Creative Collision Blog

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Gift

Very much looking forward to this! When the Auckland Art Gallery received the collection, they held a small preview of the Matisse, Dali and Picasso pieces. I missed out on that but I'm determined to see the full collection when the gallery reopens after its long makeover and improvement.

What a fitting way to reintroduce that key art building. Spearheaded by the legacy of famous artists and New York philanthropists (also NZ lovers) Julian and Josie Robertson, and complete with dazzling new facilities to open art to the wider public, there is surely many things to look forward to for the Auckland art scene.

The Robertson collection will be displayed free to the public in the new Julian and Josie Robertson Galleries from 3 September until 30 October 2011

Grief

Street art on Colombo Street, Christchurch, have popped up commemorating the compassion shown by a police officer when Japanese mourners came to the site of disaster. Unfortunately someone has defaced the street art, showing just how fragile, tactile and public street art can be. Somehow the modifications are reading as street art - it is a purely organic move, although it slightly ruins the reading of original artist's dignified effort and intention.

Precinct

Today was a crisp (read cold) winter's day, perfect weather to briskly walk around, taking advantage of heating in each spot of the urban environment. I decided to visit the Art Precinct down around the Auckland Art Gallery. For the third visit in a row, the blessed Goldie & Lindauer: Approaching Portraiture exhibition was still up and so was the Local Revolutionaries: Art & Change 1965 – 1986 show. Good exhibitions but does it seriously have to be around so long?? Thank goodness for Brian Brake: Lens on the World. You cannot miss it.

Upstairs the damn Call Waiting exhibition had made itself scarce for a collection of Brake's most outstanding works. I had first heard of Brian Brake from a good friend (also a creative) who said that seeing this exhibition was the feature of her trip to Wellington, even up against the various other shows at Te Papa. Now I know why. The pictures had the ability to bring you worlds away, some closer to home, each selection spanning cultures, history and sheer geography.

Photography never was really about beauty, but capturing the thing behind the thing. The real dedication to this was shown in a short documentary where Brake narrated his own story and philosophy of his art, breathing life into his oeuvre. Funnily enough, a photography show at the John Leech gallery was a sombre photo collection of the Pink and White Terraces. The photos made me think of things beyond the images (lots of terrain) and ponder it's existence if it were to be here today. The gallery staff and I agreed: what wonderful hot pools they would have been!

The other exhibition I was looking forward to seeing was the Damien Hirst mini collection at the Gow Langsford Gallery. The Dead and The Souls. Hirst is really about the drama that bursts from such a theme as existence and fragility, or at least what I read from this very tiny collection (4 skulls, three moth/butterflies and a wall full of prints). Although the pieces are really fascinating in their unsubtle subtleties (look closely at the details when you see them), Hirst still gives too much of a en masse entrepreneur vibe for my personal taste.

The Art Precinct is a strange place. Twisted and seemingly centred around a gunky courtyard with an outdated women's suffrage mural, it's almost hard to see what it has to offer. You have to explore the spaces, find the galleries which, for me, is one of it's appealing (and entertaining) qualities of space. This visit left me fruitful with inspiration but this is not always the case; it is limited in many ways. Sometimes I just wish this precinct would grow the hell up and become a creative well for all of those creatives around the city. I have high hopes for the new extension of the Auckland Art Gallery (opening 3rd September).

Copy

What creative person hasn't "reappropriated" something before? Some fancy facade, or a fascinating composition? Whole paintings even - that was how young painters used to learn the art of art, sheer copying. Now someone is being sued for it, by the copying of various poses in photography. One photographer pitted against another.
Artist Janine “Jah Jah” Gordon has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against photographer Ryan McGinley for copyright infringement, arguing that 150 of McGinley’s photographs, including several used in an ad campaign for Levi’s, a co-defendant in the suit, are “substantially based” on Gordon’s original work.
It has to be pointed out that it wasn't a very subtle way of using what might have been his inspiration. Nor was the genesis in the photos acknowledged which probably set off Jah Jah's fuse. Still, I am uncertain whether the plaintiff would win this legal battle. Inspiration and ideas, the traditions that have created a rock hard foundation for taking and copying and reliving are so instilled within the creative life that even legal technicalities might not breach it.

Utility

Think hydroelectric dam and very little precedence comes forth to imagination. Block wall, stops water, lets a bit fall out in a big cascade, useful. The very aesthetic of most hydroelectric dams read as just that; one can read exactly how it works from how it's built.

Becker Architekten begs to differ. Somehow they have twisted utilitarianism to a thing of beauty and, what I think it is more important, mystery. Makes us think twice about any structure worth its weight in utility.


Retro

In this day and age of plastic gadgets and sleek chic design, a wooden thing is practically a rare thing. All those hours of milling, sanding and drilling hardly makes it worth the instant plastic moulding technologies out there. So here is iPhone + wooden dock:

And this is not the only one. Retro mini TV, old school radio box - Jonas Damon draws his inspiration from that which is not today. The idea of using retro forms seem more important than the design itself (most are aesthetic only products after all). Countless iPhone accessories line themselves out the door for dazzled Apple fans: why not have the worked-up wooden version? What an iRoll.