While most of the world was glued to the opening of the Olympics on Sunday, I was keeping an eye on a closing - that of Michael Parekowhai's On First Looking Into Homer's Chapman in Christchurch.
Even just following this installation at a distance has been affecting, and the tweets about it closing made me feel a little weepy - so I gathered together a little record.
In just after a month, the work comes closer to home. Te Papa has acquired one of the central pieces, He Kōrero Pūrākau mo te Awanui o Te Motu: story of a New Zealand river - the elaborately carved, pillar-box red Steinway grand piano. It and the rest of the installation will go on display at Te Papa for a month-long special exhibition on 25 August. The Steinway will be played daily between 12.30pm and 1.30pm.
Alongside the Parekowhai will be three recently acquired sculptures by Jim Allen and four works drawn from the Museum's holdings of Colin McCahon's work, including the recent acquisition Koru 1, 2, 3 (1965). (You can read a post about the show on Te Papa's blog.)
Showing posts with label te papa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label te papa. Show all posts
Tuesday, 31 July 2012
Monday, 8 March 2010
Beautiful things
In the past week, I've seen a number of beautiful things, so I thought I'd share them here.
In my feedreader this morning I found Duane King writing about Japanese design company Nendo's Fade-Out Chair. The feet of the wooden chair are made of clear acrylic, confusing the distinction between the end of the chair and the beginning of the room it's placed in - look for it in a white cube near you soon.
Digging into Nendo a little I found Switch - a simple lamp, with a beautiful feature - to adjust the brightness of the light, you swivel the lampshade. I find this simple idea entrancing, and I think if I had one in my home I would never stop playing with it.
Over the weekend, I dropped into Te Papa to see the installations of Judy Millar's and Francis Upritchard's Venice Biennale works. Millar's work was a little cramped, but still physically affecting, and the huge shapes certainly make you look at painting in a different, more sculptural, way.
It was Upritchard's work that really surprised me though. I hadn't really cottoned on to it via the installation photos from Venice - too ornate, too hard to make out amidst all the flounces and peeling paint. Put into a neutral space however, the work seemed dense and heavy, in a good way - distilled. And maybe I've been reading far far too much fantasy recently, but these little dancing outcasts gripped me in a way I didn't expect. Also, the tables are beautiful. Just saying.
Next, flavors.me. This is a very simple tool that lets you build a splash page to pull together your activity across the web - I've experimented with pages for myself and for work, using the basic templates.
Unlike me, some people have done some stunning work with the available options, showing how constraints can be very productive. The beautiful thing here for me is the interface you use to create and update your page, one of the simplest and most convenient I've come across. I particularly like the way you can drag the design panel around the screen as you're working, watching the page update with each change you make.
Finally, I read Rebecca Stead's When you reach me in one gulp yesterday. It's a book about love, death, time travel, being 12, and Madeleine L'Engle's A wrinkle in time. It's a slim book, and a taut story - every action, every word counts towards the reveal at the end. Hugely recommended.
Image of Francis Upritchard's Save Yourself from the Te Papa blog, photograph by Michael Hall.
In my feedreader this morning I found Duane King writing about Japanese design company Nendo's Fade-Out Chair. The feet of the wooden chair are made of clear acrylic, confusing the distinction between the end of the chair and the beginning of the room it's placed in - look for it in a white cube near you soon.
Digging into Nendo a little I found Switch - a simple lamp, with a beautiful feature - to adjust the brightness of the light, you swivel the lampshade. I find this simple idea entrancing, and I think if I had one in my home I would never stop playing with it.
Over the weekend, I dropped into Te Papa to see the installations of Judy Millar's and Francis Upritchard's Venice Biennale works. Millar's work was a little cramped, but still physically affecting, and the huge shapes certainly make you look at painting in a different, more sculptural, way.
It was Upritchard's work that really surprised me though. I hadn't really cottoned on to it via the installation photos from Venice - too ornate, too hard to make out amidst all the flounces and peeling paint. Put into a neutral space however, the work seemed dense and heavy, in a good way - distilled. And maybe I've been reading far far too much fantasy recently, but these little dancing outcasts gripped me in a way I didn't expect. Also, the tables are beautiful. Just saying.
Next, flavors.me. This is a very simple tool that lets you build a splash page to pull together your activity across the web - I've experimented with pages for myself and for work, using the basic templates.
Unlike me, some people have done some stunning work with the available options, showing how constraints can be very productive. The beautiful thing here for me is the interface you use to create and update your page, one of the simplest and most convenient I've come across. I particularly like the way you can drag the design panel around the screen as you're working, watching the page update with each change you make.
Finally, I read Rebecca Stead's When you reach me in one gulp yesterday. It's a book about love, death, time travel, being 12, and Madeleine L'Engle's A wrinkle in time. It's a slim book, and a taut story - every action, every word counts towards the reveal at the end. Hugely recommended.
