Meeting Billy Apple, And This Year's Prominence Of Sport-Related Art In Dunedin

On a Friday night a few months ago, a group of us hit up the opening for Billy Apple's "The Bruce and Denny Show" at Brett McDowell Gallery. I should make it clear here, in case you don't know me, that I'm seriously not into sports. I'm almost anti-sport. But from my childhood, Formula 1 has demanded a different sort of respect from me….

And as for art by a world-renowned New Zealand pop artist, combined with the one sport I've found tolerable, let alone enjoyed? This certainly set the exhibition up to be an interesting one. 

Apple used the gallery space nicely. Three works based around Bruce McLaren faced three Denny Hulme works on the opposite wall, the middle space projecting their race and victory footage from the 60's. I would dare say 'that was about it', but for me what proved incredibly interesting was that the best label for this body of work was 'pop art'. The reason for my interest here lies in the fact that the imagery was actually from 50-odd years ago, yet the art itself was recently created. Billy Apple had here used iconography which would suit the New Zealand pop consciousness decades ago but is now more of a retro image. Because of the connotations of its very name, Pop Art should (in my mind) be of a contemporary concern when it's made. Yet still, the best label I can find for Apple's retrospective art here is still pop - perhaps signifying to some extent an inherent ridiculousness in some elements of Art History and theory - that a work can be described in a certain way purely because we have no way of describing what it really represents. Regardless, it was interesting to see this exhibition using a sporting subject other than rugby as our country started going crazy over this looming, primitive display of masculinity and anti-intellectuality. 

Talking to Billy was an amazing experience, and thanks to my naivety, not what I expected. One thing I must first say is that, having been a contemporary of Andy Warhol's, I'm damn impressed he still turns up to his own shows! He had little to say on the meaning of this particular exhibition - it transpires that to Billy the exhibition is merely a display of his interest in vintage motor sports, a continuation of his famous exhibition which involved painting up a vintage McLaren Formula One car with the technicolor rainbow of past Apple computer logos. In fact, he came across as an artist who is extremely and primarily concerned with the idea of intellectual property and copyright. His use of the vintage McLaren logo was direct bait for the now British-owned company - although no longer in use, they still own the copyright and aren't particularly happy with him. This is another continuation of his pre-existing activities as an artist; back when he was first operating under the pseudonym Billy Apple, he had constant problems with the Apples of Steve Jobs and Paul McCartney. To be honest, I found Apple a bit difficult as a person, but the wonder of chatting to someone with such a legacy is undeniable. Plus, it was cool that he had a bottomless bag of pamphlets to help explain anything we asked him!

Now, to further the sports theme becoming apparent in Dunedin - about a week later I went to the opening of "Art vs. Rugby" at the Blue Oyster Art Project Space. First and foremost - I still maintain that I intensely dislike rugby. Yet the three artists in this combined exhibition create perfectly sound ideas. I'll primarily deal here with my favorite - James Oram's commentary on the media's role in sports in our country.

Oram's work consisted of three elements - a mirror with a mouthguard stuck to it, a slow-motion video of a handshake, and a sportsman's portrait covered by RGB stripes. The latter I found particularly interesting. By masking the player with RGB stripes it was profoundly stating that the people you feel you know through the RGB pixels of your TV are in fact masked by it. They're performers and you don't know them at all, no matter how well you feel they're portrayed and how well you know their game skills. The mirror and mouthguard built on top of this in a way - are players protecting themselves from the mirror of media reflection/representation? Do they guard their mouths and moves carefully enough to have some sense of normality and personality on the other side of the mirror? Lastly, the slow-motion handshake was a sensual, moving and homo-erotic commentary on masculinity. Subverting slow-mo action replays showed the hands each slide over and massage the other oh-so tenderly and lovingly.

Holding the middle ground in my preference was Edith Amituanai’s photography. Featuring two youth facing off across the gallery, her work showed the competitivity implied in the exhibition's name. The backdrop was a typical small-town rugby field and as such she showed the community importance of having a collective past-time such as rugby. Particularly appealing also was that her photography itself was quite beautiful.

