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JH

Freestanding neon sculpture

ARTIS Gallery

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.

JH

Bloodless

STARKWHITE

Auckland

12 Oct. - 7 Nov. 2009

Richard Orjis

 

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.

JH

Go on take a nibble

GAMBIA CASTLE

Auckland

Dan Arps

Shallow Relief

1 - 17 October 2009

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.


JH

Three films

THE FILM ARCHIVE AUCKLAND

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.

JH

Aqua (Mass) Media

MICHAEL LETT

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.

JH

Inside This World: The Limits of Faith

TE WAI NGUTU KĀKĀ GALLERY TWO

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.


JH

Wadahya?

CHRISTCHURCH ART GALLERY TE PUNA O WAIWHETU


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.

JH

Amazing Drawing

CHRISTCHURCH ART GALLERY TE PUNA O WAIWHETU


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.

JH
Tim Thatcher

Eight Plus One Painters

CHRISTCHURCH ART GALLERY TE PUNA O WAIWHETU


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.


JH
Reuben Paterson

On the Adam’s Walls

ADAM ART GALLERY TE PATAKA TOI

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.

JH

Early Hotere Works on Paper

ART +OBJECT

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.

JH

From Understated Restraint To Histrionic Excess

CHRISTCHURCH ART GALLERY TE PUNA O WAIWHETU


Christchurch

 

Séraphine Pick
Curated by Felicity Milburn

 

23 July - 22 November 2009

Range in Method


JH
Alex Monteith

Moving and Disintegrating Images

TWO ROOMS

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.

JH

The power or inefficacy of the Word

RM

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.

JH

The Slippery Slopes of Political Meaning

GOW LANGSFORD GALLERY

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’.


JH
Urologist

What’s in a Face?

IVAN ANTHONY GALLERY

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.

JH

Museum of Nuclear Waste

GAMBIA CASTLE

Auckland

Nicholas Mangan
Black perils and pearls
Ed Grothus’ Doomsday Stones


22 August - 19 September 2009

 

JH

Chromatic Toxic Syrup

FOX JENSEN MCCRORY

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


JH
Wayne Barrar 'Huntly Light Trail'

The Cost of Power

GUS FISHER GALLERY

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.

JH

The Black Struggle for Self Assertion and Dignity

GUS FISHER GALLERY

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

JH
Jennifer French

Mish Mesh

ANTOINETTE GODKIN

Auckland

Group Show
Mesh

5 - 29 August, 2009

 

Godkin’s and Young Sun Han’s curation is obviously eccentric: there is little thematic unity in imagery or method. That doesn’t really matter for this is an array of samples - an assortment to be dipped into.