Peel

Following the 'deinstallation' of a Sol LeWitt at SFMOMA, the Modern Art Museum of Fort worth shows how you take down a Kara Walker.

Dear Govett-Brewster Art Gallery; will you PLEASE set up a Flickr account & post pictures of the removal of Snow Ball Blind Time?

Breathe

There were two sheds down at the cow shed, both painted the same plasticky light blue. The Big Blue Shed was the taller and longer of the two - tall enough to have a neck-threatening mezzanine that held up six or seven decades of farming supplies; things that seemed romantically outmoded (leather horse collars, rusting hand shears) and excitingly new (coils of bright yellow plastic tubing, boxes of shiny fencing staples). The Big Blue Shed smelled of sump oil, welding sticks, grease, thick warm dust. It was a place to work on wet days, to let the kids loose in when they couldn't run round with the dogs.

The Little Blue Shed sat on a hump of earth in the middle of the tanker turn-around. It was like a barrow - low and dark, piled with abandoned stuff that had compacted over the years until it was part of the building's fabric. It smelt like diesel and dirty dirt. Once, crawling back into a corner, I found an ossified blackbird, a stiff collection of dried-out skin and feathers, lying inside a wooden crate with a chicken-wire cover.

The blue sheds came back into my mind recently, after seeing Don Driver's work at the Govett-Brewster. I don't want to go all literal on you, or use phrases like 'alchemist of everyday life', but it's impossible for me to see his banner works without the hessian and pitchforks and mysterious stains taking me back to my childhood.

I was really looking forward to seeing the show and I have to admit to being disappointed. The falling feeling began as soon as I walked into the GBAG and saw that the view up the staircase had been blocked by a temporary wall, which forced a left-hand turn into the ground-floor gallery.




Once in the gallery, the walls were crammed with works, several familiar from the joint show with Julian Dashper at Hamish McKay's last year. Maybe the curators were aiming for a joyful jostle, but the effect was more of carelessness. My gut feeling is that work as maximalist as Driver's needs a bit of space on the wall - allowing both it and you to breathe a bit between pieces.

The sense of overcrowding was emphasised by the retention of false walls at the end of each gallery, which blocked you from seeing up into the first floor landing like you usually can (you can just see one of these in this surreptitious photo - sorry, gallery attendant, you were doing a good job really and I had trouble evading you).

It was also curious that Produce - arguably the best of these works in the GBAG's collection - was not included in the show, but instead represented rather forlornly by an postcard in the shop window.

I don't like whinging, especially not on a Friday afternoon when you all deserve an uplifting post, not a downer. But my visit was several weeks ago now, yet I'm still a bit saddened . But there is always a bright side; Peter Robinson's solo project at the GBAG - Snow Ball Blind Time - opens on 13 September, and I can't wait.

Adjectival

I tried several times to name this post, but you end up feeling like such a goober when you apply words like 'beautiful' or 'breathtaking' or 'extraordinary' to contemporary art.

All I can say is, if you're in Wellington over the next few weeks, make sure to stop by Peter McLeavey's and see Peter Robinson's one work show. As McLeavey doesn't have a website, check out similar recent works (including those shown in the above image) on the Sue Crockford Gallery website.

Along with Rose Nolan's wall work currently on show at City Gallery, Robinson's sculpture is already on my best-of list for 2008. Related to which - info about Nolan's Artspace Sydney show in May/June is now available, along with this image of Nolan working on the CG work.

Idle speculation

The Arts Foundation Laureate Awards are being held tonight in Wellington. Last year's Laureates included John Reynolds; previous visual arts Laureates include Peter Peryer, Michael Parekowhai, Ronnie van Hout and Julia Morison.

My baseless list of possibilities for tonight:

• Shane Cotton
• Peter Robinson
• Seraphine Pick
• Julian Dashper
• Bill Hammond

And - possibly a rank outsider, because I don't think the Foundation awards to artists based mostly outside of New Zealand, but deserving nonetheless - Michael Stevenson.

NEWER UPDATE Shows what I know.

UPDATE Over the net have pointed out that the male to female ratio of awards to visual artists so far is 4:1 (and that's before you count Warwick Freeman. But if you count him, do you count Ann Robinson? Hmmmm).

My own factoid: no artist has represented NZ at the Venice Biennale and become a Laureate.

Totally unrelated, an interesting article in the Guardian about readers' reports, the invisible arbiters of the publishing industry.

Oh, now I get it ...

For anyone that missed the utterly inane Campbell Live interview with British art critic Matthew Collings at the Auckland Art Fair last night, the video is available here:

Matthew Colling interview-TV3 website

Sample out-take:

Jaquie Brown: I hate binary code.

Matthew Collings: I'm so primitive I don't even think about binary code. I just think ovals and straight lines. And in this one they're nice and brown and black and in that one they're these weird kind of muted colours.

JB: And what's it saying? What am I meant to think?

MC: I don't think its saying anything about binary code. But maybe it is. If so, I have absolutely no idea about what that might be. Maybe it's representations of God.

JB: God, you're so deep.

Image: Peter Robinson, One Lives, 2006. Lamda print. 50 x 30cm. Image from the Sue Crockford Gallery website.