Opinion

The City– Becoming and Decaying

  "The City– Becoming and Decaying" is an exhibition of photographs curated by the Goethe Institute, currently showing at Aratoi. In the introduction to his book ‘Century’ featuring 100 years of photography (1900 – 2000), the editor Bruce Bernard says: Later in the passage he says: ‘The City – Becoming and Decaying’ would have been very different had the late Bruce Bernard been selecting the images. The exhibition tries to be a photographic essay about one of the most complex human

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Close to Home – William Beetham Portraits

Portraits are a statement about societal manners as much as they are the record of the appearance of a particular individual.  Above all perhaps, throughout the history of image making, portraits have been an attempt to preserve and immortalise the status and position of the subject as worthy and important. The current exhibition of Beetham portraits at Aratoi extols the values of probity, dignity, sobriety and respectability as much as they are records of the appearance of their mostly family subjects. William -

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Breath – the Fleeting Intensity of Life by Vincent Ward

Video installation 4.50m, 2012, showing at Aratoi Gallery until 28 February Vincent Ward’s video is a shortened version of a larger work that circulated around New Zealand Galleries in late 2011 and 2012. Much of the publicity surrounding those showings and the commentary around them seems to have been provided by Ward himself through interviews and written publicity material. The version we see at Aratoi has two scenes. One shows a fat naked man lying in the middle of the road, in a deserted small

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Art, the Rubber Duck and Love

Three events coincided recently which raised the perennial question of ‘What is Art?’. The first was the death at age 89 of the renowned art theorist and philosopher Arthur Danto in October; the second was the appearance in news media of an oversize rubber duck which had so far visited 14 international ports (including Auckland in 2011); the third was a very amusing interview with Charles Firth who, as director of the Sydney Museum of Words convened an exhibition of ‘donated’ words. Charles Firth

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The Unknown Craftsman

I recently read a short article in the last issue of Ceramics Quarterly from an Auckland Potter raising some interesting questions about the nature and definition of domesticware. Suzy Dünser’s discussion revolved around a much-heralded exhibition at Masterworks Gallery in Ponsonby, Auckland. Called ‘The Last Supper’, it had the ambitious aim of establishing a new 21st century ‘ethos’ for contemporary domesticware. Masterworks considered that in most other areas of the arts a 21st century approach could be seen but in handcrafted domesticware it was not.

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Look at us Now. Tirohia Mai. National Library

Posters at Look at us Now Two of the posters on one wall recalling the poster campaign through the 120 year period. The Katherine Mansfield poster on the right claims that behind every great woman is a man who tried to stop her. Look at us Now. Tirohia Mai is an exhibition about the slow, 120 year, progress in NZ towards gender equality.  On my way back from Wellington on the train after seeing this exhibition and a couple of others, I read

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Shane Cotton, The Hanging Sky

Head #!?$ 2009 – 2012, acrylic on linen The Hanging Sky is a survey exhibition of the work of one of the country’s most critically acclaimed artists. It is currently showing at the City Gallery Wellington having already been seen in Christchurch and Melbourne. The exhibition occupies all four galleries on the ground floor of the City Gallery. Shane Cotton is a prolific painter who has concentrated on the careful exploration of particular personal modes of expression. His work is immediately identifiable even

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Difference

An exhibition held at Aratoi in 2006. ‘Difference’ is a group of 24 jugs each about 20cm tall displayed together. The jugs were made at the same time, with identical materials, and fired in a single firing of the wood kiln. The varying glaze effects come from wood ash floating through the kiln. The passage of the ash is affected by the particular position of the jug in the kiln. Those that are directly in the path of the flame will be exposed to more

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Dry Stone wall

Simon foreground, Gavin at rear At the suggestion of a stone wall builder friend – Gavin Dench – who is also a keen enthusiast for wood fired pots - I eventually decided to replace a rather dilapidated wire fence near the house with a stone wall built from stones collected from this property.  If I had known at commencement what sort of task it turned out to be I probably would not have started.  Having built it now, I have absolutely no regrets

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Warhol Immortal at Te Papa

Reigning Queens: Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.1985 The exhibition of Andy Warhol works at Te Papa promised a new look at this controversial artist. Curator Sarah Farrar is quoted by the Dominion as saying: “Warhol’s such a popular icon, but we have a one dimensional idea of him”. She hopes that this show will change people’s views by emphasising Warhol’s obsession with people. These comments were made in the context of an article that featured his images of Prince, Sylvester Stallone,

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