feuillets d'album: February 2011

Monday, February 21, 2011

art writing as a shopping list

a bad piece of art writing can generally be dismissed as "mere description." a shopping list that describes the art and exhibition, sometimes with a few badly researched art historical references thrown in.*

yet sometimes it is delightful to read a review of a show that one hasn't seen, because then one can somehow feel that one has experienced it. particularly when reading reviews that occur in other cities it is sometimes wonderful to read description as well as interpretation and critique of an exhibition that one will only get to see in images. there is an art to the balance of description and technique... good art writing lives on when the exhibition is over, the works dispersed throughout the wide world... a document or witness to an event that once happened. art writing as a testimony?

*there is also another kind, where a seasoned and puffed-up reviewer begins with a little homily of his very own.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

"I'm just a big fan of other human beings"

for a while there was one mere painting in the main exhibition space of artspace gallery on karangahape road in auckland.

the painting was a portrait of new zealand artist francis upritchard by another new zealand artist liz maw. the portrait floats serenely, upritchard's eyes are either glowing white or have rolled back into her head. surrounded by a gesso-off-white aura, she stands, delicately gesturing, tall thin and simply dressed in a black gown.

in this majestic and elegant portrait liz maw has captured in painstaking detail and with a subtle but virtuosic palette a darling of the new zealand art world. an artist that is tremendously successful, truly talented as well as quite beautiful.

when approached by artspace to create a piece, ms. maw knew that she wanted a single painting in the large space. a work that would be site-specific, that is, very much about the space itself. liz maw chose to paint ms. upritchard because according to maw "she was always more of an artspace girl than I was." indeed the portrait appears in the space where upritchard once staged her solo show "doomed doomed, all doomed" in 2005.

other-worldly, respectful and sublime. as a metaphysical magpie maw has painstakingly rendered someone she admires and in the process captured part of her essence for her very self, using it to contribute to her unique oeuvre and practice.

"francis upritchard" liz maw
4 december 2010 - 19 february 2011
artspace