Cage

I was struck by inspiration this morning just as I was about to leave the computer for sunnier things (this just after the end of Daylight Savings after all). John Cage and his "Mushroom Book" of 1972 is a collection of drawings and poetry in a folio format. What caught my attention aside from the realistic renderings of fungi was his lithograph prints.

It's as if the mind and its ponderings fell onto a piece of paper, but as a print, these thoughts and manuscripts were purposely prepared then pressured into the paper. Sometimes there would be a map-like drawing to accompany it.

My journals have always been very text based - it's how I process things. Sure there are visual elements, but I'm keen to try this much less ordered (or ordered chaos) approach as a reflection of my own thought process - sometimes muddled, overlapping and reiterative.

For more on the exhibition in New York City, see Hyperallergic.

Intensity

Heather Hansen is a New Orleans-based artist who creates incredible geometries using her body on pieces of paper. Part performance art, the symmetrical forms made with her movements allude to the Virtruvian Man in many iterations.

The performance of creating a piece such as this is not completely new – in the 2008 Olympic opening ceremony in China, dancers-cum-artists danced upon a sheet, creating an amazing Chinese-style calligraphy painting whilst maintaining the grace of a dance.

Hansen's work is different in its intensity. The sheer focus given to her work and the piece is reflected in the centrally weighted lines she sits in. Her pose at the end of the piece reminds me of meditation and the spell circles of fantasy novels. 

She doesn't mind getting her hands (or her body) dirty. It's a show of the grit involved in art making, countering the usual sterility of the white, curated gallery. 

NZFW6

Not as immersed in NZ Fashion Week as I was last year, but I'll be off to a few NZFW 2013 shows just to keep the creative mind sharp while writing a thesis.

Ticket to the show

The other night I got tickets to the Stolen Girlfriends Club show and as usual (rebelliously) they had an off-site show. It was quite different to shooting last year's show (or maybe it was because I was in the audience as opposed to the photographer's stand) but just as impressive. The style of the clothes were inspired by 'Dirty Magic' so think dark, grungy street style and some avant garde evening wear. It's great to see a mix of male and female clothing in a show, too.

A giant projection on the facade of the building.

Melbourne

A visual summary of my Melbourne trip.

Amazing street art all over the place but this is one of my favourite. Saw a few of the same artist around too - anyone know who did this? (in Stevenson Lane near Chinatown)

Federation Square

Just a mall but had so much architectural effect to the whole thing.

RMIT building by Lyons Architects

The grand hall inside the National Gallery of Victoria - stunning piece of stained glass with Victorian motifs.

Cranes were a common sight, guess Melbourne is developing around its architectural heritage.

National Library of Victoria with two exhibition spaces on the circular spaces wrapping around this central area.

RMIT Design Hub, explored the inside of it quite thoroughly.

One of the many laneways that epitomises Melbourne.

The 'Pixel Building'

An old laneway converted into the lobby of a hotel. Notice the attempt at acknowledging the heritage architecture on the right by an imperfect mirroring.

COCA - contemporary art, unfortunately closed when I went there!

An art installation in the main lobby of NGV, the bowls circulated the water pool and every time they bumped a clear ring of ceramic can be heard.

There are also more photos on my Google+ album.

Drive

Many may have noticed the Drive Social billboards up around NZ. My first impression is that it's to combat road rage, if in a very passive approach of doing so. Looks like I'm right - the crux of the concept is that if you know who your fellow drivers are then you will be a better driver.

Bit of a leap there.. high hopes for a billboard-website campaign. The billboards have been pretty uninformative, they didn't really carry all that much of a message until you partake in the lengthy website infographic at http://drivesocial.co.nz/.

Bit of guerilla street art over the large billboard image.

What I find more interesting is what some cycling enthusiasts in Whangarei. A bit of handle bar tape and there you have it: "don't forget about the cyclists!" Someone makes a good point about the campaign too, although the net links us where real world connection are often unlikely it still seems like a round about way to 'be' social:

"It seems that a campaign encouraging you to drive to work in an isolating automobile, then use a computer device to communicate with a human, who is often metres from you, has its heart in the right place, yet is going about things in a very roundabout way."

For a bit of an article about the newly defaced billboard, a form of engagement to the campaign I suppose, see the Northern Advocate article. Thanks to @nzdodo and @kaupapa for tweeting this.

13

13 Rooms - the 27th Kaldor Public Art Project

13 Rooms is a collection of 'living sculpture', the 27th Kaldor Public Art Project. Is this performance art?  It has vibes of buskers on Queen St or Amanda Palmer's 8-foot bride but in the distilled gallery environment, these pieces confuse and confront. I love the ideas embedded in this variety of work.

Making a statement on the archetypal 'high art' plinth.

One of the curators, Klaus Biesenbach, talks about how you are compelled to think certain pieces are merely video installations, or a tricky projection, or perhaps a life-like model. Once you enter the room, you are faced with a live human. Art has too often taken the representation path. The realness of 13 Rooms is so much more engaging.

It is only on for 11 days so make sure you get in quick if you're in Sydney. It's free too! Probably only on for a week because of all the staffing - they really made the effort.

Lady

Here's a bit of pre-Banksy feminist guerilla art, going against the general wave of the times.

