Almost forgettable
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
Maloy, Patterson, Steyerl.
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.
When dance becomes movement art.
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.
Elizabeth Thomson: Lost in Space
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.
If Raw Feels is this show’s title, then perhaps the other work is Cooked Thinks?
Picnic On The Top Floor
Auckland
Andrew Barber
Picnic
9 December - 12 December 2009
Barber
Sliding Between Microcosm and Macrocosm
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.
…have practices oriented towards ‘activism or confrontation.’
Non-textual (mostly blue) Reynolds
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.
Menzies film at Gambia
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.
Summer on the Lorne
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.
Len comes to Auckland
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.
The Ascent of the Suppressed
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?
Evanescent Jenkinson
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.
Fruits de mer
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.
After Winter comes Autumn
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.
Talking Tao
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.
Vaguer than nebulous
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.
Downtown Cullen
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.
Philately Rollercoaster
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.
Must painting require a painted surface?
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.
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