MY PUBLISHER SAYS: From the writer who brought you Tinderbox, a book about a woman trying to write a book, comes Things I Learned at Art School, a memoir by a woman who has never kept a diary. Part memoir, part essay collection, Megan Dunn’s ingenious, moving, hilariously personal Things I Learned at […]
Megan Dunn
68 posts
The Spinoff, March 21, 2019 On a Sunday afternoon I opened my laptop and sat in In Transit, the most ambitious and nimble exhibition on in the country right now. If the Doozers from Fraggle Rock got unlimited access to stainless steel pipes and a really good welder they might have made the current installation at […]
I am one of the speakers on this episode of a new Radio New Zealand podcast called Pop! Culture. The entire episode – Beach, Please! – focuses on mermaids in contemporary culture and includes many fascinating speakers on why mermaids are so appealing right now. You can hear me wax […]
New Zealand Art at Te Papa (Wellington: Te Papa Press). ___ Are these dancers holy fools and if so what does that make us? Francis Upritchard first exhibited Dancers as part of her pavilion, Save Yourself, at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009. Three tables of handmade figures, including Dancers, were presented in […]
New Zealand Art at Te Papa (Wellington: Te Papa Press). ___ Does this artwork deserve to be called a ‘wanker’? Well, it is nothing if not colourful. Four rows of crosses shake and shudder within their lattice boxes. The oil paint has a slapdash appeal, each stroke thick and lustrous as though it […]
Art News New Zealand, Spring 2018 ___ These are the facts: in 2017 artist Sriwhana Spong travelled to the ruins of Disibodenberg monastery in Germany. She had three days to film her new work. “I didn’t know what to expect but I quickly realised the site had become a […]
Art News New Zealand, 2018 ___ Chris Sharp is an American curator, who first studied French Literature and wanted to be a novelist. “What novel would you like to have written?” I asked when Sharp visited Wellington on Creative New Zealand’s Te Manu Ka Tau/Flying Friends programme. “Spanking the Maid […]
New Zealand Books, 2018 ___ Did you realise that artist Theo Schoon, best known for his modernist photographs of rippling mud pools, also performed Balinese dance? Have you heard of the Prague-born architect Imric Porsolt, once the art critic for the Auckland Star, his writing so biting and insightful that […]
The Sapling, May 29, 2018 ___ In the South Island, at the back of an old mineshaft is the entrance to the planet O. There are two ways to get there. You can be forced by a coil of venomous yellow smoke like Susan Ferris. Or if you are lucky, […]
In 2017, I curated a wordy little show of works by Nick Austin and Christina Read called The Thought that Counts for McLeavey Gallery. I also co-wrote a dinky little book with the artist and writer Evangeline Riddiford Graham to accompany the show. Y’know sometimes it is hard to give […]
A tail can be manufactured Neoprene, dragon skin silicone, urethane, flukes customised & sold to finfolk lost@sea. Staccato tweets, eyespots as strange as olives. At work the dorsal fin separates easily from the mould. The mertailor’s apprentice eats. Knife and fork reveal flesh as pink as corned beef. Afterwards, he […]
Canvas Magazine, 24 February 2018 ____ Warning: If you tell someone you’re writing a book about professional mermaids their first impulse is often laughter. Don’t expect to be taken seriously. Not yet. “What is a professional mermaid?” That’s the first question. In 2005 Kazzie Mahina, a 27-year-old professionally trained dancer, […]