking for health

2009-04-22T12:50:00.009+12:00

A visitor to the gallery over the weekend reminded me that Megan Campbell's latest work explores human notions of imperfection. Her paintings are full of figures looking for health - physical and mental - and ideas that will make them 'happy'.

In some paintings they look in places where nothing satisfactory is to be found - the past, the bottle - and in others parks, gardens, and domestic settings provide 'comfort'.

Nature and the natural world are important characters and backdrops in this nebulous search.

Megan Campbell and the art of breathing deeply

2009-04-15T11:19:00.007+12:00

Megan Campbell's exhibition Health & Religion includes some intriguing images associated with obsolete health practices. The woman above is using a fifties asthma inhaler, but who knows what the men in black are up to...

Art - as in photography

2009-03-31T16:19:00.016+13:00

Bruce Connew has made his name in New Zealand as a documentary photographer with socio-political interests. His new work shifts away from this arena to a more ambiguous, less factual proposition. We asked Bruce about this shift.

MNG: You're well known as a certain type of photographer. But your latest work in the exhibitions I Saw You (see image from this series above) and I Must Behave examine image- making and photography as well as presenting a 'subject'. What has prompted this new work?

BC: I've always seen myself, in rare and brief moments of clarity, as a social/political realist documentary photographer... this new work, I Must Behave, is no different, it has merely grown out of what has come before. I Saw You uses a different technique it might be argued, to what I've previously indulged in certainly, but it is about surveillance, and that's social/political. I Must Behave is about behaviour and social control, although I must accept not obviously so, but again it is social/political. The technique applied is much the same as I've ever used, although I made a conscious decision half-way through 2007 to have my 35mm frame vertical as much as possible when I photographed, and with a prime lens slightly wider than my perennially regular, normal lens. As well, I made a point often not to look through the viewfinder at what I was choosing to photograph. I have used these techniques before with other projects, but not with the same dedication of purpose as I did with the latter part of collecting imagery for I Must Behave.

What has prompted this shift in approach? A desire to come in at subject that correspond with my lines of thought and concerns, at a somewhat different trajectory. Why? I must admit, I haven't spent much time thinking about it. I can resurrect particular moments: for example, I became aware near the end of seven years photographing Indian-Fijian sugar cane cutters for Stopover, periodically living closely with them, that I was beginning to consider moving my ideas into new territory, but was unsure just how that vague impulse might proceed. I Saw You overlapped the tail end of Stopover, and while the approach changed dramatically, it remained a microcosmic look at the broad notion of surveillance, an approach not uncommon in my previous work. Stopover, for instance, while focusing on Indian-Fijian sugar cane cutters, a tiny slice of humanity, is about migration - the hypotheosis that we're forever migrants, only sometimes we're in a position of stopover. Beyond the pale is my whimsical conviction that underground coal miners could represent the nature, not only of the New Zealand personality, but also of a much wider humanity. In the way it was photographed, and then put together as a body of work, it offered threads common across borders: comradeship, hard work, shared danger, intimacy, sexuality, aloneness, loneliness and others. Mostly, thus far, it seems only to have been considered as a body of work representing underground coal miners.

So, I produce work in a realist documentary manner that can be read first, if you like, for its literal, narrative line ... of course, there are always, always, always further layers, sub-texts within individual images, within sequences of images in a body of work, and within a series as a whole. I have never seen it as my responsibility to spell those out. I can discuss process and idea, but meaning, while I have mine, must be in the mind of the viewer.

MNG: Visitors to the exhibition have tried to relate the title to the works quite literally... but it's not a literal relationship, right? As your byline says, it's a sideways glance at behaviour. Anything you want to say about that?

Yes, I'm aware of that. Anyone who sees the work, without exception, has asked at least once about where a particular image was taken. I'm happy to explain, but it isn't a clue to the image and its meanings, or indeed a clue to the work as a whole, which is why there is no captioning information whatsoever in the book.