Some of the other works were, ideologically, a little depressing to me - Scott Eady's 15 black pillars holding up the gallery roof to suggest that the All Blacks are the pillars of our country, and his photos showing kids dressed up in rugby gear. But having said that, I guess he's speaking a truth. In New Zealand we really are brought up to be rugby heads, even if I wish I could disagree with that. So as frustrating as they may be, these works were really just a commentary on stereotypical New Zealand life.

Having found positives in the ideas of Blue Oyster's "Art vs Rugby", and appreciating Billy Apple's "Retro Art", I still remain critical of the few remaining intellectual spaces in our meat-headed country - that is, art galleries - succumbing to sports-related art. I accept that sport is an important part of our culture for most people - just as art is for me. But when I was in Wellington for a day to chat to gallery owners about a web start-up I'm working on, I even noticed that the lawn next to Civic Square has this huge, hideous (and apparently permanent) metal sculpture of rugby players. Personally, if I was inclined to travel around the world to watch the rugby (or just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time), and I went in pursuit of a bit of an intellectual sanity-hunting escape, the very last thing I'd want to find in the safe-haven of an art gallery is work about fucking rugby. Just saying.

Large Scale Painting by Lindsey Horne

From the 2011 Art Week Magazine - will post a pdf and photographs soon. It was so exciting picking them all up!!!

Lindsey Horne's large-scale painting is impossible to miss. Hanging just inside the Richardson building, her portrait of a boy with braces was almost imposing.

"I've kind of always just done art," she explains as we sit down. But it was only when she went on exchange to California that she started doing a lot of it. "It was there that I had the studio space and the time to get into it."
The incredibly large scale of her canvases comes from when she started stapling them to the wall because she "felt really claustrophobic within the small canvas", and is largely influenced by her admiration of "that duality of going up really close and seeing a texture or a pattern, then having that really zoomed-out effect as well." Surprisingly, they're not very hard for her to paint, taking two eight-hour sessions to get through. "I don't really paint up close, I get sore arms from my style which is big and fast and swipey. I like working on the whole thing at once, so I use lots of linseed oil to keep the paint runny. I like how I don't let myself have rules when I paint."

Influenced by Jenny Saville, Horne's exhibited portrait has a similarly striking beauty, but not quite the same element of grotesque. Rather, the work is only slightly disturbing insofar as it looks sickly; the colours of the boys' face unnatural and feverish, his eyes longing and emptying.

A huge contributor to Art Week, Lindsey also made a fascinating presentation for the Pecha Kucha night on personification and how faces can represent something purely because of people's super-sensitivity to them. "Faces can be a really powerful tool no matter what realm you're going into. I was talking about that and how if you don't see a face people act differently. I just like faces."

They said that when Lucien Freud died earlier this year, it was the death of painting. But thanks to the likes of Lindsey Horne, I beg to differ. In the contemporary art world where portraiture has been almost exclusively replaced by photography, it's refreshing to see a painter so inspired by faces yet not entrapped by classical representation.

P.S. I found and changed an editorial faux-pas in this piece - particularly embarrassing as the writer AND editor!

A Short Film by Spike Jonze

Spike Jonze: Mourir Auprès de Toi on Nowness.com.

A short animated film by Spike Jonze in my favourite Paris book store :)

Wonderful and slightly creepy in a Tim Burton sort of way

David Merritt - Poet And True Role Model

Surrounded by his books, David Merritt sits on the bench by Rob Roy's. Buying us coffee, I sit down for a yarn and proceed to establish this unfortunate-looking man as a true role model, an intellectual who is kind and reasonable.

Merritt's work is astounding - a poet and artist in the traditional sense of both these words. His poetry; I can't help but go back later with a tenner for a few of his pieces. His art; the recycled book covers he uses are sustainably genius, cut and staple-bound with poetry glued in as he works on piece after piece while seated at the bench.

