Opinion

Barry Brickell’s mantra is “It’s not the thing it’s how”. What he means is that the materials the object is made from, the way it is made and the technology used, contain the object’s essence and meaning much more powerfully than whatever it is trying to represent. Brickell’s work uses clay from his own property, processed on site, made into objects with age-old methods and fired in kilns using wood or coal. His sculptures are made from and refer to the landscape, the living world

Cast glass by Jim Dennison and Leanne Williams. At Aratoi until 17 March 2013 The decanters as originally displayed in the Sarjeant Gallery in Wanganui ‘Fancy Fools Flight’ is Martinborough glass artists Jim Dennison and Leanne Williams touring exhibition.  They call themselves and their workshop / studio ‘The Crystal Chain Gang’.  The exhibition has been shown in Auckland at Objectspace and Piece Gallery, at the Sarjeant Gallery Wanganui, at Pataka in Porirua, in Nelson at the Suter and now at Aratoi.  The Sarjeant

Sybylle Bergemann Photographs Aratoi until 9th December Grant Sheehan Ghosts in the Landscape Hedspace until 3 November Two Masterton galleries are currently exhibiting contrasting exhibitions of photography currently.  Sybelle Bergemann’s at Aratoi is a retrospective survey of her photography career with work from 1967 – 2006.  It is primarily concerned with the urban environment and its people.  Aratoi is the only New Zealand venue for this exhibition. It will later tour Australia. Grant Sheehan’s work presents a romantic view of isolation and derilection

"Wind-grass" by Kon Dimopoulos Wind-grass has recently been installed in Featherston. It was created by Konstantin Dimopoulos who had very close ties with Wairarapa for the decade or so that he lived in Wellington. Dimopoulos is now resident in Melbourne and works all over the world as a public sculptor. Since 2001, when Pacific Grass was installed near Wellington airport, Dimopoulos has made many similar works. Seven of these ‘grass’ sculptures have been installed in New Zealand and fifteen overseas. In 2012 ‘grass’ sculptures

Kermadec is a touring exhibition, which has already been exhibited at Tauranga and Auckland. It is now showing at the City Gallery Wellington.  The nine established artists featured were invited by the Pew Environment Group to travel to the Kermadecs on board the NZ Navy ship Otago.  The exhibition was designed to give the Kermadecs the sort of publicity that artists’ trips to Antarctica have given that region.  Pew advocates setting up a marine reserve in the area because of its unique location, submarine geography

40 cm Qing Vase. Image from: Wall st Journal Nov 17, 2012, $80 mil vase (cropped) I recently watched a BBC documentary about the manufacture of Chinese porcelain during  the Qing Dynasty (1644 – 1911).  This porcelain was highly prized in Britain at the time and shiploads of it were sent to Europe where it was purchased and flaunted by wealthy buyers.  The documentary ended with an account of the vase (pictured) which was brought to Britain during the Opium Wars, recently found

Te Papa has come up with another blockbuster. The collection of Constable’s paintings, drawings, watercolours and etchings must have cost a fortune to get together, transport to New Zealand and display. The exhibition is undoubtedly an interesting collection of nineteenth century work and a testament to the breadth of skill and experimentation of the man himself. It is however a little hard to understand why such vast resources were spent bringing such an exhibition to the ‘New World’ in the 21st century. Te Papa is