BFA (hons)? Check!

In March 2012 I begun studying at Massey University Wellington as a 'mature' student, not sure if I would stay for the whole 4 years of the BFA (hons) degree. Well, as of midday today I submitted the last assignment required to graduate. The time has flown by. It has been an amazing experience and I have continued to feel so privileged to have the opportunity to spend this much time thinking about, talking about and making art. It is my passion. It is my focus. They say 'do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life'. Art school never once felt like work.

My plan now is to have a part-time job in the industry as an arts administrator in whatever guise may be available, and the rest of the time to hone my skills, to refine my practice and to make a tonne of work! I have a few projects coming up before the end of the year (including the graduate show 'Exposure' at Massey, which will be the work I just submitted), but more on that next time. Right now I'm ready for a break, some bad tv, popcorn and a hot chocolate.

Test Space (detail)


How to cope with life...

Periphery is a diverse exhibition, exuberantly presenting various strategies on how to cope with life: accepting errors, being joyful, questioning conventions and defying categorisation. The artists and designers involved share a desire for a societal shift in perspective and reprioritisation of values, away from rigid rules and definitions and rather, to embrace open thinking, individual uniqueness and infinite possibilities.

 

'Space' is a concept relevant to the group in various ways. To play off that idea we will be positioning our works in non-standard locations. Some are in hallways were  you can see them easily and in passing. Others are in rooms that are able to be hired out and therefore are tucked away. Access and audience is varied. Depending on whether the rooms are booked or not changes what you might see. If the doors are open then the walls break down, more space becomes available and restrictions are relaxed. However if the room is in use you will not be able to enter. Like life, all things are not available for all people at all times. Each of the artists and designers in the show have thought about this in some way in the development of their work and it holds as a collective ingredient toward the outcome, five individual perspectives on life.

 

 

 

Contributors include:

Christina Wastney
     www.facebook.com/artXrat

Sophia Gambitsis
     https://instagram.com/sofasophia/

Edgardo Tabios

Liam Farrell
     www.behance.net/liamjonathanfarrell

 

Meeting Room West complete...maybe

Well here we are, almost a month since Toi Poneke celebrated 10 years in existence on a drizzly but ultimately colourful day and I am finally posting images. In order to brighten up the arts centre, residents were encouraged to hang their work in hallways and communal areas. Since wall drawings are my thing, I offered to give the 'Meeting Room West' (it's in the West Building) an all over paint job. There were certain considerations of course. It is a windowless and airless room with a large oval table and seating for 6 on patterned swivel chairs from the 1980's. After much consideration I decided to go with something subtle, warm and surprising.  In fact it's so subtle the photos don't really do it justice (plus with all that fluro lighting it was tricky to get a shot accurately showing the colour). If you're interested, the shade of pink, which I painted three of the walls is called 'Golden Springs' by Dulux. They guy in the shop described it as practically white and I knew I had chosen the right one. The day was a huge success. Visitor numbers have been estimated at 800 people and I got some lovely comments. 

However my presence in Meeting Room West had only just begun. I was also working toward showing three site responsive paintings which fall somewhere between a painting and a wall drawing. They are not easily to catagorise as they merge the two together (check out the images on my site under Artwork-Meeting Room West). When working on the wall drawing I knew it would stay up longer than the paintings I wanted to show, so made sure to leave one whole wall white. That way when someone else's work was displayed it wouldn't need to compete or be interrupted with the pink. I've had a few crits now on the paintings and wall drawing. I am considering a few minor tweeks. It then has one last life, before the paintings are 'free to explore other options'. In early October, Meeting Room West will host a group exhibition with other final year students. Once we come up with an exhibition name (so far the hardest part!!) then we will start advertising. Obviously more info will be coming soon. I hope you can make it.

 

Here's an install shot:

Drawings for paintings

Lately I've been working towards a group show coming up at Toi Poneke Arts Centre as part of my studies. Not officially a gallery show, but in a meeting room and overflowing into the hallway and kitchen area used by Arts Centre tenants. It's main theme is on alternative approaches to the use and display of art. Right up my alley. More info coming soon!! 

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Art school of the future?

After sale service for graduates. This was just one idea (and my favourite) from a symposium I attended recently called 'art school of the future'. What a facinating line up, being able to hear from the heads of New Zealand's Art schools, curators, writers, academics, artists and international guests. I only wish more students had attended.

