There’s only one book in the world, and that’s the oneeveryone accurately misquotes.—Allen Curnow, ‘An Incorrigible Music’ An admission: these are not the works by Denys Watkins that I was expecting to include in Fluid structures. For a couple of years now, I have admired Watkins’ largely abstract paintings, works populated by organic shapes that evoke, among other things, the alien structures...
The aim of this exhibition is simple: to provide a platform for five contemporary artists from Aotearoa whom I admire. That the show comprises non-figurative works in watercolour, or the closely related medium of ink, is in part a consequence of the many (perhaps too many) hours I spent thinking about the major painting show Necessary Distraction, which opened at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki...
Artspace’s current exhibition, New Perspectives, features the work of more than 20 artists whose work has begun to make ripples in the local scene. Produced in collaboration with Berlin-based New Zealand artist Simon Denny, the show encompasses an impressive range of material, including eye-wateringly fine paper-based works by Motoko Kikkawa, visceral poems by Owen Connors (printed intransigently...
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...
For this exhibition, The Pantograph Punch asked eight Aotearoa artists to produce a series of posters and postcards responding to the display site, the soon-to-be-renovated mall in the centre of Old Papatoetoe. While they vary widely in appearance, the works share some common themes. A number of them question the ways in which Papatoetoe and its neighbouring suburbs are changing with the spread...
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...
Welcome to Pacific Real Time, the 2016 Auckland Art Fair Projects, curated by Jarrod Rawlins (Curator, MONA, Hobart) and Simon Rees (Director, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth), with assistance from Francis McWhannell. Working with galleries participating in the Fair, independent artists, and the nonprofit arts agency CIRCUIT Artist Film and Video Aotearoa New Zealand, the curators are...
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...
