In From The Garden review

Snapshots from Object magazine Issue 59, featuring a review of In From The Garden by writer Jo Tresize.

Carving: Patrick Lundberg

It seems every young kid is destined to undertake certain ill-conceived acts and then remain ashamed of such activities well into adulthood. This kind of lingering shame would hopefully indicate an aversion from a future life in crime for the majority of us. An example: Hacking into my mum's painting easel with a knife. what was I thinking? It was the early 1980's and I was an easy-going country kid; a typical boy who fished for eels in the creek over the road and a keen reader who was also into drawing and painting. Trucks, animals, family members, houses, cartoon characters, etc; I drew them all. This predilection towards art makes the vandalistic action upon a painting easel appear slightly ironic.

There is probably a Freudian case study which would explain my one or two lawless acts during these years. For example, the easel from Freud's perspective is possibly an untouchable 'clan totem' (1) from my childhood. In some sense the easel predestined my attendance at art school by twenty or so years. What then of hacking into it with a pocket knife? Fortunately I wasn't born of a different era or locale; Freud notes the totem is accorded utmost respect among worshippers; in past ages violations of 'totem taboos' met with with harsh consequences, to say the least. (2)

In as much as it could have been the spirited rebellion against a taboo, or understandable frustration in not being able to use my mother’s oil paint with the same virtuosity as a felt tip pen, it was not in this instance an act of anger or frustration. I believe now, as I did then, that this action was simply the intoxicating combination of an exotic and unobtainable looking material meeting a pocket knife blade.

Although no longer able to visually recall hacking into this easel, I still respond viscerally from the incident – even following an art school education – to the notion of carving into something permanent or solid. The easel, thirty or so years later still in regular use by my mother, was the first thing I thought of when I came upon the art gallery wall carvings of Patrick Lundberg in 2006.

The transience of Lundberg's work, in that these carvings, or excavations, will happen for a short period of time and disappear with the first swipe of polyfilla, imbue viewers with the feeling that despite the limited time frame of an artists gallery showing, his works – being as they are 'carvings' – are something other than temporary. Fittingly, the walls of rm103 gallery in downtown Auckland still bear the faint shapes of Lundberg's 2006 exhibition, as he recently pointed out to me at a gallery opening. Whether or not this story relays an intentional aspect of these works is not really the point, but it illustrates the sense of permanence the viewer may experience as an immediate response to Lundberg's work.

Lundberg's wall carving work is predominantly destined to occupy a concept of temporality, although this is not entirely related to the time alloted an art exhibition. Foregrounding the temporality in Lundberg's work is the recent emergence of a culture within many presenting institutions and major public museums for the authentic and live experience. This is of course an addition to the regular presentations of new and old 'pre-approved' objects. The nature of the live experience however is that it is almost lost before it began and so the historical moment passes irretreviably.

While not suggesting a criticism of this institutional framework, to the regular patron of an institution Lundberg's work in a sense bridges the gap between the varying degrees of dialogism captured in an institution's past exhibitions, and the currently popular souvenir-like live event. The process of skillfully marking and cutting the outline of a drawing then delicately removing strips of paint from the gallery wall uncovers stratified layers from previous exhibitions and often previous artists site specific wall works; all within a precise and site specific drawing. (3)

This brand of virtuosity with a scalpel blade suggests the continued potential and importance of painting in conceptual art and critical theory. Lundberg is ungrudgingly attempting to engage with multiple possibilities. At the same time, it appears – despite the different intellectual references – that he relishes the opportunity and sentiment of digging his way through various histories of the institution, at least as much as I secretly enjoyed hacking into an easel with a knife.

Matt Blomeley

1. Freud, Sigmund. Totem and Taboo, The Return of Totemism in Childhood, Routledge Classics, 2001, London, (pp120). Quoting from J.G. Frazer's Totemism and Exogamy (1910), Freud suggests there are “at least” three kinds of totem, “(1) the clan totem, common to a whole clan, and passing by inheritance from generation to generation; (2) the sex totem, common either to all the males or to all the females of a tribe, to the exclusion in either case of the other sex; (3) the individual totem, belonging to a single individual and not passing to his descendants...”

2. ibid, “The rules against killing or eating the totem are not the only taboos; sometimes they are forbidden to touch it, or even to look at it; in a number of cases the totem may not be spoken of by its proper name. Any violation of the taboos that protect the totem are automatically punished by severe illness or death” (pp120)

3. Wright, Richard, Richard Wright, Richard Wright and Thomas Lawson in conversation, Milton Keynes Gallery, UK, 2000. Wright observes of his painting practice, which displays an interest in site specificity similar in some respects with Patrick Lundberg, “It's not so much about the individuality of ideas, but the quickness of how an idea gets translated through the agency of something like skill. It's karaoke shit really. The sheer dumbness of trying to transmit something through your own body – being forced to find definitions. The agency of this kind of manoeuvere that, against the odds, allows you to come up with the goods.”

Overheard Conversation

An abiding interest in topiary (hedge and shrub sculpture) is one distinguishing feature of American ceramic sculptor Scott Chamberlin’s artistic practice. Topiary, of course, is a complex and long held tradition involving the trans-generational maintenance and subtle grooming of living plants into various shapes. Many active topiary gardens in Europe predate the colonization of New Zealand not just by decades, but by hundreds of years.

It is fitting given his commitment to topiary that Chamberlin, a Visiting Professor in the Contemporary Craft Program, Unitec in 2009, during the course of his artist residency in Auckland has closely observed – and taken inspiration from – the many unusual plant forms that make up our flora and fauna. The title of Chamberlin’s Objectspace Vault installation is suggestive of the approach he has taken with his studio practice while in New Zealand.

Like a witness to an ‘overheard conversation’ – the conversation being New Zealand’s Diaspora of recently immigrated peoples and our relation to the landscape – the new works that have resulted bear traces of his present inspiration but they also lean on his experiences as both sculptor and topiarist.

Extracting reproductive forms and other attributes from our foliage, in these new works the native forest of New Zealand and our engagement with it is investigated with fresh eyes. Chamberlin has created a terracotta landscape combining plant-like elements with subtle and erotic forms suggestive of the body.

Chamberlin observes of his New Zealand muse: “One can see acknowledgement of many visual remnants of my impressions of NZ. One will see wigged (colonial) people, one will see foreigners, one will see ornamentation (from a European perspective) one will see my response to a bewildering verdancy… much flora and fauna, some “native” and some not. One will see some pondering of what “native” means to varying constituents.”

Mark Masuoka, Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver, has observed that Chamberlin “continually mines a rich vein of ideas by fusing material sensuality with a tactile consciousness and the pleasures of spontaneity. The structural clarity displayed enables the viewer to experience the presence of the object with a ritualistic simplicity. His lush, voluptuous forms are clearly not utilitarian, but function in defining internal as well as external space.”

Scott Chamberlin is the 2009 Visiting Professor/Artist in Residence at the Department of Design, Faculty of Creative Industries and Business, Unitec, as well as international judge of the 2009 Portage Ceramics Awards. Snowhite Gallery at Unitec is showing Fertile Matters, an important solo exhibition of Chamberlin’s work (until 19 October.) Chamberlin was born in California in 1948 and holds a Masters Degree from Alfred University. He has featured in numerous US and international exhibitions and is currently a Professor in the Department of Art & Art History at the University of Colorado. Chamberlin is the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts awards (1990, 1996) as well as a prestigious Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2001.

What: Overheard Conversation
Where: Objectspace
When: 22 September - 7 November 2009

(Unitec studio image courtesy Scott Chamberlin.)

Gilded Blessing

Writing of his classical musical training as a cellist, Richard Sennett observes "the development of any talent involves an element of craft, of doing something well for its own sake, and it is this craft element which provides the individual with an inner sense of respect. It's not so much a matter of getting ahead as of becoming inside."

Employing differing art forms, Gilded Blessing (the cello is a Chinese 'Blessing' brand) is a collaborative audiovisual installation between gilder Sarah Guppy and composer Eve de Castro-Robinson. Both were attracted to the idea of exploring the musical instrument as a metaphor and a conduit for traditional artisan skill and contemporary sound practice.