We chat about everything. At 52, Merritt was even active on the web development scene as it boomed in the 1980's. He actually started off as a student newspaper editor and politician in the mid-to-late 70's, but moved to Christchurch where he worked with Flying Nun Records after he "got the sex, drugs and rock n' roll bug". Five or six years later he went on to work as a tour manager for bands including The Herbs. But 'The Herbs were a fucking hard band to look after", and around 1985, after thinking "fuck this, I'm sick of looking after other people's creativity," he moved to Dunedin to do something he'd wanted to do for a long time: "become a Bohemian poet." Here he even did a stint as a guitarist for a noise band; it turns out he'd spent so much time stage-left watching performances that he'd somehow learned to play guitar. But then children started to arrive and his marriage fell through because he "was the wrong sex and the wrong colour all of a sudden".

Nowadays, when not hanging out in Dunedin and other New Zealand centers, he lives a humble and self-stocked country life in the central North Island, "sixty k[m's] from anywhere". He's a 1970's Land Rover enthusiast, too - his collection of 9 (down from 18) is his own kind of super-annuation plan.

Art Week was a small shift for Merritt. Parking one of his vintage Land Rovers in front of the OUSA lawn every day, he made and sold his poetry from a table by the bonnet. I daresay I hope people took notice; his poetry chalking around campus was only a small, but inspirational, taste of what David Merritt has to offer us all.

"You need to do what you like to do," he says. "There's no such thing as a rich poet."

*thanks to Lucy Fulford for the first photo*

Messy Performance/Visual Art

Two stunning pieces of really messy performance art… I'd love to explore this

I never realised that vomiting could be so visually appealing. Millie Brown beats Jackson Pollock any time!

http://vimeo.com/18999606

^^ Ten minutes of having chocolate poured on your face? Well… Why not?
Also, just try to pronounce this artists name. Go on. I challenge you.

Suji Park- That Which Opens at Brett McDowell Gallery, Dunedin

A couple of Fridays ago I went with friends to this sculpture exhibition at Brett McDowell Gallery 

They were REALLY cool and you can buy them for $350 - $850. In my opinion, totally worth it if you have the money

Here's the review I wrote for the Art Writers group I belong to...

Suji Park's That Which Opens at the Brett McDowell Gallery is somewhat proof that cute and discomforting are not oxymoronic. Imperfect mounds of clay, the artists hands still clearly visible, are transmogrified into realistic human postures, combined in collections, presented on podiums. At 20cm high they're not intrusive, they sit comfortably in the small gallery space amongst the crowd of observers. It could be mistaken for an unsettling version of a Frankie exhibition, yet it's this sinister innocence in which Park finds a beautiful juxtaposition. And if you fancy it, there's even a religious undertone running through the collection. 

As you enter, you find to your left a collection of Swimmers, barely raised from ground level. They seem content, passively happy in their activities. A child's dream. The clearly drawn-on watercolour and graphite detail feel obtainable and familiar, the two figures almost inspiring you to go away and replicate them. However, this simplicity is purely superficial. Our self-consciousness permeates through the characters. Why is it that they feel the need to go and sun-bathe under bright gallery lighting? Or is it more to show a necessity for us to open ourselves up to receive enlightenment from Park’s work? For the rest of the room contains pedestals bearing sculptures in which Spirituality and Sexuality would seem to reign Sovereign. A relationship is found in nakedness and prayer, evidenced in Park’s interest in showing the genital area.

The sharpest details of most pieces are the eyes, observing the observer. They're captivating, somewhat unsettling as they ceaselessly look longingly from their ceramic bodies. What are they missing in life? What the heck are they making us feel..?

A piece of the Procession collection looks skyward, kaleidoscopic triangles on his stomach posing a sharp contrast against deathly grey body as they point with his stare. Is he dying or praying? His cheeks redden and he screams. Does prayer breach the wall between here and death? Every aspect of this moribund figure is distressingly attractive. His back arches. Then his poised mouth is no longer screaming. He's taking a long, soul-catching breath. But he was doing that the whole time, of course, drawing you in. Still, the eyes!

