Wellington Sculpture Trust, Four Plinths catalogue, 2018 ____ I’m on top of the world, the seagull thought. Beak turned toward the ocean, flanked by the museum, the seagull had little cause to wonder but which world? 2. The globes were running a bit behind, Ruth Watson told me over Skype. […]
Art Writing
56 posts
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]