Gilded Blessing has been configured so that while near the cello, the viewer taking in the sensuous gold gilded form simultaneously informs a proximity monitoring camera. In some sense the viewer is able to 'play' the cello in the act of moving around but not actually touching it.

An integral part of this project is not only the craftsmanship, but also the musical instrument as a performance object. Eve de Castro-Robinson has composed 9 melodic phrases for the cello. It is these electronically manipulated 'blessings' which the viewer is able to activate and take in while in the intimate presence of the finely hand-crafted object.

Eve de Castro-Robinson is a critically acclaimed New Zealand composer whose works have been performed internationally. Twice winner of both the SOUNZ Contemporary award and Philip Neill Memorial prize awards, she was awarded the CANZ Trust Fund award in 2000.

Sarah Guppy is a gilder and painter. Trained in the UK where she worked on the Royal Collection among many other prestigious projects, she has over 25 years experience and is an exhibiting painter with work in collections in the UK and New Zealand.

What: Gilded Blessing
Where: Objectspace
When: 17 September - 4 November

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Review of In from the Garden

Damian Skinner writes: "The introductory wall text for this exhibition says that it is about two main issues: ‘the skilled terrain of craft practice' that is related to, but not the same as, fine art; and the way in which Objectspace can intervene in the craft sector and support newish makers. The second appears to be the major impulse behind the show, with the text making it clear that ‘In from the garden is intended to look closer at four makers from around New Zealand who, currently at this period in their respective careers, are staying the course and readying to settle in for the long haul.' The four are jewellers Renee Bevan and Victoria McIntosh, ceramist Blue Black, and sculptor/woodworker Ben Pearce.

Talking of practical things first: the show is nicely installed in the gallery. There is not a huge amount of work – I counted sixteen individual works, some of which are made up of groups of objects – and the gallery feels spacious, but it doesn’t feel underdone or empty, either. Sensibly I think the curator Matt Blomeley has recognised the conceptual and visual complexity of a lot of these objects, and given them plenty of space."

For the full interview visit Skinner's Paua Dreams website. Published 7 August 2009.

Kirsty Lillico: I Came Back As Someone Else

As endless streams of fashion advertisements, globalized brands and chain stores attest, the enormous variety of social functions involving garments are easy to overlook. Through dress and fashion we perform many roles but among the most important are to project confidence whilst protecting insecurities, physical or otherwise. Kirsty Lillico’s textile-based sculptures address this duality and also act on a deeper level, as prompters, reminding the viewer of garments additional abilities to either bottle-up or externalize our perceived individuality.

Working with an entirely white palette, Lillico’s textile sculptures include utilitarian objects such as mittens, helmets and capes. Presented alongside this are garment-like objects which “have ceased to be a ‘second skin’ for the body, and instead have become the body itself.” She describes this aspect of her work as representing both “the suppression of individuality, and its preservation. This contradiction is intended to activate curiosity in an audience regarding the social and psychological context for the garments use and manufacture.”

It is appropriate given the subject of Lillico’s works and their resemblance with modern fashion that the viewer of these art objects is possibly attracted to the notion of embellishing or cocooning oneself within them. As writer, Katy Corner, has observed, Lillico’s sculptures are “full of potential and anticipation. They project a powerful, intelligent presence as if patiently waiting for their use to be discerned and appreciated. They also seem to be waiting for us to do something, handing over responsibility.”

Kirsty Lillico is a Wellington based artist. She holds an MFA from RMIT University, Melbourne.

What: Kirsty Lillico: I Came Back As Someone Else

Where: Objectspace Window, 8 Ponsonby Rd, Auckland

When: 23 July – 16 September 2009

Handstand: Unfamiliar and Innovative Contemporary Jewellery

Notes on the Top Mark and Resene Award Winners

The first four years in a contemporary jewellery career is a pivotal time. Inevitable and obvious issues confront the maker head-on; finding gallery representation and supplying proven selling pieces, not to mention holding down a day job. These exterior aspects of a practice push and pull new makers in perhaps unexpected directions. Although by no means insurmountable, challenges like this serve to define the committed versus those who will inevitably fall off the radar. A small yet vibrant part of the visual arts sector, contemporary jewellery has grown exponentially in recent years and witnessed a number of New Zealand practitioners establishing national and international reputations. The makers showcased in Handstand provide a fantastic snapshot of just a few talents emerging out the handful of tertiary education programmes in this field, from around the country.

Top Mark Award winner Vaune Mason’s unique work, Control, stands out with its consideration of the jewellery wearer. An intriguing and nostalgic object, the work is not what you would consider typical jewellery. A vintage-looking object resembling a mourning jewellery locket, or a ‘box brownie’ camera, and finished with a sensible leather strap, the wearer of Mason’s work engages in a conceptual manner with the object. In choosing from a selection of portrait images, one of which then peers out of the lens-like porthole, the viewer is perhaps left to ponder; is this a metaphoric device providing us the ability to capture our mood (like a camera) or is it suggesting that one can choose who we mourn on any given day? The truth is slightly different, as the images are of Mason herself, who explains: “I have given over my physical identity as well as my ‘marks’ to this piece. The new owner, over whom I have no control, will be able to decide how I am viewed. They may never meet me in person, but with this piece, they can see an intimate side of me.”

Second place in the Top Mark awards went to Vivien Atkinson, whose series Suite: Illusions addresses bridal jewellery. A universal symbol, the ‘bride’ is synonymous with beauty, purity and of course the always implied air of temporality. In transferring the fragile and undoubtedly highly skilled craft of cake decorating to jewellery, Atkinson engages directly with the discussion of adornment, an issue which resounds more strongly in contemporary jewellery than other art practices.

Winner of the Resene Award, Jhana Miller’s The Charm Bracelet is a witty work which highlights our contemporary obsession with disposable consumer goods. This colourful collection of charms is ironically fashioned from the eminently more recyclable and un-jewellery-like medium of paper.

By the time they have ‘made it’ those who thrive in contemporary jewellery can be considered successful as both fine artist and skilled craftsperson. The emphasis on craft skill is something which needs to be asserted here: skill, in combination with fresh ideas and cogent aesthetic explorations that is. As writer and curator Damian Skinner discusses in his essay (the publication accompanying Handstand will include essays by Damian Skinner and Kevin Murray), developing skill takes time. Skill of course cannot be acquired via a certificate and it takes many years of hard graft in the studio to – hopefully – master the nuances which add the indiscernible polish that can define a successful craft practice. These makers are proving beyond doubt that they are well on their way.

Matt Blomeley (2009 judge of the Top Mark and Resene awards)

HANDSTAND: Unfamiliar and Innovative Contemporary Jewellery
Exhibition dates: 16 – 19 July 2009
Sky City Convention Center
The New Zealand Jewellery Show
www.jewelleryshow.co.nz

Curator Peter Deckers (educator and established contemporary jeweller from Wellington) has brought together the Handstand exhibition, featuring the latest works from participating emerging jewellery artists in a variety of artistic styles and media.

Printing Types: New Zealand Type Design Since 1870

Printing Types: New Zealand Type Design since 1870

The word 'Designer’ is a loaded term which for most of the population inspires visions of glamourous personalities, high fashion and covetable objects. Let’s face it, the glossy and multifaceted world of design has held us enthralled for decades. Within the varied sub-industries of design however, there are numerous career pathways that garner relatively little public acclaim, despite occupying important roles within contemporary society. Type design is one of these roads less travelled.

For these reasons it was rather surprising that a hit feature at the 2007 Auckland International Film Festival was - you probably guessed it - all about type design. Gary Huswit’s documentary Helvetica was a runaway success documenting the use, abuse and global popularity of this now ubiquitous typeface. Helvetica attracted numerous attendees, many of whom probably hadn’t paused for long to consider the history and of a typeface we most often turn to when composing the majority of our daily correspondences.

So where do we fit into this picture here in New Zealand? Does our local type design history consist of Koru motifs, borrowed and embellished ad infinitum? The answer is that this kind of perception couldn't be farther from the truth. A small and discerning industry with many entertaining and intriguing stories of design success and failure, the history of type design in New Zealand has unfortunately been inadequately documented. Designer and curator Jonty Valentine aims to do something about this.

