Nice surprises

Elam Art Upfront: The Foyer Art Project
Curated by Sonya Korohina and Mythily Meher
Various windows and foyers in Shortland St
6 March - 20 March 2009
Auckland Festival

Here we have five downtown corporate venues in the upper reaches of Shortland St – spaces that are often visible from the street - and nine artists. Good artists who because they are immensely varied, make this a show worth making the effort to get to. Lots of unexpected things to ruminate over.

Let’s start near the top of the street and zigzag our way down.

Shortland Street Chambers (#70) has three artists. Firstly there is Florence Wild in the window. She likes to write out a cursive script by draping lines of cassette tape across a space so you can read words. The lines are suspended in the air by invisible threads of nylon. She seems to be a bit of a punster who loves anagrams. This one says Live Evil, and as it is audio tape it is likely to be of commercially recorded music. Perhaps it is from a cassette of Miles Davis’ live recording of the same name. Behind the window glass the wrinkled, brown, skinny ribbons shimmer in the sunlight.

In the foyer, leaning against the wall near the lifts are two photographs (Work is Work) presented by Fiona Gillmore and Louise Menzies. The images of a stream in some lush tropical bush are blandly dull, but the nearby wall label is immensely interesting. It tells us that the artists purchased the images from the national Geographic Image Library via Getty Images, who laid down three strict stipulations. (1.) Only to be displayed internally, i.e. indoors. (2.) In one location only. (3.) For six months only, then the licence expires. These terms intrigue as they ensure obsolescence and likely renewal of purchase. Not much generosity there.

Also at this address was a Timothy Chapman sculpture which I didn't see but which is pictured above. It had a sibling I discovered at AXA.

Across the street just inside the door leading up to the NZ Post office (#69) we can see Tiffany Singh's presentation: moulded wax effigies from India placed on interlocking triangles of spread rice and herbal powders. Fruit and flowers dipped in wax can be seen from the street on the window ledge but hidden on the floor below are ines of the mentioned plump elephant gods and pointy angular Madonnas. The beeswax has a penetrating aroma that is quite overpowering when you go inside.

In the WHK Gosling Chapman Tower (within The Shortland Centre at #51-53) is a dramatic display of six hollow fibre-glass spheres by Priscilla Brown that vary in size. These have been suggestively stained with undulating organic patterns of black ink and areas of ‘skin’ removed. They seem to have a printmaker’s graphic sensibility, and so are unusual when seen on large sculpture. Brown’s orbs have a real presence, successfully competing with the Bing Dawe sculpture attached to the low ceiling above them.

In the AXA centre (#41) we can see works by three artists. A very special treat is provided by the moving image and sound installation of Katie Theunissen. Her three projections dramatically exploit blurred motion created by tumbling rolls of bandage, jerking bags of spilling flour and suspended but stationary, testicular pear-shaped forms. Theunissen knows how to make compelling viewing out of the most simple of methods. She has a real instinct for strikingly lit movement that holds your attention, has ocular appeal but which is also theatrical and vaguely profound.

Roisin Moore’s three photographs of plants growing alongside the AXA building comment on the sterility of AXA’s foyer area where they are placed, as they do the external sites being documented. On her label she compares her photos with fake plants but actually they lose out in the comparison. Fake plastic pot plants have more appeal than her dry, somewhat icy, photographic images.

On the outside of a skylight just around the corner, but viewable from below, is a giant plunger created by Timothy Chapman. The handle trembles and flickers through the glass like a stamen on a flower. Its movement brings a nervousness that makes the sculpture anthropomorphic, denying any possible reading as Pop Art but showcasing the airy environment affecting it.