You know, at a late stage in the book's production, while it was at the printers, I weakened for a moment and considered including an explanatory line or two ... fortunately, a good friend, when it was put before him for a speedy response, said the following:

"I don't think you need this piece of text? Or rather, what it says does not seem to me to cover the broad effect of your project, which for me rests on doubt, uncertainty, taboos, proscribed or hidden practices, a hint of menace and of apocalypse either now or just averted or soon to come - and which gives the viewer a certain not wholly pleasant frisson as to what 'human nature' might really involve - by comparison with which the sentence you offer seems a bit too literal and limiting, prosaic even?"

That cleared the thought pretty quickly!

With I Must Behave, I have done away with a literal, narrative layer (beyond a layered title, and, in the book, a layered sub-title too), which may perplex some viewers given the history of my work, but to perplex is not my goal. It's just that this work, rather than a microcosmic approach, has been collected from 10 different countries over three years, a broad physical sweep attached to the broad concept of behaviour and control, something of a monumental topic, and, of course, one that resists a single definition. As well, I'm conscious to eschew moral judgement, or, for that matter, use the work to coach, rather it is a tone, a feel, even an inkling that I hope viewers stroll away with. Behaviour and control has been dealt with in many different ways ... this is mine.

MNG: Do you imagine that you will continue to do projects like Stopover?

While I wait for I Must Behave to arrive from its fabulous Italian printers, I'm working through ideas for the next project, and while a clear picture is yet to emerge, I figure it will not be like Stopover, in a way that nothing before was like Stopover.

I approach the process for each project with an open mind, although that may only now be evident as the differences in process from earlier work are more sharply defined.

As well, I Saw You and I Must Behave are the first two in a series of three projects each exploring a particular social/political theme, so I expect the third to run it's own path, much as the first two.

The Censored 2008 triptych, another recent tangent, developed as I collected work in China for I Must Behave .. I enjoy the overlap of ideas and processes, and, I must say, I'm gratified when the likes of lofty, literary magazine Granta see sufficient value in the work to publish it. (Granta, Spring 2009, issue #105, Lost and Found)

MNG: Mark Amery suggests in his review of I Must Behave that you were subverting your own photographic practice. I wasn't sure I agreed, but perhaps you were?

BC: Certainly, my motivation for I Must Behave, and I Saw You, did not begin with an art notion to subvert my earlier work. My photographic practice continues to grow, perhaps with an occasional, kooky outgrowth. When I retrace my steps to end up at my abbreviated, formal art education period, before my first social/political documentary project in 1976 (on a disheveled Aboriginal community in north-west Australia, the fall-out from 1967, when Aborigines were made Australian citizens, and, incredibly, first gained the right to vote), if ever there was a foggy effort to undermine myself, it was probably then with my deduction that I shouldn't be anything other than a photojournalist. I was aware I wanted to work towards social/political documentary, but considered this single option, which, as I look at it now, was an unlikely fit ... I had years of difficulty with magazines and photo agencies. I had my agenda and they had theirs, and our infrequent, although sometimes lengthy, alliances were a blinding headache to all who were implicated. It took me years to work that one out. I was never a photojournalist, but I tried very hard to be one because I imagined that was my destiny. I didn't even look like one! So, I suppose, early on, I undermined my own instincts. Now, I'm right on track.

Art memories

2009-03-24T16:54:00.007+13:00

Gordon Crook and I were photographing the work above in his garden recently in preparation for his exhibition Smoke. Afterwards he wrote to say he had remembered where the image 'came' from:

"Due to the enormous amount of research reading I did on previous shows, I wanted to pitch in straightaway and work spontaneously, ignoring the chore of research. I bought sketchbooks and let the images flow. So appeared the odd drawing of 'a man smoking a pipe' (above) though there was no pipe to be seen, and was that actually smoke issuing from his mouth? The drawing fascinating me, and I decided to concentrate on this compelling puzzle. It soon reminded me of an uncle I sometimes visited. He was shell-shocked during the Great War and lived with my grandfather and other uncles and Aunt Mabel. I would sit at the tea table with Mother and the others. Shell-shocked Ben (see painting below) would take a plug of navy tobacco from his pocket and pare shavings of it with a penknife into his pipe. After a few well-focused puffs a plume of foul-smelling smoke would hit the blackened ceiling. His face a picture of contentment.