Printing Types: New Zealand Type Design Since 1870 is a new exhibition and publication project at Objectspace. Having previously curated the outstanding 2006 exhibition at Objectspace, Just Hold Me: Aspects of NZ Publication Design, Jonty Valentine has this time researched and compiled a selection of key moments and narratives in local type design from a history spanning approximately 140 years. An important and timely project to undertake, he says “it is remarkable how un-heroic and invisible the history of type design has been here”.

Valentine observes that “the purpose of this project is to begin to establish, or at least begin to lay the case for such a series of stories” and to question “why there is so little written about this subject.” Objectspace Director, Philip Clarke, has overseen both of Valentine's exhibitions and notes that “Printing Types, is I believe, the first exhibition and related publication completely focused on contemporary and historical New Zealand type design.”

Two highlights of Printing Types include the 1960s achievements of internationally celebrated New Zealand-Samoan Joseph Churchward who is the subject of a new book, Joseph Churchward (ed. David Bennewith, published by Clouds, 2009) and Tom Elliott (designer of the iconic 1970s Air New Zealand typeface).

Contemporary type designers in New Zealand featured in the exhibition are exemplified by designers such as Kris Sowersby and more speculative practitioners like Luke Wood, who are producing work of great intelligence and wit. The result of these projects is sometimes taken far beyond what the designer originally intended. For instance, Wood's McCahon typeface (2000) has had a very eventful life which highlights the value of typefaces as commodities. In its short life it has been appropriated by a multinational, found its way onto ‘Charlie's’ fruit juice bottles and been used in the branding for an important Colin McCahon exhibition!

Other exhibitions: Coinciding with Printing Types is an Objectspace Window installation by contemporary artist Kirsty Lillico. Also on display will be an intriguing new Objectspace Vault installation of tea vessels.

What: Printing Types: New Zealand Type Design since 1870
Where: Objectspace, 8 Ponsonby Rd, Auckland
When: 25 July – 12 September 2009.
Gallery hours: Tues – Sat, 10am – 5pm. Free admission.
Publications: A catalogue (66 pages) and typeface specimen posters (A0) for this exhibition will be available for sale at Objectspace
Curator’s talk: 11:00am Saturday 1 August 2009 at Objectspace
Image: Luke Wood, McCahon (detail), typeface design, 2000.

Reducing how much we drive: child/family miles?

Just came across a great blog post on Amory Lovin's 'Yahoo Green' Blog. This post highlights a troublesome dichotomy for me that is especially apparent for city-based parents. The dichotomy lies between children's organized sport and their lack of appreciation for, or understanding of, nature. Of course being kids driven everywhere these days (it's dangerous out there!) exacerbates the issue.

Richard Louv (mentioned in the post) writes of the modern child's 'nature deficit disorder'. By comparison, from 1979 to 1992 I was rarely driven to school and instead relied on my feet, bicycle or the local school bus. For me this wasn't an issue: in fact, I recall being embarrassed when I was hand-delivered to school. Walking, riding or bussing to school was time that I no doubt used to exercise my imagination and it was a dose of compulsory outdoor playtime (I was lucky enough to grow up in the country).

Shoot forward a couple of decades to every second Monday, where I now battle Auckland's traffic to drive my ten year old daughter to school and have recently combined this commute with dropping my partner at her work. This circuit is a 40 kilometre drive that I feel mildly guilty of, as someone who recently moved house and made a commitment to commute by bicycle 80km per week to/from work.

This fortnightly Monday commute is the tip of the iceberg, as my daughter - like many other kids in Auckland - is dutifully delivered by my ex-partner to a variety of activities, has friends far and wide and grandparents over two hours away by car. So much for the convenience and efficiency of cities: I'll do my best to leave Auckland if/when child number two comes along!

In from the Garden

“Half the interest of a garden is the constant exercise of the imagination. You are always living three, or indeed six, months hence. I believe that people entirely devoid of imagination never can be really good gardeners. To be content with the present, and not striving about the future, is fatal.” – Alice Morse Earle (1897)

Twentieth century German conceptual artist Joseph Beuys famously proclaimed “every man is an artist” and it seems that we have built upon this notion to include craft practice. It is perhaps easy to utilise Beuys’ statement as a truism for considering all creative practice as equivalent but the realities are much different. For the majority of us, one reminder from our time spent making is the sobering discovery that the vision and skills necessary to realize a well crafted object readily identifies the ‘amateur’ from the ‘auteur’.

Art, including craft is a barometer of the times, and as Alice Morse Earle observed, notable practice always looks to the future. Gleaning information about the practices of a new generation of contemporary craft artists, In from the Garden showcases four currently establishing makers who clearly have strived for the future, both creatively and professionally. These exhibitors, since emerging from their respective New Zealand tertiary arts programmes during the last half decade, have between them exhibited nationally and internationally, entering and winning awards and demonstrating capabilities as makers of artistically attuned craft.

There is a certain period in a creative practice where a maker has attained that fine balance between exhibiting and selling work, making a living and having time in the studio: i.e. the realities of professional creative practice. During this period, where there is often much more to achieve, there is a sense that an epochal work could be just around the corner. Objectspace has observed the opportunities and difficulties makers can encounter in establishing practices. With this in mind, In from the Garden is intended to look closer at four makers from around New Zealand who, currently at this period of their respective careers, are staying the course and readying to settle in for the long haul.

A new series of work by jeweller Renee Bevan goes by the boldly self-explanatory title, Blooming Big Brooches (2008-9). One can confidently claim that Bevan is currently obsessed with flowers. Bevan recalls, “I have long been fascinated with the pre-packaged emotive power of flowers; specifically the rose. Its manufactured sentimentality, vast symbolism and long-standing history in jewellery and adornment; the rose has a unique ability to speak of love, life and death all at the same time. Transforming imagery and materials already entrenched with an abundance of history and meaning I exaggerate and play on their existing connotations and suggestions.”

These brooches engage in a distinctive new conversation for Bevan regarding dimension, subject and adornment. Earlier in her career, Bevan was fascinated by pre-existing jewellery. A series of work entitled Lost and Found (2005) resulted from casting new works in precious metals as direct impressions from mass produced jewellery. (1)

This time around, Bevan has borrowed generic images of roses, the kind of images which proliferated in 1960s and '70s gardening related publications. In these new works, the rose image is détourned, (2) cut-and-pasted to become sections of petals on successive layers of wood. The resulting brooches are kind of clunky yet elegant and not entirely disposed of their former glory.

Ceramic artist Blue Black is engaged in a practice which emerges from “an organized and ordered place to disorderly, freeplay chaos and back to organizing what happened.” Embodying these words, Black's works arrive from the kiln as perlocutionary statements after this energetic and performative process as variously charred, colourful, grotesque and ultimately striking objects.

Blue Black's work is refreshing at a time when it often seems every aspect of the craft process is over-investigated for relevance in order to be vindicated, sometimes stifling free expression. Black tackles expressive processes with relish explaining that “while my imaginings take a back seat the physical pleasure of the actions of making is the focus ... My priority is finding my own rhythm and being swept along in the sensations of the body and materials, as if it is a performance.”

Through the study of expression, Black's research forms an organic part of ceramic practice. Pushing clay around freely is championed and thus allowed to inform the artist's thinking about modernist concepts like the sublime and the subconscious as something “produced from automatic emotional responses of the artist which can be perceived by the viewer.”

In Harm’s Way? (2008) is a central work for Jeweller Victoria McIntosh, who presents this installation with the quote, ”Primum non Nocere - First do no harm.” A maker of finely crafted individual works and installations, McIntosh's work often seems to poke at the vagaries of how we each relate to objects and in the process of doing so emotionally attach ourselves to them, using this emotional resonance to draw meaning and define our notions of individual identity.

A provocation is deliberately set-up and 'emotionally fractured' in In Harm’s Way? by McIntosh. A collection of found and hand altered finely crafted objects are subjected to the notion of separation – a central idea in McIntosh's practice, as an adoptee. In this work a framed found image depicts a mother and child. This image, with its cracked glass metaphorically separating the two intimate subjects, is installed beside a matching frame containing various objects. The words 'Nature' and 'Nurture' are finely embroidered onto the labels of two vintage lace collars, subtly embodying the dichotomy that may come to bear if we are separated from our genetic past.

