What painting needs is hecklers, groupies, buffs, aficionados, nerds, family members and fans.—Justin Paton[1] I met Simon McIntyre some months ago, following a conversation event with artist Amber Wilson at Anna Miles Gallery. It was a short meeting, but I remember being struck by McIntyre’s liveliness and warmth, and the fact that he, like me, grew up in the household of a painter. A few days...
An inventory of Caravaggio’s household contents was drawn up when his tenancy ended abruptly in August 1605 … Reading it is like leafing through a dossier of arbitrarily cropped and framed snapshots of the things a man once owned – the furniture he sat on, the weapons with which he fought, the books he read, the tools he used. But all the photographs are just a little out of focus. Crucial...
I first encountered the work of Amber Wilson in 2013 at Porous Moonlight, a painting show at the unassuming Papakura Art Gallery, curated by Wilson’s friend (and then studio-mate) Imogen Taylor. Her works, all oils, hung alongside paintings by an unlikely, but totally satisfying, assortment of living and dead artists, including Frances Hodgkins, Denys Watkins, Nicola Farquhar, and Claudia Jowitt...
Before arriving at Necessary Distraction: A Painting Show at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, I am aware of two things. First, that the exhibition comprises work by artists from Aotearoa. Second, that its installation design includes sometimes unclad, sometimes unpainted walls. These, it transpires, are visible even before you enter the exhibition proper. Crossing the threshold, I come to the...
Jacqueline Fraser’s latest installation, Plastic (1976/2016), occupies a somewhat unusual position in her oeuvre. While it is visibly an extension of her current practice, it also makes reference to a piece created when she was at art school. At the time, Fraser—like many of her fellow students—was experimenting with conceptual art. Finding that some of the results were lacking sensuousness, she...
In an immediate sense, Yang Fudong: Filmscapes represents an important and exciting event. It is the first solo show in Australasia of one of China’s most renowned contemporary artists (Yang’s work has appeared in such illustrious contexts as documenta and the Venice Biennale); a second large-scale exhibition at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki of moving image art, immediately following Lisa...
x (life, still. Baby) is one of a small number of similar works that composed John Ward Knox’s 2010 exhibition welcome home sun (Tim Melville Gallery, Auckland). Likened by the artist to cover versions of songs, the pieces in the show were ostensibly based on photographs – some images of famous sculptures, such as Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Rape of Proserpina (1621–2), which became Ward Knox’s x...
Part One The part for people who have not yet seen All Your Wants and Needs Fulfilled Forever, in which I tell you that it’s worth seeing, without giving away too much of the game. For the last few days I’ve been going round telling people that they should go see All Your Wants and Needs Fulfilled Forever. (I think I’ve finally internalised that title. I’m quite proud of that.) When they...
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki is not in the business of placing outside bets. Inside Outside Upside Down: Five Contemporary New Zealand Artists—curated by head of contemporary art Natasha Conland,[1] and comprising materials held by the Gallery—is thus a showcase not merely of five contemporary NZ artists, but of five of the most celebrated practitioners to have emerged in recent years.[2] It...