I wanted to use this theme of smoke and smoking. But to bby-pass the cultural history - its film star charm and the ad fads of the thirties, the settlers introducing this terrible addiction to Maori, and so on. However I was no nearer to solving the mystery of that corkscrew emanation- what it might mean. In a sudden flash I recalled a small tapestry I had woven that was hung in the library at Victoria University. A similar head ans similar emanation. I did not know then what it was - but now I do - it is the 'breath of life'.

The form of the head - the why if it - eluded me. I made a Marquette of it for a garden sculpture thinking it could be enlarged like a stone mason's graveyard angel or to my aspiration of a Rodin bronze... Mary-Jane was taking photos of it when the sun shone straight through his nostril. Ureaka! It was Sunny Jim. Rag doll mascot of the cereal called FORCE given to me for breakfast when I was a child. I saved the packet tops and sent them away and back came Sunny Jim. He has rested unbeknown to me in my mind ever since - long ago wandering along with another Sunny Jim I acquired when I was thirty-six.

He was part of me associated with my uncle Cecil Aldin from whom, said my mother, I had inherited my artistic talent... He made toys for Liberty's with my father, and painted popular 'horse and hounds' pictures for many a country pub, the huntsmen in the red jacket like Sunny Jim.

High o'er the fence leaps Sunny Jim
Force is the food that raises him.

Whatever you say, wherever you've been
You can't beat the cereal, that raised Sunny Jim."

Photography is the new painting

2009-02-28T15:51:00.009+13:00

A client visited the gallery recently to look at I Must Behave by Bruce Connew. She surprised me with a question about the validity of photography as an art form... "It is so reproducible." I was stunned - I didn't have a comeback. But what I should have said was "Everything is reproducible in the 21st century, but that certainly doesn't preclude the creation of great images in any media." And of course we all take photographs, but the real skill, the art, is in the production of the image as object - the texture, the quality of the image on the paper. This is the acid test - the translation from the screen to the wall.

And of course photography has its own tricks and knowledge and accidents and wonder that distinguish it from other media without detracting from its appeal. It can reference painting, it can reference its own traditions and practitioners - like any art form it does wherever it wants. I mean look at the image above by Bruce Connew. Gorgeous.

Behaving

2009-02-14T15:41:00.003+13:00

Bruce Connew's exhibition I Must Behave includes 14 framed photographs. The I Must Behave series is made up of 90 images. Featured here are two images from the series not included in the exhibition.

I Must Behave takes a sideways look at behaviour. It examines the notion that wherever we are, we are controlled by social, cultural, and political forces.

Censored

2009-02-07T14:00:00.006+13:00

Bruce Connew's new exhibition I Must Behave includes his work Censored, recently a finalist in the Waikato Art Awards. Censored is undoubtedly a major work by one of New Zealand's foremost photographers. It will also be published in the May issue of Granta.

Here's what Bruce says about it:
"While in Zhongshan, China, during May 2008, I bought a copy of National Geographic magazine's May 2008, pre-Olympic Games, special issue on China. The magazine was plastic sealed. I cut it open back at my hotel. I removed the plastic, and leisurely thumbed my way through the fresh magazine, reaching page 46, and couldn't help but notice two-and-a-bit lines on the left-hand page excised with heavy black ink. Ah, censored, I deduced, and just 80-odd days out from the Olympic Games. Angled against the light, I could read the excised words, " . . . the Japanese invasion to the Cultural Revolution to the massacre around Tiananmen Square in 1989." Oh dear, that was curiously provocative of National Geographic. I thumbed some more. I came to a page that felt thicker than the others, and figured it was a three-page fold-out; but no, it was a double-page spread that had been glued together. Astonishing - this magazine was turning out to be a collector's item.

I moved along. Two more double-page spreads glued together. I must have spent an hour carefully prising them apart. They had been glued around the bright, red-ink border of each double-page, as if the border had been made for the task, and then the censor had pressed his/her glue stick in a full-page, neatly-formed, marvellously symbolic, diagonal cross that, when prised apart, tore at the printer's ink, immortalising the censor's work, and a government's meaning. This is when I discovered National Geographic had been truly, and improbably, confrontational. Each glued double-page spread dealt with a sensitive, political issue, using, mostly, art works by Chinese artist, some of which had been previously banned."