David Cross (former head of Masseys PhD programme) presented a whole host of ideas which included: benefits for alumni such as access to technical facilities, free access to seminars and subsidised studio space for one year on or near campus, more administrators to do the administration and let the teachers teach, avoid competition with other art schools by working together and perhaps set up a council of art schools. These ideas if implemented could increase advocacy for the sector at a political level, share costs of enticing international artists, develop role models and enhance success rates.

Other topics included: art as research, where to teach Maori art, funding and economics in the arts, background and current situation for each art school, alternative models for art schools and places of learning, increasing partnerships, a need for flexibility, preparing students for careers with transferable skills, going digital (teaching in Second Life), reconnecting with high schools to prepare students prior to uni, recognising student loan debt.

It was a full on, immersive weekend of considering the arts sector/industry. While it didn't pull out many suprises it was still quite stimulating and I'm glad to have gone. Plus we got cute little notepads.

Upcoming project at Toi Poneke Arts Centre

Semester 2 starts this week for my final year of BFA (Hons). The studio's looking tidy (I've just returned a huge stack of library books) but watch this space. It's gonna get crazy!

In other news, as part of Toi Poneke Art Centre's 10th Birthday I am kitting out Meeting Room West with a new paint job!! Yay. Still finalising the plan right now but come check it out at the party/open studios on Saturday 8 August.

Toi Poneke Arts Centre, 61 Abel Smith St, Wellington

https://www.facebook.com/toiponeke

Studio 2015-07-14

Crossing the Line

The following text is taken from the invitation to the opening of Crossing the Line, a group show I am exhibiting in curated by Pauline Autet, at The Engine Room 29 May - 19 June 2015.

“Line and drawing are the formal elements central to the work of the artists in Crossing the Line, whether laid on paper, walls or in solid form. This minimal and some would say modernist proposition echoes the artists’ shared spatial awareness and an interest in reflective and responsive processes. Memories and experiences of their time as Massey students inform the interventions in the exhibition, allowing us a glimpse into the ‘engine’ of the future and introducing the gallery space as a single part of a larger institution.

The artists work in response to the spatial features of the Engine Room; walls, angles, doors, and by manifesting its physical structure reveal links to the wider institutional and educational framework from which they emerge. The works are intended to be seen in the context of the University and in connection with the other disciplines, people and spaces to which they are intertwined, deviating from the modernist comfort of a self-contained and restrained gallery.”

— Curator, Pauline Autet

Not contracting but expanding

Last year I was creating wall drawings, about the size of a person. I enjoy doing these. For me it makes so much sense to make art about architecture on the architecture itself. I was given a challenge at the start of this year, partially in response to my decision to start making paintings that are less temporal and more, to put it honestly, sellable (not everyone can commission a large wall drawing). That challenge was to reduce in size, considerably. Make the work more intimate to see what happens. So I made the previously blogged paintings. 150 x 200mm. First they were on the front surface, then the paintings ran around the edges. Now they continue to expand and are creeping back onto the walls... So what are they? Paintings or wall drawings? What happens if the paintings are removed? Are the two parts still the same artwork? Are they something new? If someone bought one of these paintings would  I insist on it needing the wall drawing around it? Or could they just have the removable painting by itself? Lets just say, TBC for now. 

Slipping, expanding

The series of small paintings I have been working on are expanding, Originally from human size wall drawings I compacted them into 150x200mm boards. However they are filling not only the image plane but spreading around the edges. They are still growing. What happens when they outgrow the boards they are on and creep back onto the wall itself? We'll see next week when art industry experts from Wellington are invited into Massey University to give feedback on students work.

These paintings will also serve as a test for the upcoming group show at The Engine Room, Massey University's art gallery.

 

Sometimes it hurts

The city is hard edged and angular.

It is black and grey, glass and concrete, smooth and flat.

It is full of fast metal boxes and soft colourful bodies.

We do not belong here.

These unrelenting forms will not compromise if we fall.

How could we have created this alien world so opposite to nature?

It harangues my senses.

It hurts to live here.

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A little quirk

As life becomes complicated, I search for simplicity as a form of escape. It is a way to retreat back in time, when cares could be forgotten in a matter of minutes. I find it pleasing to bring into my world objects that are seemingly logical and understandable. The grown-up me then requires a little quirk. On further perusal, there is something amiss, something twisted. A puzzle. I am not good at riddles, but as I have written this one myself I feel the relief and pride in being able to answer it. For once I can get something right. For once I can be the winner. 