Image of Francis Upritchard's Save Yourself from the Te Papa blog, photograph by Michael Hall.
Thursday, 25 February 2010
The British invasion
A review of the Paul Nash show at Dulwich Picture Gallery caught my eye over the weekend. I first learnt about Nash's work when working on my thesis on Peter Tomory, the director of the Auckland Art Gallery from 1956 to 1965.
It was looking at the collecting practices of New Zealand galleries at this time, and reading Tomory's art historical texts (drawing links between our surrealists/romantics and England's), that brought the large numbers of British modernist works in New Zealand collections to my attention for the first time.
Jonathan Jones this week, reflecting on the Nash exhibition and the Henry Moore show at Tate Britain, wrote that "British art from the years 1900 to 1950 is unlikely to be found in huge quantities in many museums of modern art you visit around the world."
We might not call them 'museums of modern art' here, but we certainly have our fair share of British works. I'm a bit of an Eric Ravilious fan, for example. I don't run my nose up at Te Papa's Nicholson or Ceri Richards, or Auckland Art Gallery's John Tunnard. The Rex Nan Kivell gift of modernist prints distributed British artists' work across Auckland Art Gallery, Christchurch Art Gallery ,Te Papa, and Dunedin Public Art Gallery*. And of course Frances Hodgkins is a British painter in all but place of birth.
*DPAG helpfully confirmed by @ChchArtGallery
Image
Eric Ravilious, The Commander of a submarine looking through a periscope, 1941. Colour lithograph. Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, gift of Rex Nan Kivell, 1953. No known copyright restrictions.
Monday, 28 September 2009
Raymond McIntyre appreciation day 2009
Over the past few weeks I've spent quite a lot of time looking at Raymond McIntyre's portraits. I'd rather like to see them (or the ladies, at least) shown alongside Yvonne Todd's cosmetic counter women.
By the by, I found all these images at once using the DigitalNZ Search; Christchurch Art Gallery, Auckland Art Gallery and Te Papa have all added their records to the search, meaning you can go to one place and search all their catalogues at once.
Images, from top
Suzette, 1912-14, oil on panel. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery, presented by Mrs M Good, London, 1975.
Edward McKnight Kauffer, c.1915, oil on panel. Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, gift of the estate of C. Millan Thompson to mark the occasion of the retirement of the director, S.B. Maclennan, 1968.
Felice, c.1913, oil on panel. Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, purchased 1976.
Lizette, c.1913, oil on panel. Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, purchased 1976.
Haraldur Hamar, c. 1923, oil on hardboard. Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, purchased 1983.
Ruth, 1912-14, oil on panel. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery, presented by the McIntyre Family, 1938.
Thursday, 2 April 2009
Snippet
I just realised this morning the NZOnScreen has my favourite passage from 'Getting to Our Place', Gaylene Preston's documentary about the gestation and birth of Te Papa, up online for free viewing.
For anyone who's ever squirmed through a branding presentation that went horribly wrong, or who's had clients that can never make up their minds, or was a kid in the 80s and didn't realise that grown-ups' glasses really were *that* big, this snippet is pure gold.
As a side serving, here's Over the net, pinpointing the actual digit that is now Our Thumb.
For anyone who's ever squirmed through a branding presentation that went horribly wrong, or who's had clients that can never make up their minds, or was a kid in the 80s and didn't realise that grown-ups' glasses really were *that* big, this snippet is pure gold.
As a side serving, here's Over the net, pinpointing the actual digit that is now Our Thumb.
Monday, 17 November 2008
Groan
Best of 3 is off to Sydney at the end of the week, and was all excited UNTIL .... I looked at the AGNSW site and saw the exhibition line up:*
What is it with the Impressionists (this is the same show that's coming to Te Papa)? How did this period manage to capture the popular imagination to such an extent that you can more or less smack the word Impressionist into any exhibition title and watch the punters stream in?
But that's interesting. The above link to Te Papa's site brings up a contemporary art show opening on 20 December - "We are unsuitable for framing", presumably titled after the eponymous Barbara Kruger work in TP's collection. I've always thought that TP's Liz Maw full-frontal painting was pretty much unexhibitable in the museum: I look forward to seeing if it's made it into this show about "identity, gender, sexuality, and mythology".
*Personal taste and all, but I was hoping for something a bit more chewy.
- Monet and the Impressionists
- The Lost Buddhas
- Tom Arthur
- Country Culture Community
What is it with the Impressionists (this is the same show that's coming to Te Papa)? How did this period manage to capture the popular imagination to such an extent that you can more or less smack the word Impressionist into any exhibition title and watch the punters stream in?