Conspiracy is haunting, the title is perfect. Postures lean in, whisper. Institutionalized religion? Where has the naked Spirituality gone? 

"And as you go out into the world, may the Lord make you truly thankful," says the priest to the collection of sculptures gathered around him in Sermon. His magic works, it's difficult to leave the exhibition feeling otherwise.

Procession

That Which Opens- Poet

Visitation

Another Opening

The best things in life are those which are exciting and happen several times.... I love mail again!

Interview With Sam and Damien from Computers Want Me Dead

Heya! Here's my Tearaway interview from last week with Computers Want Me Dead. Fun guys, awesome music.

Sam picked up his cell phone almost immediately. He fetched Damien, closed the door to their Auckland office, and put me on speakerphone. This retro/indie/synth/pop duo who originally performed together at a friend's apartment- formerly a gay brothel- on K' Road in Auckland, are very modest about their music and success. Currently in the process of planning a world tour to Australia, New York and Japan in October, they've found that the key requirements for forming a band are like-minded individuals, patience, and similar ambition, although "you don't need quite as much skill, as everything is all computerized now."

With their first album coming out this year, the guys like to pretend they're not famous. Or, at least if their music is, not them personally. "We're relatively anonymous," Damien points out, "we're not featured heavily in our videos. We have friends in bigger New Zealand bands with much bigger attention. It's actually quite cool being able to walk down the street and not have that attention."

That's all well and good, but what's striking is that these guys are incredibly talented. Sam has designed the album cover and he also directed their first video. And with their EP cover comprising geometric shapes and a simple Computers Want Me Dead title, they joke that the ideal album cover is "simple but complex" (get your mind around that one!). Their films are about the "idea, not the budget. So they're quirky and out-there." The first video- a Youtube hit- is about a guy traveling back in time to visit his girlfriend, where the time machine is made out of crystals. The next one, however, was produced by Liam Barclay based on his interpretation of their lyrics. "Entertainment is important. It was cool how Liam interpreted the lyrics without being cheesy." On the idea of creating an image, they find that "a big part of it is attitude. We're not really into creating an image as such but we're addressing it more and more. By making a multi-media live show we're re-thinking things visually. But also, everything's about marketing these days and where people are looking."

It was April Fool's day when we had the conversation, so as for their best pranks? Earlier in the day, Damien had sent his girlfriend a link to a website for 2 hour dolphin rides. "She was really nervous about being in the open ocean with this dolphin. But she had told everyone in the office before calling (me about it) so she was really gutted (it was a prank)." As for Sam, when he was six his family had a boarder staying who was always fighting with them. So after one particularly bad evening, "I left something for him on his toothbrush. He left the next day."

Their main pet peeve is the same as any musician- instrumental gear breaking- but also people who can't take a joke. "We like people with a sense of humour and who don't have to be so serious all the time."
And on the subject of pet peeves- someone who's annoying everyone without fail at the moment gets an interesting rap. "I'm not into (Rebecca Black) myself. The case of point being that anyone can make a song and music and voila. There's always gonna be a market for what you're into. But she didn't have to do anything with her music and video. She just mouthed words. Good on her because she's doing what she loves just as any 13 year old girl would, but to be honest the music video is famous because it's so bad. I don't hate her but I hate the song. It puts a smile on my face just talking about it- it's entertaining for all the wrong reasons."

Thank goodness Computers Want Me Dead are entertaining for all the right reasons. 

And a few more random questions...

How many times have you been asked what your name means?
-Every singe interviewer has asked what our name means. We made an effort to have a unique name, it was catchy because of that and it's why we get asked our name so much.

Who's the coolest New Zealander you've ever met and/or want to meet?
S- Jordan Lake. Is there anything he can’t do?
D- John Campbell. I've met him serval times and he's the loveliest, coolest guy.

