Victor Berezovsky's "Portal"

In February Victor Berezovsky will begin the installation of his Portal (pictured above) on the facade of the Freyburg Pool in Wellington's Oriental Bay. Portal is designed to draw attention to one of Wellington most iconic twentieth century buildings, and to reference the activities that take place inside.

Smoking with Gordon Crook

The three prints by Gordon Crook included in May Contain Nuts give the flavour of a new series of work that will be shown at the gallery in March 09. The central motif of Gordon's new exhibition will be smoking in all its many forms.

Anna-Marie O'Brien and the Rabbits

The Meeting of the Anti-Natal Class and New Father's Support Group by Anna-Marie O'Brien, look like sweet rabbit paintings. The titles of Anna-Marie's work are always important. They provide the key to their real meaning...

Megan Hansen-Knarhoi's Prayer Hand Pigeon

I asked Megan Hansen-Knarhoi about her work Prayer Hands Pigeon Pooing Prismatic Promise in May Contain Nuts
She writes, "Praying hands are a universal symbol of hope, and simultaneously as a white dove a symbol of peace. The pigeon on the other hand is considered the dirty rodent of the bird world. The rainbow symbolises the covenant between God and man "the rainbow shall be seen in the cloud; and I will remember My covenant which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh". (Genesis 9:8-17) It is also symbolic of the seven subtle, interfacing bodies of multidimensional human consciousness as well as being a sign of diversity and inclusiveness, of hope and of yearning & international cooperative movement & freedom, and popularized as a symbol of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender with the freedom flag. Here the Prayer Hand Pigeon shits out a rainbow of crosses, another potent symbol. Being poopped on by a bird is supposedly good luck, but in our western world of over use, and over indulgence perhaps all this symbolism is just a load of shit?" Prayer Hand Pigeon is a series of finely crotcheted crosses, and a cross stitched prayer hand.

More Hybrids by John Roy

It's the last weekend of Here and There and I'm looking at the largest Hybrid in the exhibition. A friend just came in and wondered if the figure wasn't more than a little introverted. With his gaze hidden by the building, the figure would seem to be using it as a periscope - staring into some internal void. And generally John's work is introspective - the way that good art sometimes is. It quietly thinks about the contemporary world and our place in it.

Talking to John Roy

We talked to John Roy about his latest exhibition Here and There.

MNG: You've often used rabbits in your work before. Why rabbits?

JR: I like to use rabbits because they say so many different things depending on the viewers reading of the work.

MNG: Your work has often engaged with architectural forms. But the Hybrids are a little different. Metaphorically all buildings are an extension of ourselves in that they are the product of human projects and labour. Is this what you are referring to, and what's the significance or meaning of the Hybrids?

JR: I see the Hybrids as a fusion of people and buildings - people being modified by the environment they live in.

MNG: Anything you want to say about the holes or perforations in your work?

JR: I like holes. I think of them sometimes being windows , other times I see
them as drawing with light and dark. A hole is the blackest black you can get, and at the same time it can let the light through.

MNG: And the soldier rabbits? Are soldier rabbits an actual breed...

JR: I used the soldiers as I liked the army in disguise aspect. I also liked the way the wall rabbits are abstract shapes and patterns from a distance, it is not until you get closer that you can tell what they are.

John Roy and his Hybrids

Are they buildings? Trophies to the instability of aesthetics? John Roy calls them Hybrids. They've started out as people and in the alchemy of art, transmuted into buildings. On each side where the base meets the buildings are a set of hands and feet as a reminder. John's signature holes perforate almost all the Hybrids along with formalist bands of colour. The largest Hybrid here suggests the Empire State building, while the one next to it, a mosque or perhaps the Chrysler building.

Lonnie Hutchinson & Hand Maid in Mt Albert

Lonnie Hutchinson's work often carries a sub-text. It's only apparent here in the title - Hand Maid in Mt Albert - and perhaps in the doily like shapes of some of the cut-outs that make up this installation. It's a subtext about the place of Polynesian women in contemporary society, about 'craft' (that much disputed word), about sculpture, about applied art. In this work, the notion of sculpture is ephemeral and fragile - with implied movement and a lightness of touch.

Home Base

Home Base includes new work by Margaret Dawson printed on silver trays. Above is The Next Stage 2008 - essentially an image of a woman with a jersey over her head but emerging from a deep silver dish coated so that she glows. Margaret often uses people she knows in her work and this woman is her mother, Anna. But it's not essential to know this and Anna is transformed into a image with non specific historic references, of forbearance and saintliness.

A Guilty Party

"Who ate all the pies? Who ate all the world? With our voracious appetites, we have gnawed, devoured, scoffed, gutsed, chomped, gobbled, trampled, polluted, desecrated the world. Who ate all the world? We did! Pass me those antacids - this heartburn/break is killing me!"
Lauren Lysaght, Oct 2008

A Guilty Party is featured in Home Base.

Collecting Art

"The best advice I can give a collector is: develop your eye, and then buy with your heart - always, always with the heart."
Andre Emmerich (1924-2007), 2003

Simon Shepheard and the demolition of NZ landscape

We asked Simon Shepheard about the ideas behind Pimp My Planet on at the gallery until 4 October.

MNG: Visitors to the exhibition often ask where you get your materials?

SS: My immediate environment- Grey Lynn, Ponsonby. It lies on the verge outside half renovated villas, and as I go around on other business, I can't resist stacking the roof racks or loading the back of the wagon. I collect, sort, & store the materials to renovate my studio/house as well as build art.

MNG: Why make work from these kinds of materials?