At 34 Shortland Street Warren Childs manages to upstage Dick Frizzell’s nearby mural of rippled Australian bottle glass. Childs’ black tubular plinths have flat mirrored tops that look like whopper guitar picks. They hold bizarrely shaped, glass-tanked mini-motorcycles with large chrome exhausts. These small choppers seem like colourful rocket-ships that have morphed into insects. They seem inseparable from the shrewdly constructed plinths that possibly were once plants conceived by J.G. Ballard. It’s an unusual pairing of gently lumbering botany meeting a delicate but abruptly stilled velocity.

Admirable Russian idiocy

Gluklya & Tsaplya (Factory of Found Clothing): The Greatest Idiot in New Zealand
Snowwhite (Unitec): 9 March - 20 March 2009
MIC Toi Rerehiko 7 March - 18 April 2009

Marcus Williams, the lecturer and curator at Unitec has done Auckland a real service in bringing out these two Russian women to introduce us to their Neo-Marxist and feminist interventionist practice. The last time we had Russian artist visitors was when Greg Burke brought Brodsky and Utkin to Wellington's City Gallery in 1992. So now, with this their utopian project that encourages peace and harmony, Gluklya and Tsaplya function in a littoral way, with one foot just barely touching the art community (like a tag-wrestler’s corner) and the other more firmly in the much larger ‘life world’ (the ring). It is so ambitious.

I’m also impressed by the thoroughness of this Unitec - MIC collaboration and how the two exhibitions both need to be seen for the whole project to be understood. (The Snowwhite show has far too short a duration.)

Now personally, and here is a point of contention, unlike these utopian, vehemently political artists, I don’t believe art has to be compassionate or ‘on the side of the weak.’ I’m not saying it shouldn’t, only that moral behaviour and good art don’t always march to the beat of the same drum. I accept that wonderful artists can be morally dubious. They don’t have to be noble. They can even be despicable – and so be deserving of derisive comment for their actions as people. However I see personal behaviour and private beliefs as separate from quality in art. Some artists – like Lena Riefenstahl, have done amazing work that had evil consequences. Great thinkers like Heidegger and de Man wrote dreadful things at certain periods of their lives, yet their contributions to the history of philosophical debate live on. When Gluklya and Tsaplya say ‘Compassion is an understanding of the weakness of others’, and we apply it to artists, that is exactly right.

Okay, the shows. Each has two parts. One focuses on The Idiot project in Auckland; the other on contextual material that sheds light on the modus operandi of the Factory of Found Clothing. In Snowwhite that is a display of modified women’s clothing made in Russia and not for sale, and in MIC it’s a selection of terrific, surprisingly entertaining videos.(The ones with the marching sailors and posing businessmen holding white dresses show just how persuasive these artists can be.)

The Auckland project is centred on finding somebody comparable with Dostoevsky’s Prince Myshkin, somebody who is totally forgiving, selflessly compassionate, and magnanimously generous to all. (Sounds impossible doesn't it?) All five nominated individuals who made up a short list from which one was to be chosen, are highly esteemed because of their openhearted community service, but are not necessarily innocent of the ways of the world like Myshkin.

So which one of the five was voted to be the ultimate, the ‘greatest’ Idiot? A community worker, Ivy Smith, won for her care of multi-cultural youth in New Lynn, and so she has a 'minishow' in MIC where she discusses her work, personal background, and what motivates her. The organisation she is linked to will receive the proceeds from sales of garments donated by the four other finalists, and proceeds from other sales from the Utopian Shop at Snowwhite. These articles of clothing have been modified by the artists and their helpers with stitched symbolic emblems, printed fabric photographs and personal motifs like tattoos. Her own modified garments will also be gifted to her.

There is something quite fascinating about these Russian intellectuals committed to building a better world by incorporating methods that sometimes suggest white magic and very ancient ritual. The Russian garments on display at Snowwhite are intriguing - even hilarious - with sewn on ambiguous references to sex and motherhood (such as nipples/teats or phalluses/rusks), or working groups in factories and families (with photographs or stitched on newspaper clippings).

