storms, trees

Upon visiting Sriwhana Spongs exhibition Torn and Untroubled i remember being struck by one of her works; it was a piece of silk that had been draped over Spong's wisteria tree and left to embrace its branches for some time, as a delicate mantle.

The retrieved piece of fabric was blushing, stained slightly by the lilac wisteria. It absorbed rain and dew, it gathered small insects.

In Kate Newbys recent exhibition I'll follow you down the road, she titles a sheet of linen strung across the length of the gallery Hung on the roof during a storm. I imagine Newby struggling one stormy night to drape the large sheet of linen atop her house, and its ghostly flapping presence throughout the night, beneath the sky.

Spongs silk and Newbys linen act as shrouds, they gather storms, blossoms, essences, they become shimmering and emanating presences, ghostly, eloquent and slight, like second hand clothes, they are traces, they clasp residues...

(thinking of ed ruschas 1969 stains, or the aftermath of christo & jeanne-claude's wrappings)

Sriwhana Spong

Torn and Untroubled

12th December - 9th January 2009

Y3K Melbourne

Kate Newby

Ill follow you down the road

19th May - 18 June 2011

Hopkinson Cundy

curtains often hung...

the simple charm of leaving a pair of shoes just within the gallery space. actually, within a slim space created by a new special wall.

but leaving the shoes by the small door-like opening makes the gallery almost sacred. somewhere where one should take off one's shoes before entering. a place for pieces of clay rolled between palms and fingers like snakes, billowing faded curtains, additional nails marching in a row, a table made from an old door by a family member and a photograph of a sparrow perched on a front car seat.

ms newby wrote something on one of the walls in pencil, but I couldn't quite read it... I could almost make out the word "limit"...

kate newby, I'll follow you down the road hopkinson cundy 1/1 cross st, auckland 19 may - 18 june

images:

kate newby
I'll follow you down the road, 2011
installation

hung on the roof during a storm, 2011
linen, wire, 2500 x 10000mm

half a load of dishes, time on the sofa, collection and tidy up of Gambia Castle sign that fell and smashed one story onto K Rd during the storm on Wednesday 11 May, 2011
'whywho' daydreamer sandals, size 38, dark brown, 80 x 260 x 200mm

don't you scandalize my name, 2011
nails, 9000 x 5mm

walks with men, 2011
ceramic soundsticks, glaze
Messy street, 2011
matai doors, eucalyptus power pole crossbars (made by Duncan Newby), 900 x 1400 x 1800mm

old pastel

j.d.

"when you look at a good painting you don't have to work out how or why it was painted, because you are too busy thinking how much sense it makes"

- julian dashper, 1987

art writing as a gathering of nice words

a friend once told me that he wished the word "slippage" was around when he was at art school. whether he thought that him and his fellow art students would relish bandying the word about, or whether he thought it could describe perfectly what was going on I'm not sure.

words tend to travel in groups and waves, sometimes it is difficult to resist their push and pull. it is always diverting to create enthusiasms of one's own for certain words and phrases, then entertaining when they seem to catch on...

art writing is filled with school-yard crazes of vocabulary... and there are regular culprits... my all time favourite is "perhaps." one has to be rather esoteric to pull it off.

it certainly seems that art writing is often an attempt to describe the indescribable, invisible or barely discernible... or an exercise in conceptual or philosophical gymnastics... or is it attempt to conjure and cajole significance?

art writing as puzzle?

art writing as....

...a gathering of nice words?

recently I have been untangling sentences peppered with words like utopia & laboratory

i think notion could be one of the most overused words in art writing

sometimes when writing essays I catch myself veering completely off subject in order to slip in words that I love…at the moment these are miasma & azure...

strung up

to swim is to submerge time

to swim is to submerge time
the slow shift
of the body
from land to water

in bed, dancing
on tides of sleep

light on people

jars

slight

at the beach
the last light paints everything gold
everyone becomes
mystical
in their running clothes

chess

my little brother is teaching me how to play chess. we don't have a chess board so we are using a checkers board instead, he has cut out thirty two little slips of paper and on each piece of paper he has written the name of a chess piece. it doesn't work very well. a sigh of frustration sends the chess pieces fluttering.

Roman Mitch - Artspace's most recent curatorial intern is a bit of a chess expert. In correlation with the exhibition 'caraway downs' he has written a small book on chess & art.

'I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art - and much more. It cannot be commercialised. Chess is much purer than art in its social position.'

-Marcel Duchamp

continuing...

a modern menu

light poured diagonally through the windows of ivan anthony this afternoon, just in time to illuminate my visit to a fine white room filled with saskia leek's exquisite paintings. here fractured and pastel smiles of oil created partial abstractions that toy with landscapes and still-lives.

hints of berries, peaches, edifices, seascapes, and radiance can be seen. leek, ever the gifted colourist paints and paints creating melancholy plaints and soft concretions.

a modern menu
1-25 june 2011
ivan anthony
corner east street & karangahape road
auckland

image:
saskia leek, untitled, 2011
oil on board
54 x 44cm

saskia leek, untitled, 2011
oil on board
38.5 x 30.5cm

over the hills and far away...

the beginnings of a journey south... from auckland through waikato, waitomo down to taranaki and new plymouth...

"she lay asleep..."

she lay asleep in a pearl at the bottom of the sea. All round her grew beautiful Obelia seaweeds and thousands of rainbow-coloured fish guarded her night and day. There she lay for years and years, and while she slept a wonderful wisdom grew in her, though her little body remained the same. I can't tell you why or how, but it was so.

- May Gibbs

fleurs et pain