SS: This country used to be a rainforest. Huge trees, often over 1000 years old pretty well covered the land coast to coast. Then it was mass-mangled into villas by our immediate ancestors, painted with generations of toxic colour, lashed by storms and blistered by the sun. And then thrown out onto the road. So the narrative's implicit, I'm just the editor.

MNG: You seem to like paua....

SS: Paua has a parallel tale. Its cultural relevance is cross-myriad. The radium powered gleam redeems the low caste context it is set into. I like to use it as a brush stroke of neon pigment.

MNG: Your work seems to think about our landscape tradition. Anything you want to say about that? Has your work always been about landscape?

SS: Yes. It's powerful subject matter and seems to emerge almost uninvited out of the blistered, peeling planks. NZ is not the centre of the post-modern world - its a big empty landscape on the edge of it. What is happening to the Amazon now, happened here a hundred years ago. In many ways Kiwis are the biggest polluters ever on earth, and yet we deceive the world into believing that we're exactly the opposite. Landscape glorification is our most dubious art. I think I'm having a poke at all that, but I also see the scapes struggle to survive as poignant, beautifully sad, and worth revealing.

MNG: What is it with the signs? What are they about?

SS: Of course they are a cheap metaphor! They mock real-estate or street signs - hacked and pilfered souvenirs from a sick future. They are a seductive warning pointing down the road to a beautiful death.

Green Ghost

I'm looking at Green Ghost (above) by Simon Shepheard. It's inlaid paua hole and tree stump glitter under the gallery lights. Nevermind the paua, the dead tree stump is such a familiar image, but not only that, it has a history in New Zealand art. Simon talks about referencing Dick Frizzell but Frizzell was certainly sending up a whole tree stump tradition. The Dead Tree Theme in New Zealand art lives on.

Life Signs

Sign posts are something of a theme throughout Simon Shepheard's work, and Pimp My Planet includes one of his landscape signs, Man Grooves (top). Sign 2006 (bottom) was featured in a previous exhibition Another Pretty Ugly Collection. These 'signs' contain their own subtle scapes, and contain histories of the landscape in their materials. They point at places longingly.

Monet at the Dump

Pimp My Planet new work by Simon Shepheard opened last night at the Gallery. Above is "Landscrape" 2007-08 from the exhibition. With it's Water-Lily Pond colours, Shepheard seems to be making art from the scrap heap of Modernism. He's using the leftovers of the twentieth century, its floor boards and weatherboards stained with age and degraded paint, to make hazy references to New Zealand's pristine landscape tradition.

General Assembly by Fiona Jack

Welcome to the Mary Newton Gallery blog.

It's the second to last day of Fiona Jack's exhibition General Assembly, and the wall where visitors are encouraged to write up an article from the UN Declaration of Indigenous Rights is covered in a chorus of handwritten articles. I asked Fiona some questions about the installation.

MNG: Why the UN Declaration of Indigenous Rights?
FJ: Because it’s a very significant document that disappeared beneath the radar in Aotearoa. Very few people I have told about it had heard about it previously – it was clearly not discussed widely in the media at all. I was not in NZ at the time, but I am assuming that was the case, and also I can find little press about it retrospectively. Also, the final paragraph of our official statement on the declaration says “...we must therefore disassociate entirely from this text” which I believe is a mistake. Perhaps some people believe that it is legally too complicated to sign this declaration (although UN declarations are never legally binding – they are “aspirational” documents), however regardless of our position this document is for the rights of over 350 million indigenous peoples worldwide. No-one in the world can or should “disassociate” with this document. Maybe we can find complications, or debate it, or question parts, but disassociating is very problematic, and this is what we have done.

MNG: How did you interest people initially in copying out the aspirational paragraphs?
FJ: I just asked – everyone I approached was more than willing when I told them what it was.

MNG: What were you hoping for in encouraging visitors to the exhibition to copy out the articles?
FJ: By writing something out we engage more directly in a text. Also people go through the process of choosing a paragraph, which also forms a connection with the text. Then.. the outcome which is a wall filled with many many handwriting styles reflects the many voices who support this document. I guess in a way that wall will say “our government doesn’t support this document but we do”. In a way we are all signing our names to it in the absence of our government’s signature.

MNG: Anything you want to say about relational aesthetics?
FJ: Well, in so far as participation is always a part of political debate. Relational aesthetics is all about participation - creating situations for people to engage with a scenario that proposes social outcomes that in many cases lead to a political comment and/or involvement. I am perhaps less interested in framing it specifically under that discourse rather than as aligned to a number of conversations – art and politics, the situationists, graffiti, post-colonial theory, and in New Zealand specifically I am interested in Tino Rangitiratanga and how self-determination and art can manifest in our communities.

MNG: You've described your work as 'intervention into foreign policy'? Have I got that right? Want to elucidate?
FJ: I don’t know that I said that, did I? I mentioned a conference at Otago University titled “Power to the People, Public Participation in Foreign Policy”. I didn’t go to it, but it looked really interesting. But as we know, public intervention can change policy at all levels. We have learnt that over and over again, but we just need enough awareness and action on an issue in order to provoke change.

MNG: You have used a similar colour palette on a number of occasions. Anything to tell there?
FJ: Umm, not...not really. It’s just what I’m always drawn to. No conceptual choice here in relation to the content. Sometimes my colour palette is determined by the content of the show, other times not so much.

MNG: How was your work about the Melbourne's taxi community received (at RMIT's gallery)?
FJ: Not sure.... seemed ok. You’d have to ask some Melbournians. The taxi community welcomed my presence and were very willing to talk, and to be heard. Only one taxi driver came to the exhibition, but even that was great to me!