Most galleries are not open early in the week, so I earmarked Saturday afternoon August 5 as the day to do a gallery crawl. The day began with my first film of the NZIFF, Manifesto, at 11am at the Paramount, which had the day before celebrated its 100th anniversary.* This was an intriguing and appropriate start to the festival, as it was a film about art movements, or rather, a commentary on art movements; it is described by Wikipedia as “a 2015 Australian-German multi-screen film installation… (which) features Cate Blanchett in 13 different roles performing various manifestos. The film was shot over 12 days in December 2014 in locations in and around Berlin. … (It) integrates various types of artist manifestos from different time periods with contemporary scenarios. Manifestos are depicted by 13 different characters, among them a school teacher, factory worker, choreographer, punk, newsreader, scientist, puppeteer, widow, and a homeless man.”
The film appears to be quite slow at times, but a better word might be deliberative. It is also fast-paced and at times dense, not lacking in satire and humour, and with some surprise appearances from Cate Blanchett’s family. Blanchett herself offers, not unexpectedly, some great performances in her many roles. I am looking forward to seeing it again, at least once.
After the film I had a quick lunch of avocado and crackers back at the YHA and headed to City Gallery where I saw two exhibitions upstairs (the current one, opening yesterday August 12, was being installed on the ground floor), Petra Cortright: Running neo-geo games under mame: and Martino Gamper: 100 chairs in 100 days. I have taken this from the the Gallery site:
“I’ve tried regular painting before—it’s the slowest, dumbest thing on the planet. You can’t undo, you can’t copy and paste, I don’t have the patience for it. The whole waiting for paint to dry thing just doesn’t work for me. —Petra Cortright
Petra Cortright has been called ‘the Monet of the twenty-first century’. The LA-based artist gives analogue painting a digital makeover. Shifting between the digital and the physical worlds, Cortright interrogates definitions of painting and questions the boundaries of online/offline existence.”
I am not sure I agree with her about “regular painting”, but in the same way that the big David Hockney exhibition in Melbourne earlier this year immediately inspired me to try some digital drawing/painting, when I had previously eschewed even contemplating such a medium, so did this exhibition cause me to ponder further how I might use this technology in my own work.
Next door was the 100 chairs installation, which I spent quite a long time wandering around before and after the Petra Cortright. I am being lazy again, but the City Gallery website explains it best – “he made a chair a day for a hundred days by collaging components of old found chairs. By blending their stylistic and structural elements, he generated perverse, poetic, and humorous hybrids—each one unique. Creative restrictions were key to the experiment—being limited to materials at hand and the time available.”
The chairs were displayed in two section of the large space. At one end they were arranged in rows of six and columns of seven, at the other more randomly, especially as these were more irregular in shape and scale. Between the two groups was the last chair, made especially for this exhibition (a fun fact I wouldn’t have known had I not entered into a discussion with one of the attendants/explainers/protectors). I photographed every chair individually so I could see them again later, as well as wider views of the installation.
There’s an artist’s statement by Gamper on the link to his installation above which is worth reading, but the exhibition can be enjoyed regardless of whether the viewer (this one, anyway) has referred to the background and motivation.
Before leaving the City Gallery I inquired about the best place to head in order to see as many galleries as possible in the time remaining, and was pleased to discover that there was an Art Map available.
First stop was Page Blackie, which was a must-see I recalled from last year. Recently opened was Elizabeth Thomson: the black-and-whites. Again, from the gallery website:
Elizabeth Thomson’s The Black-and-Whites exhibition celebrates the artist’s lifelong fascination with merging art and science. Cast bronze black and white moths are installed to create incredible patterns, as though the moths have landed together using a higher sense to collectively create a pattern of chevrons or diamonds.
I didn’t pick the landing together notion from looking at the exhibition – the various arrangements seemed to be informed by balance and pattern – but I was pleased that I chose to spend more time wandering around to look more closely at what appeared at first glance to be an exhibition of multiples. I recognised a number of the butterflies (they are not just moths) by their shapes, from having painted them myself in full colour in the past, and became immersed in finding the subtle differences in their markings and I walked around. As is almost always the case in New Zealand galleries, the person at the desk was friendly, enthusiastic and helpful.
Adjacent to this gallery is Avid, set up by the owners to showcase contemporary art objects and jewellery. Had the woman at the counter and I not started talking after I asked about the availability of the little book written by Laurence Fearnley (New Zealand author whose work I enjoy) especially to accompany some ceramic works, we would not have discovered that her good friend from near where I live was also my best friend at art school, and now head of print-making back where we began. We had a wide-ranging discussion about film, art and how we may not have discovered our shared connection if it hadn’t been for Laurence. I eventually hurriedly made my way to the other galleries that were still open, mainly in Cuba St, where I was later going for the vegan night market.
The nearest was Meanwhile, in Willis St, and on the way there I decided to have my afternoon coffee in a place that was still open, Pandoro. For the first time, it was reasonably priced, with no excuse of “the cost of milk has gone up” in order to justify a highly inflated price for a coffee with hardly any milk in it.
At Meanwhile I was greeted by one of this artist-run space’s facilitator’s who provided some background on the current installation which, at first glance was barely noticeable, if not entirely invisible. Site-specific, it comprised some acetate on the floor which had been drawn to give the appearance of floorboards and some foam builder’s filler which had been pumped into the gaps on the walls, with some framework prised out a little in order to squeeze some filler in behind. I did not make a note of the artist and can’t recognise it in any of the links on the website so can offer no further information.
Before I left I chatted with the facilitator about the work, the space, and the good arrangement they had regarding their lease, and about other galleries worth visiting . He mentioned the Adam Gallery up on the university campus, where there was a group show on in which his partner (cleaning up her studio behind a wall) was participating. I already had a note on my gallery map after a recommendation from the owner of Avid so I redoubled my intention to get there early in the week.
From there I made my way, after a quick stop at Unity Books (or maybe that was before coffee…), to find the galleries in Cuba St that, according to the Art Map, were still going to be open. My only successes were with Matchbox Studios, which is a retail outlet with an exhibition space at the back and Thistle Hall Gallery, where one of the participants of the about-to-close show 59 (Linda Evangaline Smith & Johannes Mueller-Welschof) was on hand to talk about his work to gallery visitors. Although Kiwi Art House was listed as being open until 5.30, when I found it around 4.30 it was well and truly closed.
Cuba Street was buzzing as usual with shoppers and others, and I went to check out the vegan markets, which I had heard would be open at 5. Nothing was happening until 6 so I went to Arty Bees Bookshop round the corner in Manners St to see if they had any second-hand Fearnley books, but they didn’t. I also discovered that there was another second-hand bookshop in Cuba St called Ferret Bookshop but by that time it was closed.
And the next part of the evening is recorded in the earlier post, About food.
More about art soon.
*but which I discover when googling for more information on the cinema is closing its doors in September because the cinema owners were not able to negotiate a lease with the owner of the building, who wants to turn it into a hotel or something! This is appalling!
artsurfdance 