Echoing Alice Morse Earle’s observation, McIntosh is concerned with the future, as she observes, “science moves us further away from the tried and tested methods of conception – I am left wondering the impact this will have on future generations. The concerns I have stem from my experience growing up as an adoptee without access or knowledge of my own genetic origins. This piece is a response to the new reproductive technologies and the ethical questions they raise for society as a whole.”

Ben Pearce’s practice illustrates the value of tinkering around in the studio with conceptual ideas and technical craft skills ready to be freely deployed. Pearce’s objects are predominantly of wood, which is minutely crafted and skillfully combines locally found objects and machine parts.

Pearce is inspired by memory and childhood. For Pearce childhood is a metaphor for the act of looking at something potentially unknown, as an adult. A recent work, 28 Various Preservations (2009) delved into this idea in depth, with Pearce noting “28 actual memories may be recalled and visited here, just one small section of a vast inter-related city. A City of desperation and adaptation, the forms are not eloquent or fancy, they take on a tree hut feel, that of ingenuity, as if constructed simply to perform a basic function of protection.”

Similar in some respects to Victoria McIntosh, Pearce is also interested in family history and genealogy but from a more general perspective. A recent work, Grandfather Clock (2009) “presents a window into the idea about the connections that we make and construct around an ancestor un-met. The pieced together nature of information that in-stills in us a type of familiarity of them, we wish to meet them face to face, stand in their air and time.”

The makers in In from the Garden emerged from educational programmes developed in the 1980s for an art sector which has evolved since then. A number of New Zealand tertiary institutions have expressed a reinvigorated level of enthusiasm towards craft in the two ensuing decades. This is in no small part due to the successes of a select group of New Zealand craft-aligned artists gaining international recognition. Some of these makers trained in the above programmes, along with mid-career makers who emerged earlier.

Accommodating for and building upon the interest in a small but vital and expanding field like contemporary craft requires not only innovative ideas but also forward thinking at an educational level. Despite certain regional strengths within disciplines of craft education, care is needed to develop and ensure existing programmes stay relevant. The perceived strength of craft programmes is on one level the opportunity for students to acquire craft skills and on another level the opportunity to refine their critical (fine art) acumen: there is often an issue with the balancing of these two dimensions. (3)

The four makers in this exhibition have established a strong case for the continued valuing of craft skill. Without a place to learn these skills, aspiring makers in craft disciplines have limited options outside of established community-based societies. It is a concern for many that some institutions are moving towards combined art and design programmes, where the balance between theory and practice does not address the distinctive nature of craft practice and the needs of emerging practitioners.

The context for making contemporary craft and art is an intimate occasion, drawing upon makers wants, needs and concerns and it is a natural conclusion that these makers are often drawn to the deepest recesses of their imagination. These unique vantage points are a rich source for rewarding and enlightening projects. Helping to redefine the parameters of contemporary craft and fine art practice, the makers featuring in In from the Garden demonstrate that they are “striving about the future”.

Matt Blomeley
28 May 2009

1. http://www.objectspace.org.nz/programme/works.php?documentCode=656 (26 May 2009)

2. A fine arts technique where imagery, or an object, is borrowed or reused to make a new work; often containing a different message than intended by the original author.

3. Jenkins, Douglas Lloyd, Volume: After The Makeover, keynote presentation, ‘Volume’ symposium, Hawkes Bay Museum and Art Gallery, Napier, 18 October 2008, http://www.hbmag.co.nz/item/volume_dlj.pdf (26 May 2009). Jenkins’ notes that this emphasis on degree credentials at the expense of skills is not limited to New Zealand and he quotes Jane Jacobs, who has cited a similar concern within the diploma system in Canadian community colleges.

Image - Ben Pearce, Home Alone No. 2, English Beech, English Walnut, Cotton, 2009, courtesy of the artist (image Peter Tang)

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What: In from the Garden (curated by Matt Blomeley)
Where: Objectspace, 8 Ponsonby Rd, Auckland
When: 6 June – 18 July, 2009
Gallery hours: Tues – Sat, 10am – 5pm. Free admission. A print publication for this exhibition will be available for $2.00.

Mind the Gap

There is no reason to deny the reality of progress, but there is to correct the notion that believes this progress secure. It is more in accordance with facts to hold that there is no certain progress, no evolution, without the threat of “involution,” of retrogression. Everything is possible in history; triumphant, indefinite progress equally with periodic retrogression. (1)
- Ortega y Gasset

Observed from a distance the earth's landscape and our interventions upon it are at once mysterious and obvious. Modern technologies such as GPS devices combined with satellite imagery allow us to navigate land and ocean in unprecedented detail. Whether it be obtaining navigational directions to the supermarket or 'geotagging' hiking adventures over distant mountains, we now more than ever before perceive the landscape topographically. From this unique perspective areas of mystery from past eras are exposed to us conclusively, in photographic detail. Unresolved details of the land have become more or less reduced to heavily vegetated areas, along with vertical terrain and the underground.

The quality of topographical imagery available varies considerably within popular web applications, most notably Google Earth. Enticing our imagination to complete unseen spaces, the flaws and imperfections in these images highlight the limits of photography (at least the limits of imagery we are allowed access to in the public domain). In a sense, working from these images offers a ‘plein air’ painterly pretense for the painter, who is engaging with the outside world but at one remove from the traditional model of an artist towing his or her easel through a field.

Gaps have at one time or another invoked imaginative responses in us all. Whether it be cracks in the pavement or the narrow spaces between domestic decking floorboards. In this new series of paintings, Adrian Jackman is considering gaps in the landscape. Investigating the agricultural technique known as circular irrigation, two of the three paintings in this exhibition, entitled Detail, and The Fall, refer to an ongoing discussion for Jackman whose earlier works occasionally explored the landscape from a similar point of view. Relating to his works which were based on the manicured landscape of golf course fairways, these new paintings observe the land similarly, but this time tended on a massive scale for agriculture.

Describe circular irrigation to most people and they will no doubt recall the crop circles depicted in Hollywood extraterrestrial films and conspiracy theories. Circular irrigation is easy enough to explain as the pattern created by massive irrigation sprinklers. Jackman's physical brushstrokes suggest a Courbet-like approach (2) echoing against the impermanence that we see in satellite photographs of these assembled landscapes. Rough painterly gestures in certain areas are contrasted with carefully measured lines and sections of sfumato (3) indicating where the photographic image fails to capture the details.

In these fields seen from directly above there is no qrandiloquence of nature, as in old paintings; the sublime is replaced by a matter of fact, topographical view of our invasion upon the land. Looking closer, the arrangement of forms appears hastily constructed. Roughly slotted in between arterial roads, circular crops take in as large a space as they are able. In most fields the irrigation circle is only partial and missing sections of the pie shape are taken up by conventional rectangular paddocks and buildings. These abstract and slightly haphazardly arranged shapes are perhaps epithets, for Jackman, of our engagement with nature.

The titles of the two larger scale works (Detail and Inset) in Jackman's exhibition deliberately borrow straightforward photographic terminology. These titles, lowly technical definitions in the realm of photography, imply a conditional status upon the works, in effect freeing painting from historical jargon inasmuch as they suggest the potential importance inherent in any image, photographic or otherwise.

With the largest work, Inset, the topographical idea that initiated the series appears to have been exorcised and provides Jackman licence for a new investigation in the same theme: tractor tyres. While Detail and The Fall depict and also abstract the images of our interaction with land, Inset goes one step further in arranging a pile of future archaeological objects.

Taking in the visually jarring effect of a pile of tyres forming the monochromatic composition of Inset – a large map-like painting spanning numerous linked-up sheets of paper – brings to mind the work of 1960s optical artists. While that is partly a historical refence by Jackman, this work belongs to his on-going drawing practice, which operates alongside and occasionally conjuncts into his painting practice. Possibly inspiring or challenging a new direction for Jackman's current investigation, Inset is in effect a counterbalance to the two topographical paintings; the detritus of agricultural machinery forming an emblem for this project.

Matt Blomeley
Tuesday, 17 March 2009

Mind the Gap will be on show at Lopdell House, 18 April - 24 May 2009.
(Satellite image courtesy Adrian Jackman.)

