Freestanding neon sculpture
Auckland
Paul Hartigan
The Undrawn
7 Oct. - 1 Nov. 2009
The main point though of Hartigan’s neon work is his love of chroma, the delight he has in manipulating intensely bright, coloured line. While these are also sculptures that provide spatial pleasures for those keen to look at them from different angles, the physicality of this sometimes intensely saturated, linear light provides wonder, even though neon now is dated technology.
It’s an odd show, disappointingly anaemic but admittedly adventurous with the tropes which were always in his colour photography anyway. It’s clever but dry. It doesn’t thrill.
Yet what we find here is still classic Arps. The space is occupied with what appears to be abandoned detritus. There is a pervading sense of delirium, all sorts of peculiar things thrown around, most being fake ready-mades that look like rubbish.
Three films
17 October - 21 November 2009
Annie Bradley, Cellulite Rose, Susie Thomas
Lending Looks To Other People
Designed I think to make you irritated and groan, it has a sound track that in contrast is quite gorgeous, espousing the natural world outside the gallery through the recorded clicks and whirrs of what sounds to me like a flock of starlings.
Aqua (Mass) Media
Auckland
Simon Denny
Starting from behind
9 September - 10 October 2009
The hermetic, watery world of the mains-stream media could perhaps be intended to parallel the ‘art world’ too. Beyond through the rectangular holes in the wall, there exists the so-called ‘life world’. Where folks like you and me fit in - in terms of these options - huddled over our various computers, I’m not quite sure.
Inside This World: The Limits of Faith
Auckland
Out Of This World
17 September - 16 October 2009
It seems to mean let your imagination leap across the void of common sense to grasp the significance of this wondrous event. Like the kneeling man in the wood engraving, ignores the world of logic.
Wadahya?
Ronnie van Hout
Who goes there?
4 July - 18 October 2009
That’s the wonderful thing about these projects, that nursery-tales, old movies, inner anxieties and prosaic imagery all get jumbled up together.
Amazing Drawing
et al
That’s obvious! That’s right! That’s true!
23 July - 22 November 2009
Hung from clunky grey screens, these incorporate faked sociological and statistical charts or graphs, culled from enlarged text book pages. Made with a wide range of traditional media, including collage, paint, pencil, ink, tape, charcoal and crayon, they look like very odd archaic posters from some very peculiar ranting institution.
Eight Plus One Painters
Cloud 9
Curated by Jennifer Hay
29 August - 29 November 2009
I mean I almost toppled out of my zimmer frame trying to laboriously transcribe the damn thing, but it interests me in the way mental images replace physical ones - outside of its elucidation of the properties of states of mind like love.
On the Adam’s Walls
Wellington
Wall Works
Curated by Christina Barton
8 September - 4 October 2009
These gorgeous surfaces evoke the Sublime and force your eye to rush to the ceiling and its corners, seeking out strategically positioned, negatively-shaped drip-free zones that allow planar respite.
Early Hotere Works on Paper
Auckland
Ralph Hotere
This Land
18 September - 24 September
1969 was his Frances Hodgkins year and his career really too took off after that - especially with the glossy black lacquer, minimalist panels with glowing lines (they are the peak of his career), and the wonderful textual collaborations with Tuwhare and Manhire.
From Understated Restraint To Histrionic Excess
Christchurch
Séraphine Pick
Curated by Felicity Milburn
23 July - 22 November 2009
Range in Method
Moving and Disintegrating Images
Auckland
7:5 Seven Films by Five Artists
19 August - 9 September 2009
Though an obvious reference to the transience of existence, her fleeting portraits and figures also alluded to the fortunes of the planet, grim augurs for our species’ future.
The power or inefficacy of the Word
Auckland
Instructional Works
20 August - 5 September 2009
This is a Fluxus style show (its spirit of dictated sentences is like that of say the works within Yoko Ono’s anthology, Grapefruit) where artists living outside Auckland send in instructions for actions - be they thoughts, object building or bodily movement - to be carried out by other artists and their friends.
The Slippery Slopes of Political Meaning
Auckland
Peter Robinson
SOLD OUT: Works from the 1990s
19 August - 12 September 2009
Looking at this earlier work from an artist who has made works with swastikas and texts like ‘Pakeha have rights too’ and ‘Boy, am I scarred?’ it provides a semantic filter through which we can observe the ‘Pakeha’ chains ‘unbound’.
What’s in a Face?
Auckland
Yvonne Todd
The Wall of Man
26 August - 26 September 2009
…you can tell Todd has had fun picking out accoutrements like gorgeous silk ties and heavy shirt fabrics. She seems to enjoy the sensuality of these materials, almost for their own sake and not for sociological coding.
Museum of Nuclear Waste
Auckland
Nicholas Mangan
Black perils and pearls
Ed Grothus’ Doomsday Stones
22 August - 19 September 2009
Chromatic Toxic Syrup
Auckland
Leigh Martin
25 August - 2 October 2009
Examining them is a bit like going deep sea diving - in a sea of acid yellow, purply red or vivid lolly green
The Cost of Power
Auckland
AC/DC: The Art of Power
Curated by Andrew Clifford
21 August - 3 October 2009
It is an interesting show because it allows Clifford to play with certain slippages of meaning, to calculatedly revel in ambiguities not present in some works when they were initially created (outside the electrical context) but present now.
The Black Struggle for Self Assertion and Dignity
Auckland
Emory Douglas
Minister of Culture, Black Panther Party
21 August - 3 October 2009
Most of the time the printed faces and figures look like they are from the sixties, having the flattened heavy contours that you get with a lot of, say, Beatles or Haight-Ashbury posters
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