What's the coolest small town in New Zealand and why?
-We were really stoked playing in dunedin. Everyone down there is so ennthusiastic about gigs. Unless you go to McDonald's and get punched to death (this happened to them).
[this interviewer comments that he lives there]
Didn’t know you were down there...$5000 in your bank account.
Hamilton is also pretty rad, but I guess neither of those are small towns as such...

What do you guys make of the whole "Indie" ideal that's happening at the moment?
-"Indie is so broad and misconstruited and misinterpreted. We have a Pop element and Indie element. Basically, an underground thing becomes mainstream. It's not a fad- it's always been there. An independent thing becomes well known, something good becomes fashionable.

Buy the album people!!!


Love


xxx

Annie Leibovitz

At the moment I'm totally inspired by photographer Annie Leibovitz. This has been started by an exhibition on in Sydney at the moment entitled 'Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer's Life 1990-2005' which combines the photos of her private and family life with the portraiture she's so famous for. The idea that the two contrast so heavily yet can be combined seems quite interesting to me, purely because it creates such a visually obvious juxtaposition between the two, a stark contrast from glitz and glamour of celebrities to her subtle and banal personal life. The exhibition has an underlying feeling of mortality, also an interesting idea because of the capacity we believe photography to have- to immortalize a moment in time. And now what I really want is the accompanying book to the exhibition...

Over her career Leibovitz has photographed for both Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair magazines, toured with The Rolling Stones on their 'Tour of the Americas '75', and has since been frequently commissioned by celebrities. Here is some of her stunning photography:

Brad Pitt

John Lennon & Yoko Ono

Queen Elizabeth II

Keith Haring

Anyway, all this has inspired me to try some portraiture! Any volunteers for models?

xx


P.S. The next step for me is to look up Susan Sontag, a beautiful writer and essayist who was romantically involved with Leibovitz. I bet her writing was amazing...
Also, here's a good article on this...

Photo Essay: Amazing Libraries Around The World

This photo essay is just inspiring, and I even feel they could have used the library here at Otago University

Ahhh such inspiring places to study! They're certainly much more attractive than the Physics lecture I'm struggling through as I blog this. I can only dream... 

xx

Barnaby Weir

Hey'all!

I'm back after a looong break from the blogging world, excited as hell to get back into it. First and foremost, my thoughts go out to all those families affected by the devastating earthquake in Christchurch last week. It was certainly a sobering down-buzz to our Orientation Week at Otago University. The minute silence yesterday was a great way to think over it; to put yourself into the mindset of families who have lost loved ones and homes, the architecture which has been ruined (the cathedral even needs to be demolished), etc. 

Anyway, to try and bring a bit of positivity back to life: the very day that the earthquake happened I was due to interview Barnaby Weir. This was only two hours after the rumble and so all the phone lines were dead, but luckily the next day it was all sorted. The interview (along with a review which I'm yet to do) will be appearing in this year's second issue of Tearaway, but for now here's the title track from Tarot Card Rock:

Barnaby Weir is the go-to guy of New Zealand music; he would seem to be New Zealand's present-day equivalent to, say, Bob Dylan. His previous projects included the incredibly successful band The Black Seeds, followed by Fly My Pretties and the lesser-known Flash Harry. His music is wonderful and my mates were all willing to confess their jealousy at my interview opportunity. 

Here's to Christchurch, here's to starting Uni, here's to New Zealand Music, and here's especially to Barnaby Weir

xx

13 Most Beautiful

So, coming to the end of the year I've been reminiscing quite a lot. And as far as 'work' goes, by far the biggest thing which happened was winning the senior category of the New Zealand International Arts Festival review-writing competition for my review of Andy Warhol's 13 Most Beautiful. It was enough to get me a permanent writing position at Tearaway Magazine and what seemed to be the position of events-reviewer at Wellington College. What I still laugh about is the fact that I wrote it on a whim, in about 15 minutes, the night the competition closed, and there's aspects of it which I'd edit.