Adrian Jackman website http://www.adrianjackman.com/

Footnotes:
1. Ortega y Gasset, José, The Revolt of the Masses, W.W. Norton and Co, New York, 1930 (1993). (pp79)
2. Harrison, Charles, Conceptual Art and Painting: Further Essays on Art & Language, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England, 2001 (pp85,86). Harrison discusses Fried's study of Gustave Courbet, interpreting the physical nature of Courbet's painting: “Foremost among the defining preoccupations of Courbet's work, Fried diagnoses an urge – necessarily and significantly doomed to frustration – to transport himself bodily into the painting taking shape, and thus to close the gap between painting and beholder ... Courbet's attempt to eliminate the distinction between painting and painter beholder is seen by Fried as a means to defeat theatricalization, and thus preserve the integrity of modern painting.”
3. A painting technique of merging multiple colours without a hard edge, sfumato is derived from the 19th century Italian definition which literally translates as 'shaded off'.

Indian Fortunes: Bronwynne Cornish

A favourite holiday novel of mine returned to several times over the years is set in an idylic university town. There is of course something asmiss with this place, not that many locals would even notice: a powerful spiritual presence lingers in the surrounding landscape. To the few who are destined to see it, this admirable yet malevolent looking character takes the form of a giant black domestic cat, cursed by a local witch to linger around the town and its surrounding hills. (1)
The spell which binds the old tomcat to the town is also an invisible leash, occasionally tripped over when visitors to the town and locals happen to cross his path. The central character in the story becomes entangled with the cat in this manner. She meets him again after passing to the 'other side' and, upon discovering his endless multitude of physical forms, has the following conversation with him: “ 'Schrödinger's cat!' 'That's only a concept, more than that.' Was it against the law of the universe for anything to be only what it seemed? 'Nothing is against the law. The law is its own violation. That is the core of all events, that is Schrödinger's cat.'“ (2)

Heavy dialogue for a popcorn novel, which no doubt passed right over my head as a teenager. I was surprised, in returning to the novel recently that it would actually have some relevance to me as an adult reader. The common superstition, explored in this novel, that we are predestined to a certain path (that can even account for when fortune or misfortune prevails upon us and we are confronted by our ethics in making decisions!) returned to me upon visiting Bronwynne Cornish's ceramic studio and considering her most recent work.

Fortunate to undertake a 2008 residency in India, this experience has greatly influenced Cornish. Speaking about one of the repeating forms that is due to feature in her 2009 exhibition at Masterworks gallery, she relayed to me the story of a remarkable place in India, which she was unfortunately unable to visit first hand during her time there, for logistical and geographical reasons. In this place is a library that apparently holds a detailed pre-written record about anyone who wishes to know their path or fortune in life.

Cornish's shapeshifting works, related to the story she told me – reminding me of the karmic premise as well as the imposing creature of my novel – are a series of six legged beings. Standing proud on four solid, powerful looking legs, their arms with palms cupped together servant-like hold forth your fortune cards. Although there is an overhanging air of mysticism to these works, Cornish is offering more than just an effigy of ethereal worlds and beings. Her investigation also concerns the present, the future, and our place in it.

The maker of ceramic objects which literally wear the skin of her subject(mysticism), like an unbiased contemporary theologian holding the subject of religion at arms length, Cornish explores in-depth and with an open mind the desperation with which we sometimes cling to beliefs and presumptions that have been held for millenia, all the while looking for underlying questions. The questions, and possibly answers, that Cornish is posing with these works are deliberately left open for the eyes and minds of the viewer to ponder and decode, as she is not presumptuous enough to suggest otherwise.

Of any subject or idea that comes to mind upon considering Cornish's new works, perhaps the most important is the notion of Self. Philosopher Slavoj Žižek observes that “if we penetrate the surface of any an organism and look deeper and deeper into it, we never encounter some central controlling element that would be its Self, secretly pulling the strings of its organs ... there is effectively no self ... A true human Self functions, in a sense, like a computer screen: what is “behind” it is nothing but a network of “selfless” neuronal machinery.” (3)

To know that ones Self is not governed by something other pulling its 'strings' is refreshing, yet it does not negate the enjoyment of lyrical objects, which often engage in a language that predates western science and philosophy. Cornish's works operate interestingly and fluently in this context; contemporary objects – enjoying a growing, appreciative audience – in an age where it is more common to see artists exploring science and genetics than pre-European belief systems.

Bronwynne Cornish's years of pushing clay through her fingers are combined with intriguing ideas and relevant subjects to make a convincing artistic statement, reminding one that we each exist as a conflation of our bloodlines and our learned experiences. As Žižek notes, “what makes me “unique” is neither my genetic formula nor the way my dispositions were developed due to the influence of the environment but the unique self-relationship emerging out of the interaction between the two.” (4)

Matt Blomeley
8 March 2009

Essay commissioned for Bronwynne Cornish's upcoming exhibition Horn, Beak and Claw at Masterworks)

1. Strieber, Whitley, Cat Magic, Grafton, London, 1988.
2. Ibid. (pp323,324)
3. Žižek, Slavoj, Organs Without Bodies, Routledge, New York and London, 2004. (pp117,118)
4. Ibid. (pp118)

Head in the Clouds

Phil Cuttance says of this work, “Similar to the rough diamond (another recent Cuttance lightshade), the cloud city shade’s pattern was inspired by simple pop-up book patterns. This shade is created by cutting and then folding flat shapes to create the volumetric form of a mythical ‘cloud city’.” Since graduating in 2002 with honours in Industrial Design from Massey University, Cuttance has established a unique brand of quirky and quick witted design objects for production. Lightheartedly describing himself as a “design bogan”, Cuttance pays homage to this Australasian social archetype with an impressive variety of works which have been exhibited in Auckland, Sydney and Milan. Having moved to London in early 2009 to further his career, we can expect big things from this talented young Kiwi designer. www.philcuttance.com

Matt Blomeley, 6 March 2009

Renee Bevan's 'Blooming Big Brooches'

A recent series of work, by New Zealand jeweller Renee Bevan, goes by the boldly self-explanatory title of Blooming Big Brooches. One can confidently claim that Bevan is currently obsessed with flowers, “specifically the rose; its manufactured sentimentality, vast symbolism and its long-standing history in jewellery and adornment.” These brooches, soon to be exhibited at Inform Contemporary Jewellery in Christchurch, engage in a distinctive new conversation regarding dimension, subject and adornment. Renee Bevan is at the forefront of a new generation in Australasian jewelers. Having graduated in 2002, her work has been featured in a number of important exhibitions at institutional project spaces and dealer gallery’s over the past few years, culminating in her selection for the international jewellery exhibition, “Schmuck 2008”.

Image: "Bill Riley wearing Blooming Big Rose Brooch," courtesy Renee Bevan

Matt Blomeley, 6 March 2009

Kate Barton: 2D/3D

This window installation for Objectspace embodies a form of duality, in both a literal and a critical sense. Kate Barton studied as a contemporary jeweller before following this up with studies in animation. Fittingly, Barton's work often manages to extrapolate one into the other, despite the sometimes restrictive specificity and material concerns of these different practices.

Comprising modular, often rectilinear forms, there is a particular softness in the way Barton's jewellery bends and adapts to the wearer's body. The artist notes that these works "resemble both the aesthetic of half finished buildings, steel skeletons exposed, and fragile spider webs with multifaceted, slightly different angles glinting."

An effigy of the jewellery in the installation, Barton's animations (also featured in the installation) describe, in a very analog manner, how she thinks about and visualizes object making. The animations illustrate how her jewellery objects are designed to move and encapsulate space. In effect this is privileging the viewer to the "3D object caught in the 2D plane of paper and ink", statically jumping and moving: embodying the potential that only the jewellery wearer can unlock.

Kate Barton is an Auckland based artist. Image courtesy of Objectspace.

Speaking In Ramas

"Numismatology, pharmacology and archaeology have been reformed. I understand that biology and mathematics also await their avatars…. A scattered dynasty of solitary men has changed the face of the world. Their task continues. If our forecasts are not in error, a hundred years from now someone will discover the hundred volumes of the Second Encyclopedia of Tlön."
- Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings, 1962.

When I heard the title of this new painting installation by Kirstin Carlin and Krystie Wade, I was momentarily confused as to whether I was meant to be associating the ‘Rama’ in Hindu mythology, or the ‘–rama’ in panorama and diorama. In some sense both are equally applicable, as painting, even in its most factual moments, is able to freely dip into fiction or mythology, often embodying a Borges-like feeling of empiricism and liminal exploration.