Victor Berezovsky's "Portal"

2008-12-24T14:48:00.006+13:00

In February Victor Berezovsky will begin the installation of his Portal (pictured above) on the facade of the Freyburg Pool in Wellington's Oriental Bay. Portal is designed to draw attention to one of Wellington most iconic twentieth century buildings, and to reference the activities that take place inside.

Smoking with Gordon Crook

2008-12-17T16:58:00.005+13:00

The three prints by Gordon Crook included in May Contain Nuts give the flavour of a new series of work that will be shown at the gallery in March 09. The central motif of Gordon's new exhibition will be smoking in all its many forms.

Anna-Marie O'Brien and the Rabbits

2008-12-16T15:39:00.005+13:00

The Meeting of the Anti-Natal Class and New Father's Support Group by Anna-Marie O'Brien, look like sweet rabbit paintings. The titles of Anna-Marie's work are always important. They provide the key to their real meaning...

Megan Hansen-Knarhoi's Prayer Hand Pigeon

2008-12-13T11:34:00.004+13:00

I asked Megan Hansen-Knarhoi about her work Prayer Hands Pigeon Pooing Prismatic Promise in May Contain Nuts
She writes, "Praying hands are a universal symbol of hope, and simultaneously as a white dove a symbol of peace. The pigeon on the other hand is considered the dirty rodent of the bird world. The rainbow symbolises the covenant between God and man "the rainbow shall be seen in the cloud; and I will remember My covenant which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh". (Genesis 9:8-17) It is also symbolic of the seven subtle, interfacing bodies of multidimensional human consciousness as well as being a sign of diversity and inclusiveness, of hope and of yearning & international cooperative movement & freedom, and popularized as a symbol of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender with the freedom flag. Here the Prayer Hand Pigeon shits out a rainbow of crosses, another potent symbol. Being poopped on by a bird is supposedly good luck, but in our western world of over use, and over indulgence perhaps all this symbolism is just a load of shit?" Prayer Hand Pigeon is a series of finely crotcheted crosses, and a cross stitched prayer hand.

More Hybrids by John Roy

2008-11-29T12:57:00.006+13:00

It's the last weekend of Here and There and I'm looking at the largest Hybrid in the exhibition. A friend just came in and wondered if the figure wasn't more than a little introverted. With his gaze hidden by the building, the figure would seem to be using it as a periscope - staring into some internal void. And generally John's work is introspective - the way that good art sometimes is. It quietly thinks about the contemporary world and our place in it.

Talking to John Roy

2008-11-19T14:30:00.007+13:00

We talked to John Roy about his latest exhibition Here and There.

MNG: You've often used rabbits in your work before. Why rabbits?

JR: I like to use rabbits because they say so many different things depending on the viewers reading of the work.

MNG: Your work has often engaged with architectural forms. But the Hybrids are a little different. Metaphorically all buildings are an extension of ourselves in that they are the product of human projects and labour. Is this what you are referring to, and what's the significance or meaning of the Hybrids?

JR: I see the Hybrids as a fusion of people and buildings - people being modified by the environment they live in.

MNG: Anything you want to say about the holes or perforations in your work?

JR: I like holes. I think of them sometimes being windows , other times I see
them as drawing with light and dark. A hole is the blackest black you can get, and at the same time it can let the light through.

MNG: And the soldier rabbits? Are soldier rabbits an actual breed...

JR: I used the soldiers as I liked the army in disguise aspect. I also liked the way the wall rabbits are abstract shapes and patterns from a distance, it is not until you get closer that you can tell what they are.

John Roy and his Hybrids

2008-11-12T16:36:00.006+13:00

Are they buildings? Trophies to the instability of aesthetics? John Roy calls them Hybrids. They've started out as people and in the alchemy of art, transmuted into buildings. On each side where the base meets the buildings are a set of hands and feet as a reminder. John's signature holes perforate almost all the Hybrids along with formalist bands of colour. The largest Hybrid here suggests the Empire State building, while the one next to it, a mosque or perhaps the Chrysler building.

