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, […]
Megan Dunn
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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?” […]
NZ Listener, 13 December, 2015 ___ Who is the Alabaster Man: a monument or a sacrifice? He is buoyed on the shoulders of the crowd, his arms spread in the shape of the cross. Behind his head, a white picket fence and two-story house trim the hill, but this is […]
Eyecontact, 29 November, 2015 ___ What is it that makes today’s dollhouses so different, so appealing? Emily Hartley-Skudder seems intent on finding out. I first noticed her petite paintings of dollhouses and still-life compositions of doll-sized trinkets and toys a couple of years ago. Too cliché? Ibsen. Mansfield. Barbie. The […]
Auction No.1 Catalogue, Bowerbank Ninow, 25 November 2015 ___ The spectre of JonBenét Ramsey haunts the maudlin Werta. Is Yvonne Todd’s subject another moribund child beauty queen? Werta’s blue banner, orange pallor and backcombed hair foster a sense of misplaced pageantry. Her demure eyes meet the viewer’s gaze. Werta […]
Art + Object Catalogue, Important Paintings and Contemporary Art Auction, 2015 ___ The northeast and southeast trade winds meet at the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone known by sailors as the doldrums. In the doldrums when the prevailing winds are calm sailing boats can be trapped at sea for days or […]
Creamy Psychology Opening, City Gallery Wellington, 2014 ___ “That’s quite Yvonne Todd”, a staff member said. I looked up. It was 2010 and I was out the back of the then Borders store on Lambton Quay loading books onto a trolley. The staff member didn’t realise she was in the […]
Yvonne Todd: Creamy Psychology (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2014). ___ “Long ago and oh so far away,” Karen Carpenter sings. Her voice swells, fills the song with far more longing than the lyrics contain. She sounds so ‘sweet and pure’, but she’s not really here; it’s just YouTube. Karen Carpenter […]
from Miles and Mabel, a novella ___ Tate Britain was crowded. Mabel and I weren’t the only citizens that had come out to look at an artwork the artist described as possessing the qualities of nothing. “It’s more powerful than I was expecting,” I said. The room was shady, as though […]
A Single Hurt Colour, reading, Litcrawl, November 2014 ___ In 2012 I was picked up from the Dunedin airport by a driver holding a sign: Megan Dunn and Jim and Mary Carr. I thought the sign was pretty funny. I had never met Jim or Mary but I knew they […]
New Revised Edition catalogue, City Gallery Wellington, 2013 ___ Little Gem Consider the lettuce (Lactuca sativa). It is good for you. Healthy. A lettuce is not calorific. Commonly associated with salads and slugs, the lettuce is a humble vegetable, first cultivated by the ancient Egyptians, who turned it from a […]