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 […]
Art Writing
48 posts
Eyecontact, 24 December ___ I wasn’t going to review this show but I kept circling back to it – because if not me then who?—and it is a show worth a review because it works the way a circle works, so don’t redesign the wheel—eight double-sided fabric banners of circles—some […]
Eyecontact, 12 Decemeber ___ But is it art? I’m not sure I care. Precinct 35 is a design store with a nifty little gallery out the back. And The Sun Department is the most exceptional exhibition I’ve seen there yet. Mark Alsweiler’s paintings and sculptures may be neither art or design but […]
Art News, Summer 2017 __________ Turn a corner in one of Daniel Unverricht’s hardboiled paintings and you might find yourself in a tight spot. In the dark, on your own and down on your luck. His carparks, derelict streets and shops after hours paint a picture of night-time in a […]
Home Magazine, 2 October 2017 _________ Here’s a plan: if a Hollywood movie was made of her life she’d be played by the actress Kirsten Wiig because the artist Christina Read is funny and goofy and charming. And also because she makes self-reflexive art painfully aware of its own verbal […]
Art Asia Pacific, August 25, 2017 ________ In 1978, graduate student Charles Burnett produced Killer of Sheep for his thesis, salvaging the black-and-white film stock from the “short ends” discarded by production houses. Set in Burnett’s Watts neighbourhood, it tells the story of Stan, a slaughterhouse worker, and his unravelling relationship with […]
The Pantograph Punch, 18 May, 2017 ___ He was a nail biter in his youth. In adulthood, a painter of envelopes, and fridge notes, of boxes and concrete poetry. Austin likes to play word games and his elusive art has been said to borrow from the logic of ideograms, crosswords, […]
The Burning Hours opening, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, 2016 ___ I moved back to New Zealand in 2010, the year Kushana Bush showed Pimp Squeaks at Ivan Anthony in Auckland. Who is this artist? I asked. Who made this? I knew I’d seen something rare and I had to know […]
Art News, Summer 2016 ___ Kushana Bush lives above the town belt and passes Kereru and Tui on her walk into her Dunedin studio. “Its got windows in three directions, a corner building, bathed in light.” In her recent painting Here We Are a boy is held upside down from […]
Art News, Summer 2016 ___ In September 2014, Wendelien Bakker began to dig a hole in her back garden in Grey Lynn. It was warm and all her neighbours had swimming pools. She wanted a swim, so she decided to build a pool. “It’s just something I wanted to do, […]
Francis Upritchard: Jealous Saboteurs (Melbourne and Wellington: Monash University Museum of Art and City Gallery Wellington, 2016) ___ In 2003, I was at a party in the East End sitting on a couch next to Francis Upritchard. I was wearing a crop top and Francis was stroking my stomach. “Isn’t […]
The Pantograph Punch, 22 December, 2015 ___ “I heard on the radio yesterday that if a certain region of your brain is damaged (your god spot) then you are more likely to have mystical experiences. Maybe a simple bang on the head could explain what is happening in my work?” […]