Lonnie Hutchinson & Hand Maid in Mt Albert

2008-11-05T12:16:00.002+13:00

Lonnie Hutchinson's work often carries a sub-text. It's only apparent here in the title - Hand Maid in Mt Albert - and perhaps in the doily like shapes of some of the cut-outs that make up this installation. It's a subtext about the place of Polynesian women in contemporary society, about 'craft' (that much disputed word), about sculpture, about applied art. In this work, the notion of sculpture is ephemeral and fragile - with implied movement and a lightness of touch.

Home Base

2008-10-17T16:51:00.004+13:00

Home Base includes new work by Margaret Dawson printed on silver trays. Above is The Next Stage 2008 - essentially an image of a woman with a jersey over her head but emerging from a deep silver dish coated so that she glows. Margaret often uses people she knows in her work and this woman is her mother, Anna. But it's not essential to know this and Anna is transformed into a image with non specific historic references, of forbearance and saintliness.

A Guilty Party

2008-10-08T17:25:00.003+13:00

"Who ate all the pies? Who ate all the world? With our voracious appetites, we have gnawed, devoured, scoffed, gutsed, chomped, gobbled, trampled, polluted, desecrated the world. Who ate all the world? We did! Pass me those antacids - this heartburn/break is killing me!"
Lauren Lysaght, Oct 2008

A Guilty Party is featured in Home Base.

Collecting Art

2008-09-30T16:38:00.003+13:00

"The best advice I can give a collector is: develop your eye, and then buy with your heart - always, always with the heart."
Andre Emmerich (1924-2007), 2003

Simon Shepheard and the demolition of NZ landscape

2008-09-18T12:50:00.008+12:00

We asked Simon Shepheard about the ideas behind Pimp My Planet on at the gallery until 4 October.

MNG: Visitors to the exhibition often ask where you get your materials?

SS: My immediate environment- Grey Lynn, Ponsonby. It lies on the verge outside half renovated villas, and as I go around on other business, I can't resist stacking the roof racks or loading the back of the wagon. I collect, sort, & store the materials to renovate my studio/house as well as build art.

MNG: Why make work from these kinds of materials?

SS: This country used to be a rainforest. Huge trees, often over 1000 years old pretty well covered the land coast to coast. Then it was mass-mangled into villas by our immediate ancestors, painted with generations of toxic colour, lashed by storms and blistered by the sun. And then thrown out onto the road. So the narrative's implicit, I'm just the editor.

MNG: You seem to like paua....

SS: Paua has a parallel tale. Its cultural relevance is cross-myriad. The radium powered gleam redeems the low caste context it is set into. I like to use it as a brush stroke of neon pigment.

MNG: Your work seems to think about our landscape tradition. Anything you want to say about that? Has your work always been about landscape?

SS: Yes. It's powerful subject matter and seems to emerge almost uninvited out of the blistered, peeling planks. NZ is not the centre of the post-modern world - its a big empty landscape on the edge of it. What is happening to the Amazon now, happened here a hundred years ago. In many ways Kiwis are the biggest polluters ever on earth, and yet we deceive the world into believing that we're exactly the opposite. Landscape glorification is our most dubious art. I think I'm having a poke at all that, but I also see the scapes struggle to survive as poignant, beautifully sad, and worth revealing.

MNG: What is it with the signs? What are they about?

SS: Of course they are a cheap metaphor! They mock real-estate or street signs - hacked and pilfered souvenirs from a sick future. They are a seductive warning pointing down the road to a beautiful death.

Green Ghost

2008-09-17T15:37:00.005+12:00

I'm looking at Green Ghost (above) by Simon Shepheard. It's inlaid paua hole and tree stump glitter under the gallery lights. Nevermind the paua, the dead tree stump is such a familiar image, but not only that, it has a history in New Zealand art. Simon talks about referencing Dick Frizzell but Frizzell was certainly sending up a whole tree stump tradition. The Dead Tree Theme in New Zealand art lives on.