Confusion about the meaning of the exhibition title was doubtless not the point they were intending, as I know both artists are aware the painted panorama is a peculiar moment in both history and art history, so it was most likely this definition. Anyhow, the conjunctive apprehension of multiple usages, as suggested above, is perhaps a fitting analogy for the exhibition, Speaking in Ramas, for reasons that will follow.

Prior to the advent of photography and the moving image, the painted panorama was a significant and popular simulacrum of the real (and imagined) world in nineteenth century Europe. The most impressive of these were installed in gigantic purpose-built circular rooms replete with artificial fragrances and breezes to stir the imagination and satisfy the vogue for ‘Grand Tour’ experiences. The visitor would enter the panorama via a staircase and be greeted by a handrailed circular viewing platform and a dizzying, continuous painting surrounding the platform.

The paintings produced by surveyors and botanists which were used to peddle the idea of immigrating to New Zealand, paintings which we now hold dear within institutional collections, would have seemed tame by comparison to the fecundity of the panorama which was then all the rage in European cities. Until photography and the moving image, painting was considered as much a mechanical art as a tool for the imagination. The panorama amplified this view, accentuating the desire of many people for instantaneous travel to historically poignant places and past events.

More recently photography has been employed in the realisation of these often massive panoramas, but painting remains of course the only tool appropriate for conveying the information at such a scale. Although panorama painters often relied on technologies like photography and the camera obscura to capture the sense of a real place, just like those early panoramists Carlin and Wade also draw upon the imagination and a plethora of images (now freely available online) to imagine their own places. Although not recreating the 360 degree panoramic spectacle in their works for Speaking in Ramas, both artists have nonetheless engaged with the manner in which panorama pulled together elements that could not be seen in a single painting or photograph.

Having attained a similar command of the ‘hairy stick in mud’, as our art school lecturer once described it, several years down the track into their respective careers Carlin and Wade are ensconced within the mutable history of painting. Both artists, in their own way, envisage panoramic mise-en-scènes using a variety of techniques and mediums in their drawing and realisation processes.

Carlin’s latest paintings utilise Google image searches in a series of works which here interpose the Christchurch Botanic Gardens with the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, London. It is an effort by the artist “to create [her] own fantasy gardens”. Bringing together elements that, like the panorama, are “isolated or scattered around an area too vast to be perceived in one go,” Carlin revisits the conservative vision that Europeans had for New Zealand cities with her own eyes, prompting the viewer to wonder whether new vistas need not always be a glass, stone and concrete simulations of another place, but perhaps have just a strong a validity when their representations emerge merely from flights of the imagination.

Wade’s paintings combine all the twists and tangles of the three dimensional landscape, drawing the viewer into an experience of imagined natural settings that exist within the frame of the canvas. The feeling of movement is an intentional characteristic of her works, which often feature plateaus and garden elements haphazardly linked into path-like constructions, drawing the viewer around a space deliberately held within the constraints of the canvas. Wade quotes the artist Laura Owens: “It’s odd to think of paintings as static, they are so much more. They don’t move like film but seem to have a lot more movement than photography.”

Digital technology, with its potential to faultlessly distort the truth captured within photographic images, often uses drawing and painting inspired ‘tools’ within computer applications like Photoshop, and as such seems to have loosened the captivating, alchemical mantle that technologies such as the panorama and photography originally displaced, but could not replace, from the medium of painting. In as much, the majority of digital drawing technologies used to manipulate images do not seem to have moved beyond emulating collage-like drawing and photographic retouching techniques.

If digital media has freed or reinvigorated public perception of the painting, it also seems to be responsible for other ‘mechanical’ or ‘technical arts’ regaining status in the challenging and decidedly panoptic world of contemporary fine art. It is not uncommon now, for instance, to see ceramic, textile and jewellery practice exhibited alongside painting and installation art within contemporary art galleries and major exhibitions. The panorama may no longer be relevant as a specific optical technology but the role it has played and the influence it still represents remains omnipresent.

Matt Blomeley
07/02/2009

- Speaking In Ramas is a new exhibition at Physics Room gallery in Christchurch, 18 February - 14 March 2009.

- Image courtesy Kirstin Carlin and Anna Miles Gallery.

Pests in the Tool Shed

The colligate relationship between material, skill and local identity is something which holds particular gravity in the object making scene. There is for good reason for this, as creative practice would be all the poorer were we limited to makers whose modus operandi is international in scope yet oblivious to the rich vein of potential inherent in local history and materials. This relationship to material is often slightly obsequious in the contemporary arts, yet a small number of New Zealand artists in recent years have managed to successfully blaze a path which blurs the line between craft and contemporary art. Whether or not intentional, it would appear that material has reasserted itself as a central factor in our understanding of many arts practitioners and two fine artists that have a foot in this particular canon are Regan Gentry and Ben Pearce.

Based in the Hawkes Bay region of New Zealand, Ben Pearce’s practice is testament to an inherited compulsion for tinkering and making. Pearce has made a name for himself though a consistent stream of exhibitions over the past few years. On exhibit have been a range of unusual sculptural objects that you would not be likely to find elsewhere. These objects are more often than not comprised of various timbers that have been crafted into smooth and sinuous forms and then skillfully combined with locally found objects and occasional small machinery components.

Pearce’s ever expanding and evolving repertoire of works is inspired by childhood and suggestive of mostly harmless cyborg-like beings that have perhaps willed themselves to life by employing the detritus and abandoned things found in a disused shed. In his 2007 window installation at Objectspace in Auckland, titled Mr Moorhouse’s Garden, the artist collated a menagerie of retro toy inspired sculptural objects.

Featuring funnel-esque wooden appendages that resembled early hearing aid devices or ‘His Masters Voice’ gramophone speakers, the objects in Mr Moorhouse’s Garden were arranged so as to advance the notion that they were communicating with one another. Pearce noted that they were “solemn and lost, yet in search of each other for cues and dialogue”. Pearce’s upcoming March 7 to May 17, 2009, exhibition at Hawkes Bay Museum and Art Gallery in Napier, Utterance, promises a selection of intriguing new works that expand upon his earlier premise.

Regan Gentry is a contemporary fine artist whose range of exhibition projects has investigated the ingenuity, DIY ethos and colonial history of New Zealand. Gentry’s 2007 series, Of Gorse, Of Course, exhibited at the New Dowse and The Sargeant Gallery, featured an exhaustive selection of works, all of which were fashioned from gorse. Imported to New Zealand during colonial times as a hedge, gorse doggedly spread its way around the country fast becoming a nationwide pest. Conceived during his four months in Invercargill as a 2006 William Hodges Artist In Residence, Of Gorse, Of Course drew attention to Gentry outside of the regular art channels as much for the variety of objects on display as the artisan skills displayed by the maker.

There is a vein of dry wit running through all of Gentry’s exhibitions, in particular with the Gorse series, which communicate particular mannerisms and gung ho nature of the antipodean lifestyle. Other recent works by Gentry have included several major public sculpture commissions as well as a 2008 exhibition for the Sargeant Gallery in Wanganui, Near Nowhere, Near Impossible, developed while he was 2007 Tylee Cottage artist in residence.

Matt Blomeley
23 January 2009

Images above by Regan Gentry (top) and Ben Pearce (Bottom)

Writing commissioned by Object
Ben Pearce website http://www.benpearce.co.nz/

Two new Objectspace installations to check out

Best In Show 2009

Best In Show is Objectspace's fifth annual exhibition in a series which showcases a handpicked selection of outstanding craft and design graduates. The Best In Show format has proven itself to be an important event within the annual craft and design exhibition calendar and Objectspace is proud to have represented a range of new voices over the last five editions of Best In Show. The fourteen exhibitors in this year's exhibition encompass the exciting and varied terrain of spatial, graphic and textile design along with ceramics, jewellery and object art installation.

Previous Best In Show exhibitors have moved on to win design awards and competitions, establish themselves within their chosen fields and some are already moving into roles as mentors and teachers. If there is a theme or feeling that stands out among these fourteen exhibitors in 2009, it is that critical engagement is positioned foremost within their varied practices in conceiving and making intelligent objects.

