Notes
No reason to get excited

No reason to get excited

There is no real reason to post this picture of a scrubby painting of Brazilian favelas, except that it is by a certain Robert Zimmerman. 

Notes
Barry Brickell's Art Train Up The Coast

Barry Brickell's Art Train Up The Coast

Passenger trains are few and far between in the South Island these days, probably the North Island as well for that matter, but Barry Brickell's Art Train up The Coast is one trip I would dearly love to take.

Notes
as there is a constant flow of light

as there is a constant flow of light

On a recent printer's residency at the Otago University's Otakou Press Colin McCahon's huge mural painting Waterfall Theme and variations dominated proceedings.

Notes
Time, memory, photography

Time, memory, photography

As part of the recent Word Christchurch Writers and Readers Festival, Christchurch Art Gallery was a partner in the presentation of 'Remembering Anzac', a session which paired photographic artist Laurence Aberhart with historian Jock Phillips.

Notes
Moving Moments - Pallet Jack Dolly Stack

Moving Moments - Pallet Jack Dolly Stack

I mentioned the recent collection shift last week in the Puzzling blog post.

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XXXXXwords

XXXXXwords

Lucky? Hell yes! I'm just back from a month-long stint in Dunedin as the University of Otago's Otakou Press Printer in Residence, where I collaborated with Port Chalmers artist Michael Morley to print a book of his lyrics and linocuts titled XXXXXwords.

Notes
Fishwork

Fishwork

'One' of my favourite books published by the Holloway Press (I could just say my favourite but there are too many to chose from) is the lavishly illustrated Fishwork by Alan Loney and Max Gimblett.

Collection
Black on white

Gordon Walters Black on white

Gordon Walters is best-known for work that fused the influence of European modernist art and Māori and Pacific art forms, particularly the koru motif of painted kōwhaiwhai rafter designs. Walters’ influences from European modernism included the hard-edged geometric abstractions of Victor Vasarely and Auguste Herbin, seen while in Europe in 1950–51. Walters made his first optically charged ‘koru paintings’ in 1956, but didn’t show them until 1966 when he first exhibited this painting in Auckland.

Walters’ adaptation of the koru has been both admired and criticised by cultural commentators. Walters himself, when discussing the motif, increasingly focused on the fine mechanics of abstraction:

'What I’ve done to the form is push it more in the direction of geometry. So that I can have in my painting not only a positive/negative effect of black and white, but I can also have a working of vertical and horizontal, which is equally important.' (Op + Pop, 6 February – 19 June 2016)

Collection
Bucket, Croagnes

Bill Culbert Bucket, Croagnes

Since the early 1970s, Bill Culbert has explored the creative possibilities of light, capturing it in wine glasses, windows, lightbulbs, fluorescent tubes and even – as here – a simple plastic bucket. Set down on grass and fallen leaves in a wooded area close to Culbert’s home in France, this unassuming prop takes on a glowing, transcendent beauty as the sunlight fills and illuminates it.

(Unseen: The Changing Collection, 18 December 2015 – 19 June 2016)

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