On the occassion of having an art moment

In 2012 I was fortunate enough to travel to Europe in my first year of art school with predominately post-graduate students and lecturers. I was more than excited to have engaging conversations about the meaning of art, its purpose and what it does to you to experience it in the flesh. Unlike most art enthusiasts on the three week trip I did not have any particular focus in mind.

I had already visited many large art institutions around America but not having any formal schooling in the subject it was a pure visual and visceral experience. I had what we call an ‘art moment’ standing in front of an enormous drip painting by Jackson Pollock at a gallery in Washington DC. However I soon began to question my sense of awe, wondering if it was truly the art, or the fame of the artist, or simply the scale that was so exotic and new to me.  I am a thinker and without anyone to bounce ideas off (I was traveling alone for a whole year), soon a sense of isolation set in, inheriting the work and my experience of it with a sense of melancholia.

The trip to Europe three years later was going to be different. I had people all around me just bursting to ask my opinion and to share their own. Or so I thought. Instead, after 15 minutes or so of sitting in the hotel foyer in Kassel, Germany searching through the Documenta 13 guidebook and pawing over the map of the town (absolutely riddled with dots marking the spot of each installation, gallery, temporary beer house, sculpture, projection, etc) the ‘we’ became ‘I’. My travel companions scattered to the wind in pairs and threes, on their own voyage of discovery, having recognised certain artists listed and now on the hunt to track them down. The isolation came back and I felt a pang of despair. I was in a town I don’t know, with no one to talk to and no particular interest (just a general one that was slowly dissolving).

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After a few embarrassing tears in my hotel room, I decided to suck it up and pretend I was traveling alone again. I ventured out and investigated randomly and timidly the art on the map. I headed to the main gallery of the town and was unimpressed. I was not in a good state of mind. There were too many people. It was hot and I was carrying around my raincoat. I was in need of a bathroom, a coffee, some water, a sit down, lunch, anything other than art. I felt a sense of longing for my days traveling alone. I had no expectations that could be dashed. I could spend hours in a café watching people go by, listening to funny accents, with my giant pack by my side unceremoniously lying on the floor beside me (or carefully leaning against a wall so as to keep out of other patron’s way).

 

After 3 days I started to connect with a few of the younger people in the group. Things got better. A few cities and a week or so after that we were in London. I had been there before but had more of a local experience wandering around neighbourhoods, going to a park to watch fireworks on Guy Fawkes night, having a pint at a pub with my cousin and visiting the ANZAC memorial with some ex-pat friends. This time a little group of us decided to do the ‘big gallery’ circuit. Portraits, historical works and contemporary.

Tate Modern is large. Very large. After what felt like a few hours, I came across a series of rooms displaying a familiar style of work. It was modernist. Some of it was American. I can’t even remember if I had my little posse with me by this point. I don’t know if it mattered. I felt comfortable. The ceiling was lower, the corners of the rooms seemed dimmer. Simply forms confronted me with their ease of existence. “I am here just as I am” they said to me. I read labels, recognised names. Took photos. I did not rush through like in Kassel. I was not cramped or hot or thirsty like in Kassel. I was calm. Serene. Smiling to myself and gliding delicately from one to another.

Untitled, Donald Judd, 1972, collection of Tate Modern. Photograph by Laura Ann Woodward, 2012Click here to go to the Tate Modern website for more info

Untitled, Donald Judd, 1972, collection of Tate Modern. Photograph by Laura Ann Woodward, 2012

Click here to go to the Tate Modern website for more info

Past the Andre there was a doorway on the left. I went through it and fell into another world. I could have sat in that room all day. An emotion swept through my body which I did not recognise. Perhaps it was relief from despair. If I was alone in there I might have cried a little. Around me was work by Judd, LeWitt, Turrell and others. My eye lingered on a sealed clear cube with water in it, ‘Condensation cube’. I felt appreciation and my heart lifted. My mind wandered around the possible meaning. In the middle of the room was a jewel. A shiny metal box. I knew it was Judd. I had seen pictures and been curious. I approached it, assessing the quality of the material, the sheen and finding it most pleasing. I looked inside and almost laughed at the release of tension. Row upon row of pinky-red cubes reflected and extending out forever. I want to be there. I had an urge to reach in and touch them. I looked at the rim of the box and saw others must have had the same sensation as there were fingerprints circling the void. But it wasn’t a void. It was lush and rich and beautiful. I recognised an ethereal delicacy to it and did not want my clumsy, dirty fingers to lift the dust from the butterfly. I wanted to live lightly and briefly and not to make a mark.

Photos from my visit to Tate in 2012

(click image for title)