Jacqui Chan's Exotic Blend

A reflection upon cross cultural heritage, Jacqui Chan's Exotic Blend signifies her desire, as a contemporary jeweller, to embody the particular form of chinoiserie endemic to her New Zealand upbringing.

The artist notes that "growing up initially in bicultural Whakatane and later the homogenous Pakeha-dominant South Island, there was little reflection of our Chinese half in life outside our home. It was therefore somewhat natural that our sense of Chineseness became entwined with domestic objects. Rice pattern bowls, our Chinese teapot, painted fans, shitake mushrooms, and the mahjong set were day-to-day evidence of our cultural heritage and imagery with which to imagine China."

With this body of work Chan was drawn to tea tins for the symbolism they engender. The exotic imagery depicted in tea tins is, she observes, equally distant from modern China as it is from England. Cut up, pierced, folded and tricked into wearable brooch forms, the tea tin is reclaimed by the artist.

Jacqui Chan is a New Zealand artist. Trained as an architect and then a jeweller, she will be undertaking doctoral studies in Australia from 2009.

'Special Needs' post at Paua Dreams

Moyra Elliott just informed me of an excellent post on Damian Skinner's Paua Dreams website that I'd almost missed the last time I was checking out his site. In his post, Skinner addresses the issue of craft artist representation within the contemporary art world. The answers to this problem are definitively buried within the scope of each craft discipline and it does appear, as Skinner points out, that jewellers are currently playing the contemporary 'art game' more successfully than ceramists, glass and textiles artists.

As Skinner illustrates, the issue is relatively simple: with the exception of several contemporary art galleries that represent a select few jewellery makers, craft focused dealer galleries - the predominant exhibiting venue for jewellers - in NZ are usually a little out of tune with the workings of the contemporary art system. I won’t be surprised when when a 'maker' breaks through to Walters-type acclaim, but in the current climate it's more than likely that it won’t be someone singled out from a craft gallery exhibition alone.

Sarah Sadd of Masterworks may have had to feel Skinner’s heat in relation to this issue (refer to the post), but Damian is in no way discriminating against the importance of galleries such as Masterworks. I can’t think of a better way to describe the current situation as when he summarises: "Either craft plays the fine art game so it can be eligible for the Walters Prize, or the Walters Prize (and the art world that sustains it) is transformed and old hierarchies are dismantled. To imagine otherwise is naïve, and that just gives fine art another reason not to take craft seriously."

Technology and innovation

Carbon fibre and traditional craft weaving are leagues apart in technology, sharing similarity only in their fundamentally fibrous nature and applicability to a vast range of design objects.

Who would ever have expected the two would meet, as with Johan Museeuw's latest flax/carbon performance bicycle frames and wheels? Comprising a surprisingly high ratio of flax fibre to 3K Carbon HM fibre (around 50%) that undoubtedly qualifies flax as more than just a timely marketing gimmick, Museeuw frames have recently received an overwhelmingly positive amount of critical attention.

A timely reminder - in the same vein as William McDonough & Michael Braungart's Cradle To Cradle / Remaking The Way We Make Things - not to overlook traditional craft materials when it comes to high end technological design. Check that retail price though!

Kim Hill this morning

I listened with interest this morning to Kim Hill interviewing designer David Trubridge. An intriguing conversation, it left me wondering if there is an unfair expectation in the media for local design businesses to be our flag bearers for eco-sustainability. Positioning an ecological and sustainable ethos above the economic realities of running a business as ethically as possible - in the face of a domestic economy reliant on cheaply imported goods - is a challenge that most mainstream businesses manage to successfully avoid. So why does contemporary design seem to cop it? Are we looking for the answers to our oil and pollution problems in designing fancy lightshades? It is a difficult territory, so hats off to Hill for taking the time to chat with Trubridge, who's website has the contemporary buzzword of 'sustainability' stamped all over it.

David Trubridge is a successful local design business inspired by native flora and fauna of New Zealand and as such is promoted heavily to the domestic market (as well as internationally). He employs intelligent local designers and makers, as well as mostly local materials and production processes.

Trubridge's company employs a profitable domestic business model in which New Zealanders can take confidence. Kim Hill uncovers - in stripping away some of the Trubridge PR veneer and deftly avoiding too much rhetoric about what Trubridge clearly perceives as our lack of national identity - that inasmuch as it could appear to be yet another a design brand built up on a confusing blend of new age hyperbole, glossy magazines and featuring in important public museum collections, this business has its roots in the old ethos of skilled craftspeople making things locally from available resources.

This is where the discussion becomes important. Sustainable making practices have always been around and seem to me extremely simple, elegant. It seems we almost need the whole ethos of this way of living repackaged, glamorised and even perhaps legislated.

At one stage in the conversation, Trubridge tells a simple yet interesting story about building a house in the early stages of his career, which relates to the direction of his present business. It is an interesting corollary for the ecologically sound remnants of 'pre-oil' economy design processes and the environmental issues which we are currently staring down the barrel of: "What's interesting about that time was that we instinctively looked for the best solutions. We could go down and buy cheap pine and stuff at the hardware store, but we went to the recycling yards and bought teak decking from ships - things like this - we built the house sort of as the way builders had always done it in rural areas of Britain; stone buildings that last forever; that kind of attitude without thinking that's what we did. It's interesting that now looking back on it, that's a real model for our times."

Volume Contemporary Craft/Object Symposium

Volume, for everyone who missed it, was a great excuse to head for the Hawkes Bay without the usual excuse of buying top notch NZ plonk (wine). Highlights were Justin Paton's keynote, the Sunday craft market (which I left with a wallet lighter but with Lex Dawson, Paul Maseyk and Ross Mitchell Anyon works), and being invited to share my notes onstage as part of a selection of eight professional colleagues presenting examples of contemporary makers and practices to keep an eye on.

Metonymy exhibition

Italo Calvino once asked: “Whom do we write a novel for? Whom do we write a poem for?” Calvino answered his own question: “For people who have read a number of other novels, a number of other poems. A book is written so that it can be put beside other books and take its place on a hypothetical bookshelf.”

The proposition behind the Metonymy exhibition is to my eyes a similar question and it is a fitting project for our post-everything social climate. One problem in literature and the fine arts is that each is so finely enmeshed in its respective “hypothetical bookshelf” that the audience – often peers – draw conclusions which are often way off the mark from what the writer, poet or artist may have intended. Metonymy addresses this gap.

When words and visual arts occasionally collude the results are perhaps even more unpredictable than each would be on its own. As noted above, writers, poets and artists, similar to a degree through holding creative occupations, employ differing methodologies which relate intricately to the shared traditions and received wisdom of their respective crafts.

Combining authorial voices, as proposed by the instigators of the Metonymy project, has allowed artists and writers to develop an understanding of each others languages in the process of teaming up on a project. The sharing of knowledge in this peer reviewed environment appears to have had a largely positive flow-on in this instance and a number of great new works are the result.

Not taking anything away from academic endeavours, the purpose of the Metonymy project has the simple aim of creative people enriching one anothers knowledge. In many ways it is more generous – both for the participants and the viewer – than most art exhibitions and for this the organisers should be commended.

Matt Blomeley

Metonymy. Cross Street Studios, Auckland, 14-24 May 2008

Pick Up Your Cave And Run

The artists featured in Pick Up Your Cave And Run suggest alternative positions from which to view our notions of home. A fundamental trait that apparently defines man from beast, the strong desire we all have to construct a private space serves as a repository of all manner of things meaningful. Not merely a shelter for sleeping, our "caves" are also a social space and necessary for emotional wellbeing. As our oldest ancestors discovered, caves are great places to store objects of personal relevance.

Bar the occasional ascetic individual (an indulgent position nowadays), we all have a desire to furnish personal space. But space is not only physical. Our contemporary existence as liminal, internet-based 'social networking' machines indicates that times are changing and that our perceptions of personal space may also be changing. For many individuals, including the artists in this exhibition, the definition of home is determined more by work and current circumstances than how space is furnished.

