Fiona Hall - Force Field

I can't remember when I last saw such a stunning sculpture show. Fiona Hall's retrospective at the Christchurch City Gallery is large, rich, and varied, almost too much to take in in one visit. It closes this Sunday, the 15th, so if you haven't already seen it, get down there. More information is here.

I'm going to list some of my favourite pieces to give you a taste:

Cell Culture

These familiar-looking Tupperware pottles have sprouted delicate limbs, claws, fins. They have morphed into new and alien forms of life.

Castles in the air of the Cave Dwellers

Models of insect colonies are attached, like outgrowths, to model human brains. A colony of social insects, which to humans seems like a utopia, a model world, is contrasted with the brain, a colony of cells that houses only one isolated individual.

Paradisus Terrestris

These exquisite sculptures are partly-open tins revealing depictions of human bodies, and each one is surmounted by a plant motif which echoes the human form within.

Syntax of flowers

Flowers are the reproductive parts of plants, and their beauty and their scent are designed to attract pollinators. This work plays with the idea that humans use flower perfumes to attract each other: The bottles of flower essences are decorated with paintings of naked women in frankly suggestive poses.

Scar Tissue

This work is housed in a cross-shaped display case, and consists of videos of war movies, with the videotape unspooling from the cassette and knitted into glittering, dark, frightening forms which hover above them. The forms appear to emanate from the video cassettes, like horrifying afterimages that cannot be erased from the memory.

When My Boat Comes In

In this work Hall explores the economics of plants, how the import, export, and exploitation of particular species, such as sugar, tea, coffee, and rubber have influenced the world economy and created huge imbalances of wealth. Hall has gathered banknotes from many different currencies, all depicting boats or ships, and on the banknotes painted the leaf of a plant native to each particular country.

Tender

In this work Hall has meticulously copied the forms of various types of birds' nests, using hand-shredded banknotes as her raw material. As the names of the bird species face off against the serial numbers of the banknotes, we are left to contemplate the consequences of commercial exploitation of natural resources.

Giant eagle at Macraes

The extinct Haast eagle was the largest eagle ever known, so big that it preyed on giant moa. In the bird-dominated New Zealand ecosystem, the Haast eagles filled the niche of the big cats, or of bears - the largest land-based predators. When the giant moa were hunted to extinction by humans, the giant eagles also became extinct.

At the Macraes gold mine site in Central Otago, soon to be the site of Macraes Heritage and Art Park, a giant eagle sculpture made of stainless steel has been erected. The eagle was made by Queenstown sculptor Mark Hill in his studio in Arrowtown. It is 8m tall and has a wingspan of 12m, roughly four times the scale of the extinct bird, so it will be a landmark in the area. And how did it get from Arrowtown to Macraes? It flew, of course!
The ODT has more information about the sculpture here and there are details of the installation, plus a picture of the eagle arriving by helicopter, here.

You can read more about the Haast eagle on the excellent New Zealand Birds site here.
And because I couldn't resist it, here is a video dramatisation of a Haast eagle attacking a person. Please bear in mind there's no hard evidence that the eagles did attack humans, although there is evidence that humans hunted the eagles. Anyway, the video gives you an idea of the size of the birds!

Another highlight of the Macraes Heritage and Art Park is a vast installation of speargrass and snow tussock by Auckland artist John Reynolds. You can read about it in this Art New Zealand feature .

Gardens Sculptures

And does anyone have any idea who made these? I came upon them in the Christchuch Botanic Gardens, and they don't seem to have any signs telling you where they came from. They are awesome, anyhow.

Graham Bennett exhibition - Converse

If you're in Christchurch be sure to catch this amazing show of Graham Bennett sculptures at The Art House in Gloucester St, until 15 June.
Bennett's subject matter in the show deals with New Zealand's antipodean location, mapping, navigation, and the migration of peoples by sea. His beautiful, immaculate forms also suggest sentinels, lookouts, and alien peoples.
The show's centerpiece, the monumental PoDs, features a crowd of 60 forms of various heights, the tallest up to 4 metres high.
Apparently Graham Bennett has just turned 60 himself. Many happy returns, Graham. :-)

Sophie Ryder

English sculptor Sophie Ryder is installing some amazing new work at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park: 6 metre tall "hare-ladies", creatures with human bodies and hare heads.

You can read about the exhibition here.
And see some of the huge work under construction here.

Sophie Ryder has a website with lots of stunning exanples of her work here.
Some of my favourites are the Curled-up Figure, Sitting Lady-Hare on Dog, Conversation, Lady Hare Holding Dog, Dancing Hares, the wire drawing Eye, and the two collograph prints Kneeling Figure and Bending Figure.

Sewing the invisible

Jum Nakao is a Brazilian fashion designer who has designed these amazing garments, made of laser-cut paper.

Nakao's collection of intricate paper dresses used 1 tonne of paper, and involved 150 people over 6 months; the dresses were on the catwalk for 10 minutes before being ripped to shreds by the models! The Listener has the full story of the fashion show. One of the garments has been reconstructed especially for The Dowse in Lower Hutt, and it's accompanied by photographs of the destroyed garments.

