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JH

Almost forgettable

ACFA

Auckland

Milli Jannides


9 December - 24 December 2009
(and Jan and Feb by appointment)

 

The best work is The Magician’s Assistant where we see bars of golden sunlight raking across a centrally positioned, wooden staircase

JH

Maloy, Patterson, Steyerl.

ARTSPACE AOTEAROA

Auckland

Richard Maloy: Raw Attempts
Campbell Patterson: Floorshow
Hito Steyerl: After the Crash

12 December 2009 - 27 February 2010.

 

…presentations that explore processes of continual change and transmutation.

JH

When dance becomes movement art.

THE PHYSICS ROOM

Christchurch

robbinschilds + A.L.Steiner: C.L.U.E
(colour location ultimate experience)
in collaboration with A.J Blandford

26 November - 20 December 2009

 

Yet one wonders if there was a satirical motivation behind this work, it seemed so classically ‘trippy-dippy-hippie’ with its trajectory of a rainbow coloured (seven costumed hues in sequence) road trip.


JH

Elizabeth Thomson: Lost in Space

TWO ROOMS

Auckland

Elizabeth Thomson
La Planète Sauvage

24 November - 22 December 2009

Thomson’s ‘Planète Sauvage’ series are strikingly dramatic lunar images, but spoilt by being shallow relief. Flat discs flush with the wall, devoid of mass, would have been less clunky and, if less over-elaborate in surface textures, much superior.

JH

Anya Henis: Raw Feels

RM

Auckland

Anya Henis
Raw Feels

26 November - 12 December 2009

 

If Raw Feels is this show’s title, then perhaps the other work is Cooked Thinks?

JH

Picnic On The Top Floor

GAMBIA CASTLE

Auckland

Andrew Barber
Picnic

9 December - 12 December 2009

Barber


JH

Sliding Between Microcosm and Macrocosm

TIM MELVILLE GALLERY

Auckland

Joe Sheehan
Slide Show

9 December - 22 December 2009

 

Yet the final experience here is so indisputably evocative, and unusual, transporting the viewer far away from the world of minerals and geological processes, that each visitor tends to experience it viscerally and instinctively, like that of privately watching a full moon on a cloudy night.

JH

Discreetly activist

NEWCALL

Auckland

1 - 19 December, 2009

Group Show

…have practices oriented towards ‘activism or confrontation.’

JH

Non-textual (mostly blue) Reynolds

SUE CROCKFORD GALLERY

Auckland

John Reynolds

Along these lines

1 December - 24 December 2009.

 

Most conspicuous is the big, four panelled work on the main wall – a painting that works. Nomadology, succeeds not only because of its lyrical, wistful sky blue and wisps of sprayed cloud and vapour trails, but also because of its dots (in that silver paint that I invariably find so loathsome), which though scattered have a compositional structure that is in essence linear.


JH

Menzies film at Gambia

GAMBIA CASTLE

Auckland

Louise Menzies

Peloha

4 December - 19 December 2009

However Menzies does say she wants her audience to consider the importance of exercise-movements and their connection to ‘the physical, the mental and the spiritual’. Yet the soft light, art historical references, eroticism and movement are also of interest too – perhaps even more than the discussions of medical history mentioned in her blurbs.

JH

Summer on the Lorne

ANTOINETTE GODKIN

Auckland

Summer Group Show

2 December 2009 - 31 January 2010

 

It generates open abstract forms packed with wiggling wormlike strokes. These teeming pockets of energy seem connected to Pat Hanly’s ‘Molecular’ paintings of the seventies inspired by Blake, Huxley and lysergic acid.

JH
Zebra 1965

Len comes to Auckland

GUS FISHER GALLERY

Auckland

Len Lye
Art that moves

27 November 2009 - 6 February 2010

 

The fascinating thing about Lye is his conceptual cohesion, how his various intellectual obsessions, while seemingly disparate, actually make up a tight package of research - the theory for his assorted, very manual, art-making approaches and their bodily focus.


JH

The Ascent of the Suppressed

MICHAEL LETT

Auckland

Michael Parekowhai
The Moment of Cubism

28 November 2009 - 23 January 2010

 

These straining hefty beasts also allude to The Moment of Cubism and seem to be attacking the modernist ‘white cube’ – as exemplified by Lett’s gallery space. The revenge of the colonised?

JH

Evanescent Jenkinson

TWO ROOMS

Auckland

Megan Jenkinson

Second Silence

 

26 November - 22 December 2009

 

Jenkinson’s best works using this sort of technology are when she demonstrates restraint, and knocks back the impact of the colour. The Heavens Opened in this way are particularly effective, and although the titles of the four works reference certain Old Master paintings you don’t need that art historical baggage to enjoy them.

JH
Second Date

Fruits de mer

IVAN ANTHONY GALLERY

Auckland

Julian Hooper

Once Inside

25 November - 23 December 2009

 

Hooper’s images are very knowing in their eclecticism. They expect you to spot the references, for the hybridity is deliberately not hidden under the mantle of a newly absorbed ‘originality.’ They flaunt their art historical origins openly.


JH

After Winter comes Autumn

IVAN ANTHONY GALLERY

Auckland

Saskia Leek

Yellow is the putty of the world

25 November - 23 December 2009.

She’s turning into a sort of Fauve Charles Tole, using a simplified cubist structure but without being overly concerned with radical spatial depth and perspective – more a Matisselike interest in shape and chromatic chords.

JH

Talking Tao

GAMBIA CASTLE

Auckland

Tao Wells

Space Jam 1996

14 November - 28 November 2009

 

 

In other words, one might as well stick with the ‘one mind’ idea that Tao Wells is simply just a terrible artist, especially as there is no articulated evidence here by his Gambia colleagues (or Wellington dealer, Whyte) to counter that, let alone claim he is a ‘terrific artist’ as well or instead.

JH

Vaguer than nebulous

STARKWHITE

Auckland

Jim Speers

Crystal Spirit

21 November - 24 November 2009.

It is part poem and part encyclopedia with its many fragments of image, sentence and word. These juxtaposed visual, historical and verbal allusions are all geared up to both frustrate and pleasantly evoke.


JH

Downtown Cullen

JANE SANDERS ART AGENT

Auckland

Paul Cullen

Situations

18 November - December 18, 2009

 

These are an elaboration of the earlier Attempts series, where Cullen included on the mounts captions under the image. Now however his use of language has changed.

JH

Philately Rollercoaster

ANTOINETTE GODKIN

Auckland

Lianne Edwards

Second Nature

3 November - 29 November 2009.

 


Yet in her variety of regimented organisation Edwards is moving the fauna of these stamps towards an interesting purpose, especially when inventing new compositional formats.

JH

Must painting require a painted surface?

GOW LANGSFORD GALLERY

Auckland


Judy Millar


11 November - 5 December 2009.

Millar is hesitating when I think she should be more theatrical, treating surface with the same lack of preciousness that she treats architectural space. She needs to tease her audience even more than what she is doing already.