Collage seems a useful metaphor for contemporary life in the digital age. A collage disrupts accepted meanings by taking found images clipped from their original context, then mixing them up and rearranging them. It’s happening around us constantly across all media. Curator Sian van Dyk provides a small survey of the practice in Cut + Paste, […]
“No ideas but in things,” wrote American poet William Carlos Williams in 1946. As I talked to Vivien Atkinson, Petra Stueben and Kelly McDonald about their ornament/artefact exhibition at Toi Pōneke, the quote swam in my head. Williams was referring to poetry, but these artists consider our relationship with things — what we emotionally invest […]
Enjoy Public Art Gallery has been on the cultural landscape in Wellington since 2000. If you haven’t been there, it’s on level one at 147 Cuba Street, and was established as an artists-run non-commercial project space. As a project space, Enjoy is able to show work that public institutions don’t take on. It’s a place where […]
I was in a grey mood the afternoon I visited Yvonne Todd’s Creamy Psychology exhibition at City Gallery (on until 1 March). In the background of my day, a lover was playing stupid games, and the wind and rain, unabated for days, made everything annoying. I felt depressed and fed up. The photographic images in the […]
A couple of months ago, Raewyn Atkinson and I met at Golding’s to talk about her new work, currently on view at the Bowen Galleries. It was a light September afternoon and we sat outside warming our backs in the late-afternoon sun. I told her my sorry story of missing her 2013 exhibition at Bowen […]
Hidden in the depths of Wellington’s creative district lies a treasure trove of multi-talented people dedicated to the arts. The Toi Pōneke Arts Centre comprises two rather unassuming buildings on Abel Smith Street (originally the home of the Wellington Education Board and given their new role in 2009, some 20 years after the board was […]
Art markets and art fairs have been part of the international landscape of contemporary art for about 30 years. In Aotearoa they are a relatively new phenomenon — the Auckland Art Fair opened only in 2006. In Wellington, the art fair concept took a more specialised route with the advent of the Māori Art Market in […]
When I worked at City Gallery Wellington in 2001, we borrowed some Janet Paul works for an exhibition from Kaye Roberts. Kaye ran the Brooker Gallery in Kelburn for many years but had retired by then. The day I collected the works from her home, I admired a ceramic horse by Juliet Peter in the […]
The City Gallery is at last living up to its promise. Former director Paula Savage had a big vision for the gallery and was instrumental in bringing in international exhibitions and artists throughout the 1990s. This included memorable work by Tony Oursler, Tony Cragg, Rosemarie Trockel, Keith Haring, Robert Mapplethorpe, Frida Kahlo, Nam June Paik, […]
I first encountered Seung Yul Oh’s work at Te Papa six years ago. Four Oddooki 2008 pieces were installed in the sculpture court on the rooftop. Seung describes these large egg birds as performance sculptures — they rock backwards and forwards when pushed, like some toy from childhood writ large. Their wit and joyfulness are […]