Adrian Arleo

Adrian Arleo is a sculptor who works chiefly in ceramics. Her ceramic figures are uncanny and dreamlike, suggesting mythological stories of transformation or metamorphosis. The boundaries between human and animal, animate and inanimate, body and spirit, become fluid and dissolve....

There are pictures of her work here, here, and here.

She says of her work:

"My overall conceptual concern, in creating pieces that deal with the figure, does not stem from a fascination with the construction and problem-solving process. Nor is it just the beauty of the human form that holds me. What continues to absorb me is how, by rendering the physical body, one can convey, or at least suggest, a remarkable array of non-physical, internal, ephemeral, spiritual, emotional or psychological experiences. I use the human form to get at the human being and human nature, not at the body as an end in itself."

And she has even designed some teapots! She says, "I see my teapots as being little narrative dramas"! Have a look at them here.

Sam Mahon

I didn't know Sam Mahon was a painter as well as a sculptor, but the Christchurch City Art Galley has this amazing example, and this too. I'm sure his upcoming show at CoCA's Mair Gallery will be well worth seeing.

And kudos to the City Gallery for putting their permanent collection online. It's a great resource, and it's part of what public galleries are for.

Peter Callesen

Peter Callesen works in the medium of cut paper. Many of my favourites are created from pieces of A4 paper, and have that deceptive simplicity that makes you think: "Man, I wish I'd thought of that!"

Some of his works are very much larger: see his floating castle, or his palace of dreams, or his boat made of ice; all have the whimsical, ephemeral quality of his papercuts.

David Goode

David Goode has a distinguished background which includes sculpting celebrity waxworks for Madame Tussaud's; he now specialises in fantasy bronze statuary for the garden. If you're thinking cutesy little gnomes, think again!

This page gives a fascinating step-by-step look at the making of one of his creatures, the "gnome-hunter"! Amazing.

Welcome to the South Seas: Contemporary New Zealand Art for Young People

This book is pitched at young people but it's so clear and readable most adults would enjoy it too: it's art appreciation without the artspeak. Gregory O'Brien has chosen one work each from 45 contemporary New Zealand artists, and he outlines his thoughts on each one, in a fun and breezy style.

500 Baskets: A Celebration of the Basketmaker's Art

Could the future of contemporary art be craft? This wonderful book shows the strength and diversity within craft art practice. Here are exquisite examples of traditional basketry, and equally exquisite innovative works. Woven materials include bark and other plant fibres, but also wire, sheet metal, thread, cereal boxes, fishing line, plastic strapping, and clay. There is even one piece made of newspaper! The range of styles and approaches are equally broad.

500 Baskets is only one of a series of juried craft art titles produced by US publisher Lark Books. Good on them! You can buy the books here through Fishpond.

Invasion of the little people

London has been infiltrated by aliens, but hardly anyone would have noticed. That is, unless they've seen the pictures. Thanks to Styleygeek for the link.

Brian Jungen

Mass-produced objects get a new life in the sculpture of Canadian artist Brian Jungen. Nike footwear becomes tribal masks and strange creatures, plastic chairs meld into a lively-looking skeleton. Great stuff! His Wikipedia page is here.

New Andy Goldsworthy show

Those lucky enough to live in Yorkshire can see it for themselves. The rest of us have to make do with a vicarious experience:

"In the final room I come across the artist himself up a stepladder working on a beautiful filamented curtain stretching the full height and width of the gallery that up close turns out to be made from horse-chestnut twigs held together with thorns, each one - more than 10,000 in all - painstakingly jointed by hand. "

Read more about it in a wonderful article in the Guardian and there's a slideshow too!

Amazing weaving

I saw Christchurch City Gallery's Toi Maori show last week. I thought as I am a non-Maori and a non-weaver it would be over my head, but I thought it was stunning. Photos simply don't do these works justice. The whole range is there, from historical, heirloom pieces, through to contemporary explorative work.

I was also thrilled to see some lovely stuff by Bing Dawe at the Arthouse. I thought his eels and flounders looked particularly well in the small rooms of the Arthouse, where the sinuous curves fill the walls, and you are forced up close, eye-to-eye with the fish.

Rivers and Tides

Anyone who admires the work of Scottish sculptor Andy Goldsworthy should see this amazing film. Goldsworthy uses found materials in their natural setting, and documents the natural processes which change and eventually destroy them. The film showcases Goldsworthy's astonishing patience, and also his spontaneity, in a way that his own photographs and writing can't convey. A highlight for me was watching one of his leaf-chains being swept down a stream, snaking and swirling along with the current.

Another remarkable film from the same director is Touch the Sound, about deaf percussionist Evelyn Glennie. The film isn't just about her, it's also about sound itself, and how conscious she has become to the nuances and possibilities she senses all around her, without hearing as we do.