A Room of One’s Own

A Room of One’s Own

That experience of foreignness, of working within a different geographic or cultural context, has proved a compelling stimulus for arts practices, particularly when coupled with a studio and free accommodation.

As you read this, hundreds of artists and curators from around the world are carving out a living and working space in locations made remarkable by their strangeness and/or the opportunity to live and work away from the pressure of paid work, be it in Sweden or Southland, Dunedin or Denmark, New Plymouth or the Netherlands.

Stakes in the ground

Stakes in the ground

Last, Loneliest, Loveliest is New Zealand's first official presence at the International Architecture Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia, and takes its alliterative title from Rudyard Kipling's poem, 'The Song of the Cities', which gives four lines each to various cities from the British Empire, including Auckland:

Last, loneliest, loveliest, exquisite, apart–
On us, on us the unswerving season smiles,
Who wonder 'mid our fern why men depart
To seek the Happy Isles!

Transformers

Transformers

Curator Ken Hall writes about his experience of working with artists Chris Heaphy and Sara Hughes, as part of a small team with other city council staff and Ngāi Tahu arts advisors, on the Transitional Cathedral Square artist project.

The pleasure of making: objects taking centre stage in the space of the art gallery

The pleasure of making: objects taking centre stage in the space of the art gallery

Was it serendipity that the opening of Christchurch Art Gallery's Burster Flipper Wobbler Dripper Spinner Stacker Shaker Maker coincided with that of Slip Cast, a group exhibition at the Dowse Art Museum that also focused on the pleasure that artists take in manipulating materials in the process of making art?

Seeking stillness in movement

Seeking stillness in movement

Time didn't feel like it was on my side on the day I first saw Daniel Crooks's film Static No.12 (seek stillness in movement) (2009–10). In Sydney for just a couple of days to see the Biennale, I'd committed the cardinal mistake of the international art tourist and bitten off more culture than I had time to chew. By the time I reached Cockatoo Island and its dozens of exhibits, I was suffering from what might be called the Grumpiness of the Long-Distance Art Watcher – a state in which one doesn't absorb the artworks so much as check them off, feeling simultaneously fretful about my dwindling time and resentful about the sheer quantity of art. Though I hardly knew it then, this was the perfect state in which to test Crooks's video – a work that attempts, like no other I know, to induce an altered sense of time.

Quiet invasion

Quiet invasion

The idea of peppering the vestigial city centre with portraits from the collection became part of the Gallery's tenth birthday POPULATE! programme, intended to remind all of us that the collection is, indeed, still here and in good shape.

Shifting Lines

Shifting Lines

It's where we live: the encrusted surface of a molten planet, rotating on its own axis, circling round the star that gives our daylight. Geographically, it's a mapped-out city at the edge of a plain, bordered by sea and rising, broken geological features. Zooming in further, it's a neighbourhood, a street, a shelter – all things existing at first as outlines, drawings, plans. And it's a body: portable abode of mind, spirit, psyche (however we choose to view these things); the breathing physical location of unique identity and passage.

Street urchins, blue moons and rare visions

Street urchins, blue moons and rare visions

Even in a city where surreal scenes have become somewhat routine, the sight of the Isaac Theatre Royal's eight-tonne dome, suspended like a great alien craft, had the power to turn heads and drop jaws. Preserved inside a strange white shroud while the theatre was slowly deconstructed around it was a jewel of Christchurch's decorative arts heritage – a 105 year-old Italianate plaster ceiling featuring a circular painted reverie on the theme of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The dome, along with the rest of the theatre, is currently being restored as part of an ambitious rebuild that is expected to be completed in 2015 at a cost of over $30 million.

Drawing from Life

Drawing from Life

In the beginning art was drawing.

Yvonne Todd: The Wall of Man

Yvonne Todd: The Wall of Man

A succinct ad placed in the classifieds of the North Shore Times in March 2009 attracted some forty applicants. Respondents were shown a photographic portrait of an unnamed executive, and directed towards ervon.com – artist Yvonne Todd's website – to decide whether or not they wanted to be photographed. Some still did. The unfolding story might not have been exactly what they'd expected, but all who agreed understood it would be something different. Next came the eliminations: sixteen men were chosen to be photographed; twelve made it to the final cut. The resulting images were printed at varying sizes and titled: International Sales Director, Retired Urologist, Family Doctor, Senior Executive, Hospital Director, Company Founder, Sales Executive, Chief Financial Officer, Image Consultant, Independent Manufacturing Director, Publisher, Agrichemical Spokesman. This is The Wall of Man.

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