Mixed mediums = roomful of clairvoyants

My philosophy about this blog is that I write about things that I love, find awesome, that are amazing, mindblowing, or cool. I only review or link to things that excite me. I *do not* whinge, moan or lambast, at least not here. ;-)

OK, permit me one small moan.

THE PLURAL OF MEDIUM IS MEDIA.
Please, please, if you write about art, remember: you have one artistic medium, but two media.

And if you have an artwork that uses more than one medium, that work is executed in MIXED MEDIA.

The only time you can have mixed mediums is if you have a whole bunch of clairvoyants gathered together.

Glass Invitational NZ at Canterbury Museum

Gallia Amsel: West Coast Surf 17 (2008), cast glass, sandblasted, acid etched & polished

The annual Glass Invitational NZ runs until February 8th at the Robert McDougall Gallery in the Botanic Gardens, and if you haven't seen it yet, you should get down there. It's a small but diverse show.

Particularly interesting to me were:

Elizabeth Thomson's Another Green World series of wall pieces, where spiny microbial forms emerge from depressions in a gently-moulded green landscape, which resembles 1950s upholstery.

Stephen Bradbourne's White linear bottles and White linear frond form, which are stunningly displayed in a black room by themselves, on a black pedestal with lights illuminating the white forms from below, so they glow. The glowing gourd-like bottle forms seemed full of life.

Elizabeth McClure's Domestic Science series, of scientific glassware decorated with floral and leafy patterns. The decoration is in some cases sandblasted onto the surface of the beakers and jars, and in some cases applied, creating the appearance of burnout velvet. The overall effect is subtly disquieting, a disconcerting mix of the clinical with the domestic.

Jim Dennison and Leanne Williams' Sophora Chandeliers, where cast kowhai blooms are suspended from glass brackets. I don't know if downlighting for these pieces was not available in this gallery, but they were displayed each with a glaring bulb in the centre, which destroyed the subtle play of light within the pieces that you can see on the website.

You can see all the pieces in the show illustrated here. But go and see it if you can, you get a lot more from walking around the artworks than you do from just looking at photos of them.

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 .

Improv Everywhere

Improv Everywhere is a New York-based group which creates drama in public places. One of their most famous missions was sending over 200 "agents" into New York's Grand Central Station, and at the same moment they all froze in place for 5 minutes, while commuters continued to rush past them. In another stunt they gathered a set of pairs of identical twins and placed them in a subway car all facing each other so that their poses perfectly mirrored each other: a Human Mirror.

Fascinating stuff! There's lots more on their website.

Russell Moses: Garden of Light

The Dunedin Public Art Gallery has a brilliant Russell Moses show. Moses' works are paintings, sculptures, and fascinating hybrids of painting and sculpture. In one of my favourite pieces he has made a string of giant clay beads in the shape of a stellar constellation, to hang over a painted clay ground. Stars made of earth: I love it!

Other works reference mining, with patterns of metallic pigment emerging from a clay ground; Green paintings mimic the markings of pounamu, but also of light on water or trees in a landscape. Cross motifs in his work refer to measurement and surveying, the carving up and carving out of the land; the patterns he makes also evoke natural shifts and processes: night and day, movement of the sun and stars, seasons, growth and erosion.

You can see more examples of his beautiful work here.

Congratulations Edith Amituanai

Edith Amituanai is the inaugural winner of the Marti Friedlander Photographic Award. The award is biennial and gives the recipient $25,000 with which to further their career.

Amituanai's subjects are drawn from her family and community and the houses they live in.

Friedlander says:

"I have chosen Edith as the inaugural recipient of the Award as I believe she has an exceptional talent. I particularly like the way her photographic essays portray people and places that reveal New Zealanders and all their diversity. She is a most worthy recipient of an Award that is intended to support the development of the medium of photography."

You can read more about the Marti Friedlander Award, Amituanai, and Friedlander here.
There's a nice article from the Herald about Amituanai's work with Samoan rugby players in Europe here. And there are some more examples of her work here.

Eye of the beholder

Banksy is an art-celebrity; his real identity is keep secret; his work sells for huge sums. However, not everyone is impressed. Cleaners this week whitewashed a work he had spraypainted on a substation.

Banksy's own website is here. You can download and print his pictures for free.

Resale royalties for artists

The NZ government has called for submissions on proposed legislation that would award a portion of an original work's resale price to the artist. The NZ Herald has the story. Russell Brown has some comments. Also prominent artist Robyn Kahukiwa is quoted here.

Congratulations Seraphine Pick

Phantom Limb by Seraphine Pick, winner of the 2007 Norsewear Art Award. You can see details of the award and view the other prizewinners here. The Stuff news item is here. Some of Pick's other recent work is here. This image appears by permission of Norsewear Art Award.

Women in Art

Kendal, UK, is hosting a huge arts festival showcasing the work of women in the arts. It sounds great. Wish I could be there!

Favourite clouds

What do you like in a cloud? Is it colour, texture, shape? Would you like to compare your preferences with those of other people? Look no further than here. The site shows you tiny pieces of sky, which you rate. It figures out what you like, and shows you more pictures of that.

What does it mean? There's an article discussing all this on Artbash.

And if clouds are a bit abstract for your taste, there's always Kittenwar.

Context is everything

A world-famous violinist plays masterworks on a famous violin. At concerts people pay vast sums to hear him play, and he is mobbed for his autograph.

What would happen if he played somewhere outside a concert hall, The Washington Post wondered. Would people still appreciate his playing if he busked incognito in the subway?

"In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run -- for a total of $32 and change. That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look."

The whole fascinating story is here. Thanks to Matthew for the link.

And kudos to the Guardian

For giving their art, architecture and design news its own section, and not lumping it in 'Entertainment', as is so often the case! Can we hope the BBC might follow suit? Art and design has so little in common with celebrity gossip....

New Art Forum

Thanks to Matthew for pointing me to Artbash! How fantastic to have a local art website. You can even buy stuff. Including, if you wish, the whole thing!

There are a lot of options for using Artbash: you can write reviews, rants or blogs and even sell your own art. The site has obviously been conceived on a grand scale. Maybe it'll be the next big thing. :-)