Yet for me, it is not the social value or moral worthiness of the endeavour that makes it good art (such questions about it as ‘art’ are irrelevant to its pragmatics anyway) but the clever organisation of its interlocking components on different sites, the humour and energy of the clothes and video, and the depth of the knowledge and passion behind the project. We have so little involvement with Russian art anyway (if that is what it is?) so it is a great chance to see what the Unitec residency can do. Explore both venues if you can.

maps has left a comment about the

Brett Graham show

Comments from Paul Brobbel, Agnes, Tinks, and artfromspace on

Looks good but

Static and moving Julien

Isaac Julien: Te Tonga Tuturu /True South (Apparatus)
Two Rooms
6 March - 4 April 2009

Isaac Julien’s installation True North at St Paul St was for many the highlight of Turbulence, the last Auckland Triennial. It was exceptionally striking with its multiple screens, dramatic polar imagery, post-colonial anti-masculinist themes and remarkable clarity of sound, so this new show of work made during a recent Two Rooms residency, will have created much anticipation.

It uses all the Two Rooms galleries, and includes some moving image and a lot of constructed photographs that refer to their own devising. Pieces of lighting equipment are lying around, and the most of the images have had the forms digitally reconfigured or the colours tweaked - as if he has used a filter.

Many of the themes of True North are in True South, namely that of exploration and dramatic landscape. No snow or ice this time round, but lots of lush sub-tropical vegetation. The sharpness of the blue-green in the glowing light-boxes and much bigger lambda prints really hits you. With panoramic breadth, rich chroma and everywhere a precise acuity, there is little of the blinding, optical dazzle of True North.

Aotearoa’s bush covered landforms are so richly complex compared to the austerity of the flat ‘Arctic’ he constructed for True North that Julien seems utterly enraptured in the source material for his representations, despite the incorporation of equipment used to create ‘natural’ images. In the end his static images are a bit ordinary, particularly to New Zealand eyes - because such scenes are commonplace and his alterations are too subtle. It is with the moving image and editing that his talent shines.

That is why his two screen installation of Dungeness, a super-8 homage to the charismatic innovative film-maker Derek Jarman, is the best thing in the show. It has a lively spontaneity as images of Jarman, his house and garden, and his actress friend Tilda Swinton, jump back and forth between the two screens. It has an appealing rawness that makes you want to see more (it is fresher, shorter and simpler than his full-feature Derek, and seems to be off-cuts from that film), whereas his static landscape images in comparison are over-cooked, over-processed, over-thought.

Looks good but....

Terry Urbahn video installation: The Sacred Hart
St.Matthew–in–the-City
Festival Event
9 March - 12 March 2009 10 am - 10 pm.

This is one of those so-called community art projects that people ooh and aah over when they hear the proposal but which in actuality causes disappointment when they realise it is not what they thought it would be. It is two and a half hours of tedium that will be totally baffling to Aucklanders, as it was made for New Plymouth audiences. Even Taranaki people though, will find it hard to stick around for more than ten minutes.

The idea is a filmed gathering of about a dozen people having a ’last supper’ in the downstairs bar of the White Hart, the well known pub across the street from the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery. All various people who at different times used to frequent the bar. Not a bad idea for a project, it should be good. The people include an ex-Govett-Brewster director (John McCormack); a local artist (Don Driver) very briefly; a couple of members of the local resident bike gang, the Magogs, one whom became a city councillor; the owner of a local CD and music store; and some earlier owners of the hotel.

The problem is that it is far too long, and the conversation (what little you can hear of it) is hardly sparkling. However visually it is sensational, and rich in allusions to Derek Jarman’s ‘Caravaggio’ and Peter Greenaway’s ‘The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.’ The candle-lit feast held on a very long table looks wonderful set up in front of the bar. The camera on a dolly slowly moves backwards and forwards, out and away and back again.

