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JH

If it is

TE TUHI CENTRE FOR THE ARTS

Auckland 

 

Fiona Amundsen and Tim Corballis

Si C’est

 

8 March - 19 July 2009

 

For Amundsen the chroma is strikingly sensual. There is a generosity with this scale and its impact on colour not found within her earlier work in galleries or publications. The middle image is crystal clear and utterly gorgeous, while the one on the left has a deliciously fuzzy boat bobbing around blurrily in the water. A real celebration.

JH

Tumbling but static tangram grays

TE TUHI CENTRE FOR THE ARTS

Auckland

 

Jeena Shin

Fractus

 

7 March - 19 July 2009

JH

Embracing Mortality

HOCKEN LIBRARY GALLERY

Dunedin

 

Heather Straka 

The Sleeping Room 

 

4 April - 26 May 2009

Here Straka explores a carefully thought out vocabulary of body language, mixed with nuances of facial expression and architectural props. Half a face and body, baring an exposed flattened nipple, peers around the edge of a corner. In another, a contorted twisting back, with straining face turning to the viewer over her compressed shoulder - in a tiled bathroom. A third has tightly bound breasts that instead of concealing femininity, accentuate it through the transparency of the bandage. It is all double (even triple or quadruple) talk.


JH

Unitec Show

UNITEC DESIGN AND VISUAL ARTS

Auckland

 

Kathy Barry and Sarah Munro

and happy the world so made

 

20 March - 17 April 2009

Despite their interest in a common form Munro and Barry have quite different sensibilities. Barry seems to like symmetry and order that can only be reluctantly disrupted, while Munro prefers asymmetry and lopsided spatial disintegration.

JH

Dramatic Video Installations

TE WAI NGUTU KĀKĀ GALLERY THREE

Auckland 

 

Gary Hill 

Voice Grounds 

Curated by Leonard Emmerling and the artist

 

12 March - 24 April 2009 


Any show of successive video installations like this, featuring such a programme of quality works, is a rare event. Of these dramatic and engrossing St. Paul St presentations, usually it is the shorter ones that are the most haunting (Site Recite, Mediations). Others are particularly intense (Goats and Sheep), if not exhausting (Why are Things in a Muddle). For any lover of quality contemporary art, several visits to this very special exhibition are essential.

JH

Three in One

SUE CROCKFORD GALLERY

Auckland 

 

Julian Dashper, Daniel Malone, John Nixon

 

13 March - 28 March 2009

This is an excellent stock show where three well known, but very individualistic, artists could get in each others way - but they don’t. Lots of space keeps them apart so that their different visual and conceptual characteristics are accentuated.


JH

Shot counter-shot

Harvey Benge 

I look at you, you look at me

Book of paired photographs

Hardcover, pp 146
FAQ Editions 2008

I wondered what would I ask them if I had the chance? Looking at a photograph gives you opportunities to examine somebody in a way you don’t have in a face to face situation where you don’t want to be intrusive and stare. Do they have secrets that are wickedly strange? Perhaps I would photograph them another way to make them more interesting than Benge’s sometimes rather dull effort.

JH

Warm but not cosy

A Centre for Art (Elliott St Apartments, Level 2, Rm. 206)

Auckland

 

Richard Francis 

Warmth 

 

25 March - 11 April 2009

The sounds are hard to ignore: they never could be background. Though not loud they nevertheless are ‘in your face.’ They put you on the spot and are confrontational. But maybe that is a misreading. Maybe some find them soothing and uplifting, even exuberant. Maybe.

JH

Menzies Show

WINDOW UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND

Auckland

 

Louise Menzies 

Gut Feeling 

 

12 March - 10 April 2009

History loses its attraction to any student who might study it. History is on trial and has lost its case. History that once spoke only of a Eurocentric master narrative has lost its credibility. Losing this credibility has helped history regain its appeal.


JH

If not lazy, then dull

ARTSPACE AOTEAROA

Auckland

 

MashuUp 

Curated by Julia Rodrigues

 

7 March - 29 April 2009

The ideas in this project about cross cultural layering and related tensions are complex, but the show itself doesn’t clarify such issues. For an Auckland audience Mash Up needs an articulate essay elucidating the specific ideas of Benjamin and de Campos and explaining why the individual artworks have been selected. The line up, alas, is disappointingly dreary. There is just so little excitement.

JH

Piscine Flight 485 from Sydney to Auckland now boarding

Auckland

 

Paola Pivi 

I wish I am a fish

24 hour, ONE DAY SCULPTURE, Hangar 4, Auckland Airport

 

21 March, 5pm

Through creating an image of extravagance in a time of recession Pivi could be presenting something really powerful for the international art community to think about, questioning the raison d’être of these art fairs, or perhaps even international events like ONE DAY SCULPTURE. It might even be critiquing its own existence. However if you look at her history of images, it is more likely she is an artist who just loves incongruous juxtapositions, and the way light falls on water or fur or snow

JH

Tentacles of Capitalism

STARKWHITE

Auckland

 

Martin Basher 

Free Spirit No Interest

 

10 March - 4 April 2009

Basher’s critique


JH
Tahi Moore, "Against Other People"

What is it about film?

Gambia Castle, A Centre for Art, Window Online

Auckland

 

Tahi Moore

War Against the Self

13 March - 4 April 2009 (Gambia)

Against Other People

4 March - 21 March 2009 (A Centre for Art)

 

Lisa Stansbie

Hackamore

12 March - 10 April 2009 (Window)

 

 


Film installations

JH
Weibke Loeper

German Photography

BATH STREET GALLERY

Auckland

 

Presentation Representation Part 2

Curated by Thomas Weski of the Haus de Kunst (Munich). Toured by the IFA and Goethe Institut.

 

17 March - 28 March 2009

The five photographers in the second half of this German show are so good I cursed myself for missing the first half. Superbly installed by its own globe trotting technician, this display is a remarkable flagwaver for German culture. The work is pristine, elegant, remarkably fresh and fastidiously hung. It looks as if the curator lived in Auckland instead of Munich, and had the L-shaped Bath St Gallery in mind right from the start.

JH

Social Shift

Jensen

 

Sydney

 

Jude Rae

10 March - 17 April 2009

The sense of drama achieved by using a historical narrative is a new area for Rae, one that moves away from her usual contemplative spatial preoccupations towards active commentary. A shift from quietistic murmurings to that of being more actively vocal. An interest in the social manifest in paint.


JH

Mitchell Wizardry

STARKWHITE

Auckland

 

Dane Mitchell

Mitchell Wizardry

 

10 March  - 4 April 2009

His show plays with belief structures, implying that if you are sceptical of witchcraft (something he has occasionally used in his projects), then why not treat art assumptions based on what artists say, the same way. Artists are striving to achieve certain ends for their work via the use of artists’ statements or writing, and these are like spells that need to be efficacious to succeed.