So here's my piece and here's to Andy Warhol!

Walking into the Wellington Town Hall with band equipment and a projector screen at the front certainly sets a different atmosphere. The audience were absolutely wired, and apparently it was contagious as everyone took their seats in anticipation. This was to redefine what we knew of Marilyn artist Andy Warhol. 

Amazing in its originality, Dean and Britta set the scene in style playing somewhat of an electronica theme song for Richard Rheem as the screen test of him- the former boyfriend of Andy Warhol- played behind the untouched instruments. The musicians, unnoticed, only arrived as Richard’s time came to an end, and from then on they treated the stage with the utmost confidence of ownership. They know their creation is quite the spectacle, and as it was unlike anything most of the very mixed audience had ever experienced before it was totally transfixing. 

The music throughout fitted naturally and instinctively with these intimate portraits of the individuals in Warhol’s life, evoking strong emotional response throughout as you felt somewhat of a connection forming between you and the Beauties with their demonstrations of pure, unrehearsed and spontaneous emotions. You pitied Dennis Hopper’s frown. You laughed at Ingrid Superstar’s perfected but insecure posing. Dean and Britta carried you through each of them by briefly outlining each Beauty’s life and their connections with Warhol. Mostly they were sad stories, and a thought-provoking commentary of the effect of fame upon the humanity of individuals. 

What you could easily pass off as black and white experiments by an artist well-known in the film industry for his Avant-Garde work, were colourised and brightened by the heartfelt performance of two incredibly talented and creative interpretive musicians. You couldn’t help but be transfixed by the depth of this show. It was a stunner. 

But yeah, basically Andy Warhol is amazing. I know that way too many people like him and I just sound boring and typical but really, he had something!

Love

xx

Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

This guy is pure inspiration. You may think it's a bit trying to sit and watch this entire lecture on-line, but you'd be surprised. Randy Pausch is an amazing speaker, and with two months left to live he has such a positive outlook on life. This is what a fulfilled life is all about- if you set out to achieve your childhood dreams, you basically will. As Walt Disney said, "If you can dream it, you can do it", and what Randy shows is that if you do it, you're fully capable of being happy with your life even if it's cut dramatically short. I'm reading the accompanying book at the moment too, and strongly recommend it.

Seriously, I know it's an old message but live your life to the full. Don't have regrets. And it will be AMAZING

Sooo, my list? From what I remember, here we go;

• Be a published writer (hmm Tearaway doesn't count. Imma write a book!)
• Be a recognised artist (this may be hard...)
• Save peoples lives (yup, very vague. I'll be a surgeon...)
• Become a rock-star (may have to redefine this one!)
• Completely design my own outfit (hahaha yup, I was a weird little boy)

I'm sure there would have been more sooo work in progress yah!

Recycle Design

Isn't this suitcase chair just beautiful? It's certainly something I'd love in my place :)
There are so many creative options in the world we can choose for recycling old "stuff"- chairs like this should act as an inspiration to really try and give everything a second life. This has got me thinking about how I've recently been trying to get my wide-angle camera lens fixed (somehow I've jammed the autofocus). I find it really sad that it will cost me less to buy a whole new lens than to get my current one fixed- we're living in a terribly wasteful society and it's such a breath of fresh air to see people making things like this!

Childrens Drawings... Revisited

I've always loved the artwork of children because of its fascinating lack of boundaries- what kids draw is completely limitless. But sometimes it's really hard to actually picture what they're showing because it totally defies any laws of reality. Korean artist Yeondoo Jung is truly unique, setting out to turn the drawings of 5-7 year old children into reality in his photographic series "Wonderland". The results are amazing...

"Afternoon Nap"

"Fox's Magic Trick"

"He Didn't Sleep For Three Days"

"Rabbit Family Hopping Around"

"Three Brothers Riding The Rainbow Waves"

You can find more here on Yeondoo Jung's website. It's worth having a cruise around his other stuff too!

Keep cool people :)