Art NZ Autumn 2007
The latest issue of Art NZ has just been released.
From page 72 to 76 there are ten of my photos plus an essay by Peter Simpson.
Price is $9.75.
Patea I went to a wedding yesterday at Patea, about one and a half hours south of here where a camping ground on the banks of the Patea River had been taken over by the guests. There was even a teepee and a house bus. It was more like a happening. The bride was barefoot and later in the evening there was a dogfight. Both those facts seemed to impress me immensely for some reason. Cortina were playing at the time of the dogfight. Much of the food was vegetarian, and all of it high quality. There were whole fish, freshly caught and freshly cooked.
Above is snap of children swimming at the river mouth. It has some feeling of what it is like there.
Below is a view across the river from where the wedding took place.The train crossing the hillside caught my attention. As usual I found myself struggling to take any wedding photographs. I find it difficult to take photos at weddings and I admire people who can.
A problem with a camphone is that on a sunny day like this, is that it’s hard to see the screen and they have no viewfinder for the eye. Perhaps for this day I should have taken a thin, pocket sized, good quality digital camera, easily carried. Perhaps I’m just not equipped with the most appropriate instrument for an occasion like this when, as usual, I simply want to photos for my own project. I had taken my large Sony but on arrival found that the card from it was still in a slot in my computer in New Plymouth.
The site of the wedding was the exact spot where Charles Heaphy painted this in 1839. Notice the waka pulled up on the far river bank.
Here is an historic image of Patea. By clicking on the photo it should be possible to read the tiny text below it.
PS Monday morning.
I’d like to add the other two photos I took at the wedding, to last night’s posting.
The bride and groom are somewhere up the Wanganui River on their honeymoon and not-to-be-disturbed but I’m sure it’s OK. On a mundane level, I notice how sharp the images are.
It’s found locally and in other parts of New Zealand too, such as North Canterbury.
I started on this project in the late 90’s when I was artist-in-residence at Canterbury University. Their museum has a good collection of these in storage to which I was given ready access. I went on a couple of personal fossil hunts in the field too, no results unfortunately.
I’ve been keeping my eyes open during all the 6 years I’ve been in Taranaki. Again no results. These crabs appear inside oval rocks that look exactly like thousands of other oval rocks!
Recently a kind New Plymouth resident gave me one as a present. I’ve had a couple of tries at finding a photograph in it. I’ll just keep playing with it, I may be being led to other pastures. Sometimes I have to photograph something in order to see what it looks like photographed.
I also wanted to see what the difference was between a colour version and a black and white one.
Meanwhile, below is a photo from about 4 years ago.
This is not how I originally envisaged photographing these Mudbugs. When I first saw them a couple of months ago, they’d been frozen together in a large irregular, monochromatic lump. Like meat in a deep freeze.
They immediately reminded me of fossils and it was a particular fossil look I’d been after for some time. I went on a stone carving course about 18 months ago at the nearby Rangimarie Marae.
My idea was that, copying from photographs, I would carve fossils into rock and then I would photograph the stone versions. Fake fossils. It’s an ongoing project that’s been on a back element for a while, I thought anyway, until I came across those frozen Bugs on Waiheke that day in early January and it came rushing back to me and it’s been gnawing away at me which is why I was so prompt upon my return from Auckland, to simply got on with it.
Problem has been that I haven’t been able to access those exact ones. However a week or so ago, some individually wrapped Bugs turned up at a new fish shop down at the port, so I bought a box of 3. ($30)
These Bugs were individually packed, and not in one lump, so I have to rethink how I’m going to approach this. The photo above is the first attempt. (click on image to make it larger). I took one Bug out and started working with it. In the photo it’s fairly thawed out. Photo is quite interesting I feel… but whether or not it will be a stayer I don’t know yet. In the original I imagined the Alien flavour as well.
A lamp shell, Devonian 390-345 million years ago. This photo is from a scientific book. (New Zealand Adrift by Graeme Stevens).
I have been using this as a source image for the rock work.
The Auckland Art Gallery is presenting the 3rd Auckland Triennal so I’m off to Auckland this afternoon to attend a couple of openings.
There are 35 artists from more than 20 countries, who it states in the publicity, will address the condition of turbulence – the complex and unpredictable times in which we live.
Ill let you know what I think, when I return in a few days.
P.S. Thank you to Julian for sending me an e-mail example of the encroachment of the word ‘groundbreaking‘ into art writing. This time from an Australian gallery.
No more than 2 months ago I heard on local radio an ad for the Govett-Brewster that used the adjective ‘groundbreaking’. Then I saw it in an Adam Gallery e-mail. And a day or two ago I saw it in print somewhere else, put it aside but can’t find it at the moment.
Cutting edge has been the artspeak favourite for some time, but I can imagine groundbreaking taking over. It has more gravitas although just how many groundbreaking shows there can be at one time I’m sceptical about. Still that won’t deter the copywriters.
Other shifts have been the change from ’emerging artists’ to ‘new artists’ to ‘new generation.’ New Generation is a phrase that will stick for a while I think. The Arts Foundation are using it, and we just had a show here at the Govett-Brewster for New Generation artists, although Peter Madden was in it and he was born in 1966 which I would have thought was pushing it a bit.
These phrases all raise interesting questions eg could an ’emerging artist’ be a 60 yr old whose career was coming on stream. Similarly could a ‘new artist’ be someone who was older.
I’m waiting for some shows for ‘receeding artists’.
There have been many visitors in town because of the Tom Kreisler opening on Saturday night. (see posting below) Went to the after-after match party which for me is staying up late. Bed somewhere around 3.30 Sunday morning, hence no blog yesterday!
Noise control came to the party, not because of me I hope. Certainly, on the front page of the Taranaki Daily News this morning, there were no photos of Peter Peryer being forcibly restrained by members of the Riot Squad.
One highlight conversation I had was with Wystan Curnow, and it was about Buick Dynaflows. He told me that Ray Charles uses the word Dynaflow in one of his songs. I need conversations like this, where there is cross-connection, it’s brainfood.
I missed out on the opportunity to ask Wystan if it’s true that he is named after W.H.Auden, (Wystan Hugh Auden). I heard this many years ago and I’ve never asked him. I hope it’s true.
I’m sorry that over this weekend, someone wasn’t employed to make a documentary of this event, or at the very minimum, even if it had been done in the most rudimentary manner, take some photos. I would like to be able to link you to a page that showed you snaps (preferably flattering) of who was there. Oscars New Plymouth style.
Saturday afternoon I cleared out surplus spectacle cases and laid them on a table so that guests here as result of the Kreisler opening, could help themselves. I fetched a camera but I don’t think that this image below passes, but all the same, I was surprised that I was still burrowing into this territory because I thought that Matisse 2005 had solved it. I’d written up the theorem so to speak.
It was a time when I felt a connection with Surrealism in general and Dali in particular and when I came to have a new respect for him. There were others too of course, I mean no disrepect to their achievements. Miro I come to appreciate increasingly, for example. Arp as ever, Calder’s kinetics. And seeing two El Greco works in Spain in the late 90’s changed my thinking somehow. They had power and it was raw.
Here are some photos from the last 18 months.
The one at the top is the spectacle cases, Saturday evening. I bit mannered I feel. Matisse is better. After Dali 2005/06 I still think is too interesting to consign to the dustbin.
After Dali 2005/06