Free online services mean that even those among us whom society would like to ignore are now able to exist in multiple social circles off the grid. Of course this is part and parcel of a proviso that one is willing to exist online as a social avatar of oneself. If so, it is quite easy to exist socially with negligible personal contact to anyone in ones sphere of influence. With access to permanent free digital services and land line phones becoming a thing of the past, perhaps we will one of these days no longer be required or in fact want to actually maintain a physical residence?

The relationship between objects and our sense of place is opened up for examination by the artists in this exhibition. Explorations range from our continued obsession with handicrafts to consideration of the urban and natural environment. The role of objects and materials is a central factor in each of these projects. Pick Up Your Cave And Run reflects on domesticity from a generation of New Zealanders who have matured in a rapidly changing post colonial economy.

Matt Blomeley

Pick Up Your Cave And Run features the work of artists Chris Hargreaves, Andrea Du Chatenier, Tim van Dammen, Andrew Rankin, Rachel Bell, Nick Taylor, Kate Barton, and Danielle Clayton and will be on show at RAMP gallery in Hamilton March 18 - April 4, 2008.

Redefining Agility on stuff.co.nz

Article by Scott Morgan.

Top Tens exhibition PDF

From Top Tens at Snowhite, August 2005. A PDF catalogue of this project can be downloaded from here. It's getting a bit long in the tooth already but it's worth a download. Top Tens features 'anonymous' writing/top ten lists from twenty one artists and academics; Dan Arps, Eu Jin Chua, Danielle Vermeer Clayton, Yasmin DuBrau, Richard Fahey, Elspeth Fougrere, Jennifer French, Vincent Lum, Grace Peters, Miriam Harris, Joel Kefali, MJ Kjarr (Matt Blomeley), Alethea Nathan, Janine Randerson, Nicholas Spratt, Tim Thatcher, Hannah May Thompson, Mandy Thomsett Taylor, Vegard Toresen, Krystie Wade, Kathy Waghorn.

Exhibition Opening

Redefining Agility exhibition at Objectspace

"Nature crafts materials of a complexity and functionality that we can only envy" - Janine Benyus

The designers and engineers featured in Redefining Agility apply contemporary manufacturing processes and materials to the production of specialist sporting equipment. Their objects expand the notion that craftsmanship and new technologies may go hand-in-hand. Henry Petroski has observed that "engineering is the art of compromise." Many designers and engineers, including those featured in Redefining Agility, are fusing new scientific and material developments.

It sometimes appears that life never really changes. The modern Tour De France athlete conquering an alpine pass on a cutting edge carbon composite bicycle could well be an ancient warring Assyrian drawing forth a finely crafted ‘fist of god' (a composite bow that was constructed of layers of horn, leather and wood) and laying siege to his enemy: both rely on objects made of composite materials. Layering and compositing materials together to build and enhance the performance of functional objects is a key component in contemporary design and engineering, just as it was for the Assyrian bow maker.

In the early 1980s if you asked a bicycle racer to describe his or her dream machine, the response would most likely have been a frame made by an Italian artisan fitting and brazing together double butted steel tubes into custom made arabesque lugs. The fantasy of this period was the delivery to your doorstep of a 3-4lb frame, replete with the logo, from one of a handful of elite European family businesses. A couple of decades on, the brand name and on-road feel remain relatively consistent, yet the resulting frame is likely to be a jewel-like 2lb carbon fibre object of desire.

The last four decades have seen major advances in the development of polymers and manufactured fibres. A 1950s invention originally estimated as potentially costing millions of dollars per pound to manufacture, carbon fibre matting soon found its way into the aerospace industry and was quickly applied to sporting equipment design, an ideal testing ground for carbon composites. Akiko Busch writes, "Objects, like people, can live double lives. And contemporary sports equipment thrives - with subtlety, wit, and pure exuberance - on its rich double life. The new materials and technology of such equipment have redefined the way sports are played, enhancing speed, force, distance, height. At the same time, however, their forms spell out clearly and consistently our cultural profile. For all the energy and vitality this equipment represents, what it may do with the greatest agility and grace is serve these two functions at once." (Design For Sport, 1998)

One of the most exciting recent developments in equipment design is ‘female moulded composite tubing', consisting of custom engineered half section tubes which are faultlessly bonded due to precisely interlocking lips. The svelte-looking resulting equipment answers the demand for optimum performance and eye appeal. Southern Spars, an international company founded in New Zealand and based in Freemans Bay, Auckland, is a world leader in carbon fibre yacht componentry. The firm employs ingeniously designed female moulds to create precisely engineered carbon fibre spars with load bearing characteristics specifically tailored to the most high stress sections. The technology is identical to the latest methods employed in bicycle design. The casual observer of these products would not notice anything other than the aerodynamically engineered outer shell of the construction.

Another innovative Auckland based company involved with the marine industry is C-Tech. Founded several years ago by yachtie and engineer, Alex Vallings, C-Tech's carbon fibre sail battens were used by every syndicate in recent America's Cup and Volvo Ocean Race competitions. Sail battens reside within narrow sleeves built into sails, enabling the sail to maintain optimum shape and increase speed. The latest developments in this equipment are leaning towards inflatable battens and C-Tech is once more at the forefront, having recently developed inflatable battens made from extremely durable polymers that are reinforced with a manufactured fibre used predominantly in the aerospace industry.

The demand for precision, simplicity, safety and performance is a reflection of the obsession with pushing boundaries. Whenever outright performance is the consideration, form is defined by function and surfing is one pursuit where the form factor hasn't changed in many years. Several new international companies have been busy promoting alternative construction methods for performance short boards, but the jury remains out on many of these products. However, Whangamata based, Pete Anderson's surfboards are well proven, the familiar '@' logo having shredded waves around New Zealand beaches for many years. In his latest project, Anderson's team riders have been strenuously testing the specific handling characteristics of new generation styrene/epoxy short boards featuring carbon fibre outer rails and a PVC stringer that has replaced the traditional narrow wooden strip running down the centre of the board.

The growing appeal of objects that feature a discernible utilitarian aesthetic reflects a desire for quality construction, convenience and outright performance. Hummer recreational vehicles and Leatherman tools are exemplars of this desire. A utilitarian concept also typifies the design of Murray Broom's high performance foldable kayaks. Broom's Dunedin based company Firstlight Kayaks produces an award winning range of performance craft. Constructed of interconnected carbon kevlar tube sections, these spring-loaded frames support a durable urethane skin. The lightweight vessel is able to be disassembled into a portable backpack in several minutes. Broom's foldable kayak design has won numerous awards and since 2004 has been featured in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The collaborative nature of equipment design is exemplified by highly specialized performance projects. The legs Wayne Alexander created for double amputee climber and athlete Mark Inglis' successful 2006 Mt Everest climb, along with the team responsible for Sarah Ulmer's 2004 Olympic gold medal pursuit bicycle are examples of equipment placed under high stress that must perform exactly as designed, with no exceptions. Milton Bloomfield, of Christchurch based Dynamic Composites, was part of the team that developed Ulmer's bike, together with Mark Hildesley of Auckland consultancy Materials Optimization, Ulmer's partner Brendon Cameron, SPARC and The University of Canterbury. In these design collaborations each member contributes to the highly specific attributes required of the end product.

Sport is a global spectacle and equipment is responsible for around 15% of the sporting industry's international revenue. In a market with total annual sales figures in the hundreds of billions, the trickle down to the mass market of new technology from elite athletes is inevitable. Carbon composites are no longer exclusive to large budget high performance objects. Product and furniture designers have taken advantage of the many unique characteristics of this material, just as aerospace, sport and medicine were able to draw upon and inadvertently share the original discovery.

The innovative New Zealand based designers and engineers featured in Redefining Agility are part of a new generation of ‘craftspeople', actively utilizing the characteristics of fibres and polymers to create highly specialized bespoke objects. Prototyping new equipment for unforgiving scenarios, they are applying their skills wherever boundaries of agility need to be redefined.

Curated by Matt Blomeley, Redefining Agility is at Objectspace 1 March - 5 April 2008.

(Image courtesy of Mark Inglis and Wayne Alexander)

Best In Show 2008

The fourth annual exhibition in this ongoing series at Objectspace, Best In Show 2008 features makers from a selection of New Zealand's design and craft tertiary education programmes. For anyone interested in learning more about these makers a print publication is available from Objectspace (also available as a pdf download). Image courtesy of Scott Facer and Objectspace.