But that's interesting. The above link to Te Papa's site brings up a contemporary art show opening on 20 December - "We are unsuitable for framing", presumably titled after the eponymous Barbara Kruger work in TP's collection. I've always thought that TP's Liz Maw full-frontal painting was pretty much unexhibitable in the museum: I look forward to seeing if it's made it into this show about "identity, gender, sexuality, and mythology".
*Personal taste and all, but I was hoping for something a bit more chewy.
Friday, 17 October 2008
Typefaces and Te Papa
Question for the day - what was the first typeface designed in New Zealand? When? And by whom?*
.................................
This week's post about the Vogue typeface kicked off some comments, including Cheryl Bernstein's note about the history of graphic design in NZ receiving more attention, what with The National Grid and the Joseph Churchward show at Te Papa.
I saw the Churchward show during the weekend. Normally, I visit Te Papa in a hold-your-nose fashion: I take a deep breath, I go straight to what I want to see, and then I get the hell out. On this occasion, I'd gone back for another look at the Dashper/Mrkusich/Driver hang - which I liked even more the second time round.
After that though, I did something unusual - I went for a bit of a wander. First I saw the Churchward show in the Illott room (and I stick to my guns - any sense of modernism that attaches itself to this roomlet is accidental) . Prompted by the note that one of Churchward's tyepfaces was used in the re-design of Tangata o le Moana: The story of Pacific people in New Zealand, I went to check that out.
First up, while the selected font is nice as display text, it doesn't work on the wall labels. But far more important is this observation: the re-design of this Pasifika exhibition seems to demonstrate the slow sea-change that's coming over Te Papa. Sure, it's still expensively kitted out. But it seemed to me that in this rendition collection items were given precedence over interpretation and design - a turn-around from the earlier version that was in place for Day One.
After wandering through TOLM, I headed for what might be my favourite thing in Te Papa. You can have the Northland Panels - I'll take the Captain Cook cloak.
One of the things I've always loved about this cloak is that it's so bloody hard to find. Conceptually, I can totally see what the Day One crew was doing. The cloak is a signifier for a moment of contact between cultures, with Cook as its fulcrum. Cook here sits symbolically and physically at the interstices between the tangata whenua, European arrival in Aotearoa New Zealand, and people of the Pacific.
Which is all fine and dandy conceptually, but as an experience for the viewer? The cloak is obscured behind one of the dullest parts of the floor (the talking Treaty poles - I mean, WTF people? these are still here?), concealed by opaque glass panels, unconnected to either of the flanking exhibitions, and in the dark (admittedly, for conservation purposes, and I do like the way you get to turn the little firefly lights on for your personal viewing pleasure).
My next part of my wander exemplified for me how the conceptual ambitions and experiential realities of Te Papa so often part company. After the Cook cloak, one of my most favourite parts of Te Papa is the space behind Te Hau ki Turanga in the Mana Whenua exhibition. Partly, it's the honey-sweet smell of the thatch. But mostly it's the way this spot demonstrates how exhibitions and architecture do battle in Te Papa. Behind Te Hau ki Turanga a wooden palisade fences off an oddly-shaped, obviously un-usable, lumpy section of wall, window and floor. It's always seemed to me like someone said "Oh shit, what are we gonna do with that completely useless part of the floor? Stupid building design. I know, we'll fence it off and hope no one notices. Phew. Crisis averted.".
But, you know what? Overall, I enjoyed my wander, and the crowd of 200 people on the Marae watching a demo by the Royal NZ Ballet left a good taste in my mouth, not a sour smell in my nostrils. You never know, what with City Gallery about to shut down for a year, maybe I'll be spending more time at Te Papa.
..................
* So - there is a tangential-ish relation between this question and the rest of the post. A website tells me that Churchward "self-published a handful of original fonts in 1978 becoming the first and only company in New Zealand to publish original photo-lettering." I'm an amateur, and don't expect this means he was the first person to publish a font in NZ. But who was?
.................................
This week's post about the Vogue typeface kicked off some comments, including Cheryl Bernstein's note about the history of graphic design in NZ receiving more attention, what with The National Grid and the Joseph Churchward show at Te Papa.
I saw the Churchward show during the weekend. Normally, I visit Te Papa in a hold-your-nose fashion: I take a deep breath, I go straight to what I want to see, and then I get the hell out. On this occasion, I'd gone back for another look at the Dashper/Mrkusich/Driver hang - which I liked even more the second time round.
After that though, I did something unusual - I went for a bit of a wander. First I saw the Churchward show in the Illott room (and I stick to my guns - any sense of modernism that attaches itself to this roomlet is accidental) . Prompted by the note that one of Churchward's tyepfaces was used in the re-design of Tangata o le Moana: The story of Pacific people in New Zealand, I went to check that out.