To make the installation the back-projected screen is set into a steep arch on the left-hand side of the church’s interior. Close by, in front and to one side, is a replica of the famous carved deer that stands on the roof of the pub. Urbahn’s version has a woman’s front left foot.

Terry Urbahn is a highly respected artist – originally from New Plymouth - who very rarely makes fizzers like this. Affable and loquacious in temperament, he often creates art with communities he interacts with normally in his ‘non-art’ life - like rugby teams, surfie groups, or rock bands. Here I think, his affection for his friends and home town caused a lapse in proposal planning judgement. He's a very persuasive personality. The results here show that to be a pity.

Magnificent Mrkusich

Trans-Form: The Abstract Art of Milan Mrkusich
Curated by Alan Wright and Edward Hanfling
Gus Fisher
6 March – 2 May 2009

This remarkable exhibition is co-ordinated with the long overdue publication of a book on Milan Mrkusich’s painting practice put together by Auckland University Press. Both show and substantial tome excel, but the show, as a visceral and cerebral experience, is glorious. An absolute knockout.

For never has the Gus Fisher looked as good as it does right now, presenting twenty Mrkusich works. Each of the three galleries has an optically and numerically restrained selection, with every individual item perfectly positioned to resonate with the rest of the room. It makes you want to go and fetch your sleeping bag and boy-scout cooker so you can live permanently on the premises. It is painful to leave.

What is particularly exciting is the varied range of painting formats Mrkusich has invented within the fifty years he has been exhibiting work: unusual combinations of panel placement and spacing, distinctive treatments of surface, new ways of suggesting space and methods of confining that aether – he dazzles with his inventive and consistent investigations, his ongoing preoccupation with Jungian geometry and painterly process.

The significance of that theme as content is a matter of debate. This show’s curators claim, as has the artist always, that the work’s visual properties as design elements are firmly embedded within a symbolic intention. This is contrary to the usual popular reading of these works as ‘formal’, as here, but of course such protests have been commonly expressed by many artists such as Newman, Mondrian or Malevich.

Maybe at the time Mrkusich over-reacted – for since the late seventies his temperament hasn’t seemed particularly ‘mystical’ or transcendent. In hindsight it now seems more clinically rationalist if anything, with his colours and paintwork more industrial and poppy – less brooding and ominous – and more about surface and the immanent. Perhaps he was worried that the notion of ’beauty’, which he clearly was exploring, along with musicality, would attract criticism as ‘vacuous’. Yet one could argue that it is impossible anyway for art of any type – no matter how rigorously formal - not to have content. There is no such thing as art being ‘empty’ of subject matter. Its status as ‘art’ ensures content is always present. The residue of some kind of denotation always remains as a trace. It never totally evaporates. So he was being over-anxious.

In their meticulously researched book, Wright and Hanfling point out the artist’s frustration with the difficulties of gaining acceptance, how he perceived the public as searching for easy narratives, national symbolism or recognisable landscapes in their images. Yet it is intriguing that Mrkusich early on trenchantly insisted on his alchemical content. Aware of Duchamp’s criticism of retinality, he wouldn’t overreact against storytelling, take an extreme position and overtly embrace formalism. It is as if that could be a bad thing. As if visual pleasure for its own sake was harmful. His aims instead were to intuitively arrive at archetypal forms that speak of an underlying TRUTH, forms that alluded to harmonious mental states and which could be found in images like the Buddhist mandalas discussed by Jung.

I’m fascinated by the occasional role of the critic in this book’s discussion. With his very early exhibitions, some of the comments by Wystan Curnow and Gordon Brown about his brushwork being ‘aimless, ’uncontrolled’ or ‘ambiguous’ attracted the artist’s ire, and he fiercely responded in a later catalogue. Yet any commentary at all must have been even rarer then than what it is now. It is fascinating that pioneer commentators like those two attracted such bitterness for their honest observations. Great they were forthright and that their bluntness stung. Great also that Mrkusich responded. That’s the way it should be.