The conditions of the art industry in Aotearoa are not optimal, nor will they be any time soon. At every level, artists and arts professionals struggle to secure sufficient funding to get projects off the ground. I recognise that all who work at Creative New Zealand, our national arts development agency, believe in the importance of the arts and feel a personal investment in their flourishing. I...
How best to name him? In essence, he was my employer. But perhaps it is more accurate to call him a benefactor. We first met at a funeral. He approached me after the service and observed that he had been wanting to meet me for some time. The context was unfortunate, but you can’t always help context. He suggested that I might assist him with some tasks that needed doing. The pay would be good...
‘The building is crumbling round us—which is scary, coz I just got in the elevator.’ This comment was made to me the other day by fellow art writer Lucinda Bennett. Those of us whose careers are hitched to the visual arts are accustomed to thinking of our positions as vulnerable. The notion of the struggling artist, slaving away as a dishwasher to support her practice, is so well known as to be a...
Independent writer and curator Francis McWhannell looks at five artists with a commitment to community and compassion. These five artists from Aotearoa New Zealand span different generations and backgrounds, and employ diverse media in their respective practices. They were initially chosen for the simple reason that their works caught my attention and refused to let go. However, points of...
Robert Fraser’s Morning/Homework Town brings together two distinct bodies of work: Morning, a group of three square-format paintings with a central motif evocative of a box, and Homework Town, a series of nine smaller rectangular works that feature band forms derived from the width of the masking tape habitually used by the artist. At first blush, the paintings seem easy to locate, to grasp. They...
I sit in the gloomy, almost oppressive environment of the Blumhardt Gallery at the Dowse Art Museum, in which a small but dazzling piece of curatorial handiwork is on display. Beneath me is a bench covered in pale-green vinyl, patterned with spots that are rough to the touch. The surface feels non-slip. It would not be amiss on the floor of a bathroom. I quickly think of urinals and just as...
On Instagram, Laura Williams goes by ‘takingthepastiche’. The moniker could hardly be more appropriate. Williams’ practice is grounded in pastiche, voraciously sampling art, design, and popular culture from different periods in time. A quick look a clutch of her paintings reveals a Hieronymus Bosch creature, a Frida Kahlo self-portrait, a Meissen-style figurine, a Richard Parker pot, a wartime We...
Kay Abude’s LOVE THY LABOUR explores conceptions and conditions of work. The ongoing project stems from the experiences of the artist and her family. Relocating to Australia from the Philippines in 1986, Abude’s parents moved from white to blue collar jobs. Her mother worked in an electrical factory, supplementing her income by bringing components home that were assembled by members of the family...
While I really want to draw attention to certain arguments and things I think have a lot of cultural importance in the world, to say something resolute—like, this is this way or that’s that way—I find really hard to do. I don’t interact with the world like that, and I don’t feel like that about things in the world. My craft is exhibition-making. That is really what I do … I really value art, and...
If his destiny be strange, it is also sublime.—Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea You read about it—how, as he grew older, the 16th-century Venetian painter Titian increasingly abandoned the mimetic precision of his earlier works in favour of a more impressionistic and visceral style. Reproductions can hint at his bravura application—how, with his brush, he created clumps and...