Materials published

Matters
Ed. Sam Rountree Williams
Contributors: Matthew Crookes, John Ward Knox, Sam Rountree Williams, Mythily Meher, Nell May (Cover: Alexandra Savtchenko-Belskaia)
pp.20, b/w drawings
Newcall, August 2008
$5.00 (from Newcall directly)

Matters 2
Ed. Sam Rountree Williams
Contributors: Jan Bryant, Amy Howden-Chapman, Sarah Hopkinson, Andrew Clifford, Laura Preston (Cover: Alexandra Savtchenko-Belskaia)
pp.50, b/w and colour photographs
Newcall, August 2009
$10.00 (from Newcall directly)

These two Newcall publications are out just as a third (edited by John Ward Knox) is about to appear within the Newcall component of the next ARTSPACE show. The first one, a thinner, blue-covered booklet with no photographs, has apparently been out for a while. It is, apart from a Rountree Williams article on a Martyn Reynolds and Marnie Slater performance, mainly writing not linked to specific shows. The short texts are well chosen, all having not only informative content, but also a fluid sensual style – to be read for pure pleasure in itself.

In fact it is a superior publication in terms of writing to the second Matters which is technically more advanced with its coloured illustrations. Over the last two years I have read many texts by most of the first Matters contributors, and Rountree Williams presents them here at their very best. All the writing is pitched perfectly, and can be enjoyed over and over.

In comparison Matters 2 has three stand-out contributions: Andrew Clifford on the convoluted university procedural requirements behind the setting up of Window’s Various Artists exhibition, Amy Howden-Chapman on Fiona Connor, and Sarah Hopkinson on Richard Frater.

Clifford is a great art journalist (and excellent curator) who can effortlessly explain the most complicated art-political scenario in lucid language. Here he has a thorough understanding of the conceptual intricacies underpinning the enforced bureaucratic paperwork and manages to turn the various hoops the curators and artists (particularly Rountree Williams and Holly Willson) had to jump through into quite a gripping and entertaining yarn.

Amy Howden-Chapman on Fiona Connor’s Half The Page exhibition at Gambia Castle is another superb article where she discusses Connor’s research material and how this show of replicas came together, mixed with her own concise observations about newspaper display racks, their duplicates - and one’s thinking habits when encountering them.

Sarah Hopkinson’s article fascinated me because of the way at a certain point in her discussion about Frater’s work she admits some components of his Newcall exhibition So long the difficulties of being single cause misgivings. I admired the honesty of her ambivalence (it is extremely rare for curators to say such things) as she attempted to articulate the complexities and contradictions of her analysis.

The writing by Jan Bryant and Laura Preston I did not admire, simply because – irrespective of content and authorial candour - they should not be writing about shows they organised (or helped organise) themselves: in these cases, Broken Fall (AUT and Newcall) and Vincent Grocery (at Enjoy). It was irresponsible for Rountree Williams to include them, for their participation trivialises Matters and turns it into a public relations rag, much like an Air New Zealand magazine you read on a plane. It was a wrong call. Publications like this should avoid overt flag-waving by self–interested participants, and at least attempt a little objectivity.

Pinned fabric pieces and slides

Amy Howden-Chapman: I used to think the only lonely place was on the moon
Newcall
3 June - 20 June, 2009

Amy Howden-Chapman is well known as half of the Wellington based performance group Raised By Wolves. Here at Newcall where she has performed on an earlier occasion, she presents a number of items: a carousel of sequenced slides projected on one wall; another projector on the floor, lightless with the carousel rotating while covered with rumpled plastic; a narrow catalogue of four brief, but beautifully constructed, essays from different authors; and eight fabric paintings made of triangles of striped cotton, pinned in angular configurations on the walls. The latter dominate the room.

Howden-Chapman’s slide projection however catches your eye first. It shows the lush green vegetation of the Amazon rain forest, blurrily photographed from the river. One salient lengthy sequence shows a large tree falling and crashing through the dense undergrowth. There are no signs of millers.

The Irish Empiricist philosopher George Berkeley (1685-1753) once argued that if something is not perceived it does not exist. If a tree falls in an isolated forest it not only does not make a sound if there is no one around to hear it, but it doesn’t exist either. If it does exist, the reason is because God watches over the forest too, and He perceives it.

These two carousels seem to comment on Berkeley - as do the fabric constellations which look like kites or geometric birds in the sky. They seem to represent a spiritual dimension, an all pervading omnipresent power. There is also something slightly Native American about the motifs.

To construct these forms the various striped cotton triangles, diamonds and skinny parallelograms have been cut from bedspreads or tablecloths made up of stitched coloured bands, and as such are related to quilts such as those made by Amish and other religious communities in America. The pulsing bands in these sections when pinned up are mostly aligned horizontally, occasionally diagonally, and very rarely vertically.

When contrasting striped tones are alternated and not too harsh, the chroma glows softly and is reminiscent of sections of paintings like Rousseau’s The Sleeping Gypsy. However Howden-Chapman in her positioning of these linked (but never overlapping) snipped triangles is not precious about finish. The borders are left as cut, a little ragged with some loose threads not tidied up. Some of her geometric configurations look improvised on the spot, and others seem carefully preplanned. With these very portable works, the larger combinations tend to be symmetrical; smaller ones not.

In an included essay she herself has written, Howden-Chapman looks on grunge as “an attempt to protect the ability to feel in amongst a deluge of manipulation” and in a discussion about overhype, says this:

Back in the nineties…people were ‘Friends of The Earth and conservationists. People were still chaining themselves to trees, and hugging without irony. The same impulses are still being played out now with a new language… attempts by governments to implement the ‘greening’ of the economy’ has come with ‘green washing’ the environmentalist values for profit. Cars that are just slightly more fuel efficient than regular cars are being advertised as having the ability ‘to protect your family and the earth.

I think her idealism is reflected in the fabric wall paintings, art which Laura Preston in her essay compares to Tomma Abts’ practice – as being ‘uncertain documents’ that come from ‘an intuitive approach’. These works though, being of fabric, are closer to the art of seventies feminist 'craft' painters like Joyce Kozloff or Miriam Schapiro, and don’t seem so time–based in process as Abts. They are not like say, Dorothea Rockburne, where the procedures in thinking are laid out in detectable stages. They may be improvised to a degree, but unlike Abts the processes are not embedded in the final visual statement.

This exhibition works as an intriguing cohesive statement rather than as a collection of honed individual parts. With three excellent essays and one inflammatory interview in the catalogue (Anna Sanderson and Genevieve Michaels are included) it is a classy well articulated presentation about craft, changing taste, cynicism and eco-politics.