Everyone's a critic but there are few organised opportunities for budding and established writers to contribute to a critical conversation about our art.
Now is your chance to review an exhibition you find interesting (whether it takes your fancy or not) or comment with a short article more generally on exhibitions and the visual arts in New Zealand.
— The best piece of writing each month wins a 2 year subscription to Art News.
— The best writing for the quarter wins editorial space in Art News next issue.
Art is based in sensory experience. It is a process of seeing, smelling, feeling or hearing the creation of another person, perceiving it, and allowing this experience to provoke a reaction whether it is emotional, conceptual or physical.
A portrait of a consequential glory.
-351x242.jpg "Mosaic Skull by Liam Gerrard. Part of Creep at Sanderson Gallery Parnell.")
A people. Stones of ancient times;
Muaiava's goal for the exhibition is to “offer an alternative perspective into how things can be viewed and interpreted.” Alternative interpretation is guided by Muaiava's use of the camera and stylisation of the photographs that push the boundaries and refresh common photographic themes.
Homecomings are often events for celebration, so the front page heading of the September 14 issue of the 'Manukau Courier', 'Hotere comes home, captured my attention. The celebration was in fact the Mangere Arts Centre's second birthday; the homecoming, a gift to the centre, was Ralph Hotere's 'Towards Rangitoto', made in 1989. The photograph in the 'Courier' could not substitute for the real thing, so it was off to the Mangere Arts Centre to have a look!
The recent death of yet another major New Zealand painter prompts me to share a few memories, as is the way.
In Buddhist thought, there is no self, no ego, no I. A challenge when trying to communicate my ideas in response to the recent exhibition Condensare: Press Close Together and the accompanying conversation staged between Professor Manying Ip and Buddhist Master Chang Lin.
The Little Blue House is the pre requisit one stop art shop/gallery assimilar to others of small town NZ. Though it does have an impediment: a creative pedigree due largely to location - Western BOP's favourable KatiKati - The Mural Town.
A chance meeting. How delightful. At Brett McDowell's while on a brief sojourn in Dunedin. We so enjoy the stable of Brett McDowell.
I don’t think 'Reading Room' set out to re-sculpt the landscape of contemporary art but it is an extremely clever collaboration. It achieves a lot in a very appealing way, reaching all the high notes of nostalgia and intimacy and intrigue.
Variety, it is said, is the spice of life. And if that is the case, and if life can be read as art, then the works of art exhibited as contestants for the Snakepit Gallery's 'Gordon's Walters Prize' season both the mind and eye in the manner of those vegetable tinctures.
From recovered billboard fabric to galvanised steel, sewn strips of paper to re-shaped Dispirin packets, fluorescent light boxes to bronze and wood; it would seem nothing unites the Paramount Winners of the Wallace Art Awards for the last twenty years.
For the past month K’road’s Corner Gallery has played stage to the theatre of messy transformation.
The wrinkled, elongated snouts looked like they protruded off of the canvas; the folded ears looked like something my dog would enjoy chewing.
The video screens of the slowly spiralling sprials, which I didn't get to until the end of my orbit of the gallery, were not necessary for me to envisage the way these objects would move if they were, as they seemed, alive.
Auckland should be very proud indeed to have such talented yet humble artists to be living in her city.
Andrew Barber is both prankster and serious painter. He’s always had a firm attachment to his materials, and played with visual puns, incredulity, and artistic in-jokes in a most thoughtful manner.
The 3Up was advertised as three plays from three different writers all wrapped in to the neat package of a couple of hours. Talk about a bargain!
On a recent trip to Lopdell House to look at the Adam Portraiture Awards, a suspicion of mine was confirmed. Perhaps several suspicions.
as workers not dreamers, businessmen and entrepreneurs, mark harvey and johannes blomqvist try to be productive with their bodies.