Life Signs

2008-09-13T15:22:00.009+12:00

Sign posts are something of a theme throughout Simon Shepheard's work, and Pimp My Planet includes one of his landscape signs, Man Grooves (top). Sign 2006 (bottom) was featured in a previous exhibition Another Pretty Ugly Collection. These 'signs' contain their own subtle scapes, and contain histories of the landscape in their materials. They point at places longingly.

Monet at the Dump

2008-09-10T11:03:00.001+12:00

Pimp My Planet new work by Simon Shepheard opened last night at the Gallery. Above is "Landscrape" 2007-08 from the exhibition. With it's Water-Lily Pond colours, Shepheard seems to be making art from the scrap heap of Modernism. He's using the leftovers of the twentieth century, its floor boards and weatherboards stained with age and degraded paint, to make hazy references to New Zealand's pristine landscape tradition.

General Assembly by Fiona Jack

2008-09-06T11:51:00.002+12:00

Welcome to the Mary Newton Gallery blog.

It's the second to last day of Fiona Jack's exhibition General Assembly, and the wall where visitors are encouraged to write up an article from the UN Declaration of Indigenous Rights is covered in a chorus of handwritten articles. I asked Fiona some questions about the installation.

MNG: Why the UN Declaration of Indigenous Rights?
FJ: Because it’s a very significant document that disappeared beneath the radar in Aotearoa. Very few people I have told about it had heard about it previously – it was clearly not discussed widely in the media at all. I was not in NZ at the time, but I am assuming that was the case, and also I can find little press about it retrospectively. Also, the final paragraph of our official statement on the declaration says “...we must therefore disassociate entirely from this text” which I believe is a mistake. Perhaps some people believe that it is legally too complicated to sign this declaration (although UN declarations are never legally binding – they are “aspirational” documents), however regardless of our position this document is for the rights of over 350 million indigenous peoples worldwide. No-one in the world can or should “disassociate” with this document. Maybe we can find complications, or debate it, or question parts, but disassociating is very problematic, and this is what we have done.

MNG: How did you interest people initially in copying out the aspirational paragraphs?
FJ: I just asked – everyone I approached was more than willing when I told them what it was.

MNG: What were you hoping for in encouraging visitors to the exhibition to copy out the articles?
FJ: By writing something out we engage more directly in a text. Also people go through the process of choosing a paragraph, which also forms a connection with the text. Then.. the outcome which is a wall filled with many many handwriting styles reflects the many voices who support this document. I guess in a way that wall will say “our government doesn’t support this document but we do”. In a way we are all signing our names to it in the absence of our government’s signature.

MNG: Anything you want to say about relational aesthetics?
FJ: Well, in so far as participation is always a part of political debate. Relational aesthetics is all about participation - creating situations for people to engage with a scenario that proposes social outcomes that in many cases lead to a political comment and/or involvement. I am perhaps less interested in framing it specifically under that discourse rather than as aligned to a number of conversations – art and politics, the situationists, graffiti, post-colonial theory, and in New Zealand specifically I am interested in Tino Rangitiratanga and how self-determination and art can manifest in our communities.

MNG: You've described your work as 'intervention into foreign policy'? Have I got that right? Want to elucidate?
FJ: I don’t know that I said that, did I? I mentioned a conference at Otago University titled “Power to the People, Public Participation in Foreign Policy”. I didn’t go to it, but it looked really interesting. But as we know, public intervention can change policy at all levels. We have learnt that over and over again, but we just need enough awareness and action on an issue in order to provoke change.

MNG: You have used a similar colour palette on a number of occasions. Anything to tell there?
FJ: Umm, not...not really. It’s just what I’m always drawn to. No conceptual choice here in relation to the content. Sometimes my colour palette is determined by the content of the show, other times not so much.

MNG: How was your work about the Melbourne's taxi community received (at RMIT's gallery)?
FJ: Not sure.... seemed ok. You’d have to ask some Melbournians. The taxi community welcomed my presence and were very willing to talk, and to be heard. Only one taxi driver came to the exhibition, but even that was great to me!