First up, while the selected font is nice as display text, it doesn't work on the wall labels. But far more important is this observation: the re-design of this Pasifika exhibition seems to demonstrate the slow sea-change that's coming over Te Papa. Sure, it's still expensively kitted out. But it seemed to me that in this rendition collection items were given precedence over interpretation and design - a turn-around from the earlier version that was in place for Day One.
After wandering through TOLM, I headed for what might be my favourite thing in Te Papa. You can have the Northland Panels - I'll take the Captain Cook cloak.
One of the things I've always loved about this cloak is that it's so bloody hard to find. Conceptually, I can totally see what the Day One crew was doing. The cloak is a signifier for a moment of contact between cultures, with Cook as its fulcrum. Cook here sits symbolically and physically at the interstices between the tangata whenua, European arrival in Aotearoa New Zealand, and people of the Pacific.
Which is all fine and dandy conceptually, but as an experience for the viewer? The cloak is obscured behind one of the dullest parts of the floor (the talking Treaty poles - I mean, WTF people? these are still here?), concealed by opaque glass panels, unconnected to either of the flanking exhibitions, and in the dark (admittedly, for conservation purposes, and I do like the way you get to turn the little firefly lights on for your personal viewing pleasure).
My next part of my wander exemplified for me how the conceptual ambitions and experiential realities of Te Papa so often part company. After the Cook cloak, one of my most favourite parts of Te Papa is the space behind Te Hau ki Turanga in the Mana Whenua exhibition. Partly, it's the honey-sweet smell of the thatch. But mostly it's the way this spot demonstrates how exhibitions and architecture do battle in Te Papa. Behind Te Hau ki Turanga a wooden palisade fences off an oddly-shaped, obviously un-usable, lumpy section of wall, window and floor. It's always seemed to me like someone said "Oh shit, what are we gonna do with that completely useless part of the floor? Stupid building design. I know, we'll fence it off and hope no one notices. Phew. Crisis averted.".
But, you know what? Overall, I enjoyed my wander, and the crowd of 200 people on the Marae watching a demo by the Royal NZ Ballet left a good taste in my mouth, not a sour smell in my nostrils. You never know, what with City Gallery about to shut down for a year, maybe I'll be spending more time at Te Papa.
..................
* So - there is a tangential-ish relation between this question and the rest of the post. A website tells me that Churchward "self-published a handful of original fonts in 1978 becoming the first and only company in New Zealand to publish original photo-lettering." I'm an amateur, and don't expect this means he was the first person to publish a font in NZ. But who was?
Monday, 11 December 2006
Bear with me
I know social tagging is hardly a revelation, but over the past year I've heard a lot about it in various presentations and conversations with colleagues. I'm particularly interested in the way that arts institutions are looking to tagging as a way to enhance the search functionality of their online collections. Examples of New Zealand institutions who have put their collections (or slices of them) up online include:
Auckland Art Gallery
Te Papa
Christchurch Art Gallery
Alexander Turnbull Library
Matapihi (a site that gives users access to the online collections of about 12 partner institutions).
Tagging (for people who aren't far behind me) allows users to contribute keywords to internet resources (like web pages, videos, images and blog posts) that are not controlled by a central vocabulary. Sites like Flickr, del.icio.us and YouTube are exponents of social tagging. The benefits of tagging include enhanced personal organisation of digital resources, spam detection, social networking and improved search functionality.
It's these last two aspects that arts institutions have jumped on. On the one hand, they're all excited about the sexy Web 2.o idea of users actively engaging with an contributing to their collections and sites. On the other hand, there's the way that tagging might / will be able to make online collections easier and more rewarding to search.
The 'problem' (not everyone's convinced that this is a problem) that tagging could fix is that the language used by curators, registrars and collection managers when cataloguing items is not necessarily the language used by the public.
For example - and not to pick on Te Papa, although god only knows why they're using rough images, not clearcut ones, on their site - when you search on the Te Papa Collections Online database using 'otago landscape' as your simple search keyword, you get this: Haru Sameshima's St Bathans, and Colin McCahon's Otago landscape no 2.
Among the artworks you don't get: Rita Angus's Central Otago and McCahon's Otago Peninsula.
The idea is that social tagging could help users to find items using keywords that aren't being used to describe the objects by the institutions. There are debates, of course, about the usefulness of user-contributed tags. People start throwing around terms like 'faceted tags'. The US Steve Museum project has just received funding to research questions like this.
Steve Museum
Sydney's Powerhouse Museum has produced a 2.0 version of their online catalogue that includes not just tagging, but Google-type features such as the 'people who searched for A also looked at X, Y and Z', all aimed to encourage 'serendipitous discovery'.
Powerhouse online collection database
Image: from del.icio.us
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