Worm

More correctly an aquatic caddis fly larvae, artist Hubert Dupprat sets up these insects to build their cocoon with materials of his choosing. The larva, in the absence of gravel, sand and twigs that is their norm, start decorating their silk cocoons with rather more precious materials: gold, semi-precious metals, pearls, gems...

Somehow the insects go about this with a sort of pattern making - some might call it "aesthetic" but for this little larvae who probably just wants to survive the ordeal, it's probably primal instinct. Strange but these sculptures are fascinatingly similar to contemporary jewellery. Minus the legs and little caddis worm head.

Something about it seems natural but the imprint of human intervention is so surely apparent. The poor creatures are also exhibited in little aquariums, showing the temporary results of a more long term experiment. From each lifecycle to another, a new insect may choose a previously made case and expand/rework it.

For more about The Wonderful Caddis Worm: Sculptural Work in Collaboration with Trichoptera see Leonardo Online or read an interview with the artist himself. 

Hotere

With great sadness I report the passing of Ralph Hotere, one of my favourite artists and an outstanding example of an artist-activitst. Described as the 'warrior artist' he uses his art as an arsenal to fight issues of injustice, destruction of the environment and of deep spirituality.

The courage displayed in his work pervades the ongoing timeline of NZ history - points such as Aramoana,  and activism for being nuclear-free - to artworks of enormous presence such as Godwit/Kuaka, inspired by a Maori chant and the godwits' migration it was originally a piece welcoming people to Aotearoa at the Auckland International Airport's arrivals area. Now the 18 metre long Godwit/Kuaka is displayed at the Auckland Art Gallery for all to see.

Rest in peace Ralph Hotere, you've given us so much. And I hope very much we will see your courage and conviction in all generations to come, not only in art, but with all that we do.

Silo

Silo Park by night

I actually can't believe I haven't blogged about this before because I'm a real ranting fanboy of Silo Park and Wynyard Quarter. Right now 'Summer of Sculpture' is on, turning the urban waterfront park into an interesting sculpture walk. In the period before this, Askew One, a renown NZ street artist that I've featured before, did a series of pieces on the decommissioned silo tanks (see above). They act as a backdrop to all of the activity and signals the increasing move towards making Silo Park as a space a creative one. The sculpture in the foreground is one of the many great pieces out there at the moment (the pose kind of reminds me of Assassins Creed).

In fact, the park holds many creative disciplines - music (there's even an old piano sits in one of the silos, for anyone to play on), films with the summer outdoor movie nights, dance, art, fine cuisine in the night market stalls/restaurants architecture and award winning urban design. 

Imagine that just a few years ago, this space was a broken down industrial waterfront. I hope that the spirit in the place is what Auckland as a whole can move toward - an accepting space open to rejuvenation and creativity.

Critical

I recently happened across a fairly old article about architectural critique (Why Don’t We Read About Architecture?), not by people like me that has studied the art of architecture, but by the layperson public.

“Buildings are everywhere,” writes Alexandra Lange, “large and small, ugly and beautiful, ambitious and dumb. We walk among them and live inside them but are largely passive dwellers in cities or towers, houses, open spaces, and shops we had no hand in creating.”

We live around and inside of architecture. Our cities are largely made up of buildings that define spaces. So why are most people so passive about it? Walking down the Auckland CBD one day with a friend, I commented on how one of the high rises near the waterfront was sleeker than the rest and elegant against the rest of the skyline. My friend said "ugh that's disgusting." To be honest, in many a situation I've heard that gut gag reflex.

Say for art criticism, you really don't really bump into art, especially the ones more open for layperson flak, unless you enter a gallery. But architecture is everywhere. You can't avoid it, yet there seems to be little appreciation for buildings, more importantly, good design and the effort that is put into it. The dreaded phrase in the architecture industry is a notified resource consent (in which everyone and their dog can comment about something they know nothing about, or give an isolated opinion against the greater good). Of course, this passivity can also act by allowing 'bad architecture' into the field - people just don't care.

What are your thoughts on the matter? I'll be inviting a few planner friends here to comment too.

Dream

A short film of Ian Ruhter's photographic process reveals a practice of inspiration. Often a camera is used as a mere tool for capturing images, but Ruhter's 'camera', which is held in a baby blue truck, exposes the lives of others (pun intended), or more accurately, their way of life.

Whether intentionally or otherwise, Ruhter's practice brutally disassembles the 'American dream' - that it is not for everyone, nor is it essential for a happy existence. Finding your own happiness is in your own hands and no one else's. The truck travels around documenting the American existence. Certainly he can't document ALL of it (most of it would be pretty banal anyway) but he sure has a knack of finding the more interesting characters around.

"The LA skyline photo is so important to me. That fence symbolises every fear, every doubt. Once we went over that fence, our trip to America began." 

Using a full plate film technique, crisp details can be blown up. He can inhabit the camera - in the film you can see the world in reverse around him like being in a giant pinhole camera (some spaces are made for this purpose). Doing both portraiture and landscape/cityscape photos, it links the peculiarities of the city with those inhabiting it with their particular stories. The technique reminds me of the chemigram, the imperfections mirror the imperfections of humans.

Blogger's note: I need to stop talking about photography for a while... this blog is becoming a photo blog or something!