Author: Peter Peryer

This author has written 889 articles


Fiat Topolino 1938
On the weekend I went to a vintage car rally here
in New Plymouth.
I fell in love with this Fiat Topolino, immediately. It doesn’t have a flat surface anywhere, every panel is perfectly curved. It was modern and still looks modern.

Topolino means something like little mouse.

The black 8 cylinder Buick behind it is strong too in a gangsterish way.


The engine is 500cc. The solid looking wheels especially appeal to me.

The rear window opens. No bumpers but a strong line that runs along the top of the doors and down to where a bumper could be, giving a feeling of strength and solidity.

European Hare

A couple of weeks ago I took delivery of 10 prints of this image, a portrait of a European Hare. The prints were made in Sydney.

Here is one of the prints at the framer, being prepared for the Auckland Art Fair on the 29th where it will be exhibited on Hamish McKay’s stand.

It is my most recent photo, taken about 6 months ago. There haven’t been any photos since then, but I’m not worried, it is something to look forward to. After a longish gap there may be a shift.

The photo is, including frame and gst, $4000. Unframed $3750. 3 have gone. Any enquiries phone Hamish 0274368368

John Reynolds…

….at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth, a couple of weeks ago.

The NCEA Best

There is a show touring NZ, recently set up at the Govett-Brewster here in New Plymouth by our national educational authorities who want to instruct teenagers of our country on how to become famous photographers.

Local secondary school students of photography were brought, even by bus, to see these portfolios, the top scoring ones from last year. They were being shown what the look was that the examiners were wanting. The remarkable sameness to the portofolios was, as usual, for they look similar year after year, truly alarming. Clearly it is a house style.

Once, a decade ago at Selwyn College, I tried to teach this approach to photography even though I knew that I would not be able to pass this exam myself. I quit after a year because I was ashamed to be part of such a questionable approach.


Back at the Studio

I’m back in my New Plymouth studio and trying to put things in order. Tomorrow I have an architect coming to help me make some decisions about opening up the roof. The house has good bones of Rimu and Matai but the old corrugated iron is springing leaks. The water is coming through my fibrous plaster ceilings and I store my photos here so treatment is urgent. As I’m going to put on a new roof it is a good time to think about opening it up to the light. And insulating.


BBQ

A couple of evenings ago I was treated to a BBQ in Freemans Bay in Auckland. The meal, was in restaurant review terms, 10 out of 10. Southland meat and Japanese skills. (thank you Michiko.)

I’m starting to loosen up with photographing, the picture above is a good sign.


Alexandra

This is one of the last photos that I took before I left the Henderson House residency in Alexandra, Central Otago.


Don Driver at the Tauranga Art Gallery

Last Friday I was in Tauranga. Drove up there from New Plymouth, leaving at 11.30 am and arriving at a motel over the road from the Tauranga Art Gallery just before 5 and well in time for the opening. I drove up to Te Kuiti, turned right, looped over the north side of Rotorua. Tauranga, I am told, now has a larger population than Dunedin.

Don Driver was having a show in this new building. He lives in New Plymouth too but unfortunately was not well enough to attend the event.

There was also a selection of works from the BNZ art collection. Billy Apple spoke about the history of how this collection came about.

I liked the gallery. I saw it last when it was a handsome but empty BNZ building and the conversion had not yet begun. Many walls feel domestic in scale, and I particularly liked that and the donkey brown coloured walls too. The Drivers looked very relaxed on them I thought. It’s an Aalto colour but I don’t know the exact name although Richard Arlidge the director did, during the evening tell me but I’ve forgotten it I’m sorry. It’s similar to the much loved colour Diesel. Much loved in New Plymouth at least.

Ansel Adams used Forest Green and a Donkey Brown for the walls he exhibited on. I don’t think that photography is particularly enhanced by the white wall.

It was an excellent evening.

I’m glad that I was there.

Back in the Studio

For more than a year I have been running two studios, my main one here in New Plymouth and a satellite one in Alexandra in Central Otago. The South Island one came about as the result of having a residency there but it has now ended. Before the year in Alexandra I was 4 months in Invercargill so it has been a fair while.

In hindsight I underestimated just how difficult this was going to be, especially as I had a book being produced in Auckland in the middle of the year. Strategically this was less than ideal.

Exacerbating the problem was that while in Invercargill I made the decision to switch from using a PC to using a Mac. Right now here in New Plymouth, they are both set up side by side awaiting the arrival of a technician who will extract everything of value to me from the hard drive of the PC and transfer it to the Mac. It has been a change well worth making, but again I might have underestimated just what there was to learn and to choose a time when I had a book underway was probably not a great idea!

Now I look forward to regaining my strength. At present I am having difficulty seeing new photos, it’s been like that for about 3 months but there is no panic, it is a time of removing a lot of overburden to put it in mining terms.

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