These two photographs of mine are in an auction catalogue, published by Art + Object in Auckland. The auction takes place on April 17th.
The top photo, on the catalogue cover, was taken in 1977. Christine Mathieson was a stylish and striking red-haired young woman who I had the good fortune to meet at the time. I think that she may have been at Elam Art School, but can’t check because unfortunately we have lost touch. She readily agreed to sit for some portraits and this was the one that I chose.
I didn’t print up many at the time, perhaps half a dozen. I may own one or two still, somewhere in my archives, but this one doesn’t belong to me. I don’t know where it has come from because, rightly so, auctioneers do not disclose that information.
The suggested price on it is $7000-$10000.
The chasuble has great significance for me. I was brought up a strict Catholic and to see celibate, educated men dressing in these soft, silken, embroidered garments made a lasting impression on me. Equally important was that they dedicated their life to a non-material ideal. For me they were like the archetypal artists, much changed now of course, where art is increasingly seen as a career, not as when I was young and inspired by these priests, a calling or a vocation.
I never printed many of these photos which is one of the reasons why the estimate on the sale price of this print being, $9000-$14000.
Rats
I have rats wanting to share this house with me, I hear the pitter patter of their little feet as they run around in the ceiling in the night. Alan, the caretaker, who handily, lives next door, has been laying poison, one large dose of which is in a kitchen cupboard.
I noticed that over the last few days it has been going down.
Yesterday as I got up and went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea I could hear scrabbling noises coming from the cupboard with the bait. Gingerly I opened the door. There was a rat on its back, with it legs paddling in the air. I slammed the door shut immediately and went for Alan’s help.
I did have an idea that there might be a photo in it so before I heaved the carcass over a steep bank in front of this house, I took a took a couple of snaps, but for some reason the head shot is slightly out of focus. The tail one is fine.
I don’t feel like going down the bank to retrieve the body so I will let it go.
Jigsaw Time
Yesterday I took this photo of reflections. I took several but this is the only one
that I think has something extra. But most of all it gives me the feeling that I would love to see it as a jigsaw. There has only been one other photo that I have ever taken that I have felt this way about and it is the one below. I took it last August in a b & b in Oamaru.
On the Road Again
At last I am nearly ready to take to the road. On Sunday I leave New Plymouth and on Monday I will be on the ferry crossing Cook Strait. I even got a discount because I am now a pensioner!
From now on I hope to be making postings more regularly. This 2 months back in New Plymouth has been a strange time. I have been very distracted and have barely picked up a camera. It is in such contrast to the previous 4 months when I was was in Invercargill and which turned out to be one of the most fruitful photographic periods of my life.
I ask myself what happened when I returned because it is important that I understand. Firstly I arrived back with a bad flu which seemed to carry on right into December, through all this I struggled to get together 31 prints that I needed for a show at the Southland Museum & Art Gallery, opening right at the beginning of January. This was not my choice of a date but I decided to go with it because it wanted to get that project behind me. These 31 were photos that I took while artist in residence there. I desperately wanted to go into the New Year without too much drag from unfinished projects.
I was also very busy with getting together my choice of 80 photos to use as the core of a book to be published in September. Orchestrating these was a big task but a very important one. No sooner was I getting on top of that than I developed a bad case of blood poisoning. I am still on antibiotics and they make me feel a bit strange in the head.
Another major task over this month has been making the switch from PC to Mac. In September I bought my first Mac, a 13 inch screened Macbook. Three weeks ago I bought a 24 inch iMac as well. I want to become a power user. In the past I have been operating my PC in rather a basic way and it has been costing me a lot of time not to say psychic wear and tear.
Every day I have been spending time learning how to operate a Mac. They are very different machines. There are marvelous online tutorials, some of them in video form.
I have an iPod as well and am now learning how to operate that in a way that gives me maximum benefit eg by downloading books for me to listen to when I am travelling which I’m mostly doing on my own.
So there we have it. Flu, show, book, Mac, blood poisoning. That will be some explanation as to why I’ve not been photographing or blogging. I’ve been rather weary as well, still had no holiday for a very long time.
There may be other reasons however. Invercargill is as far away from the art scene in New Zealand as is possible to get unless I travelled another 20 minutes and moved to Bluff. I think that this helped my work to be on the fringe. In many ways the art world is a distraction for me, certainly on many occasions an aggravation. It doesn’t seem to a source of nourishment alas. I hope that this may change.
Mutton Birds/Titi
In Southland, on islands off Invercargill, it is a big tradition among the Ngai Tahu, no-one else allowed, to pull the chicks of
the Sooty Shearwater which they call Titi, out of their burrows and
eat them, after cooking that is. Thousands of them are taken every year.
Two nights ago I tried them for the first time in my life. They
were delicious and I was surprised.
There are cartons everywhere as I am packing up in preparation for heading north.
I will be in Central Otago, for a couple of days, I’ve a meeting in Arrowtown, then
I have to go to Christchurch until Monday at which point I continue my journey. Hope to
cross over on the Cook Strait ferry about Tuesday. Have another couple of meetings
in Wanganui, and then, at last I’ll be within two hours drive of New Plymouth. I am estimating that I will be back there about Wednesday or Thursday. I’m looking forward to being back at my home for a while. It feels like the end of the year and I’d like to have
a restful time for a while. I’m feeling rather exhausted by the year. It seems to have been a big one, a bit too big for my taste.
It has been a very productive time down here in the South. I think that I have made several
photos that are ‘keepers’. Over the next few weeks I’m going to do some printing. While here
I’ve only made working prints.
It will be quite a moment when, tomorrow, I finally head off. A week on the road on your own is a long trip.
