Auckland art gallery

The original Auckland art museum with a water fall in front

concrete ,glass,steel and funeral bouquets

Keep building the mega mall up and soon well block out the clock tower completley who cares

The Auckland art gallery is now a Mega mall where its free but you still have to pay if I wanted glass ,concrete and steel I would have gone to Auckland hospital WTF

this isnt the Auckland art gallery I remember the one I remember didnt block out the sun and infect the street like leporasy pretty soon they will close offf the whole road so they can expand.

The Auckland art gallery I remember is pictured at the very top I still remember letting my daughter play in the fountain 10 years ago and not having to look through oversized windows to see the trees

I remember space ,sun ,air and a charismatic building with a skyscraping clock attactched to it now this is all but a memory swept away by a fukin mega mall structure that is like walking around in a damn rubiks cube it reminded me of the David Bowie film Labirynth.

It is a shame that the once welcoming feel of days gone by is no longer welcome in the concrete jungle now every one wants space inside but wheres the space outside I think the architects must have ben exconvicts because they didnt give a toss about the out doorspace of the building.

Cold, dank, dark, surgical, shadowy and agrophobic is how I describe this building to me it is no longer the Auckland Art gallery it is far from it should be called the Auckland Art Gallery Mausoleum-a stately or impressive building housing a tomb of memories.

Form and function

Does form follow function or does function follow form ?
the answer to this is neither
form and function are illusions for example what came first the chicken or the egg I know in Grants speech he mentions it was the chicken but I beleive it was the egg the reptilian egg to be precise as chickens evolved from reptiles.
For me as a Maori carver Form and Function are 2 sides of the same coin the spirituality behind my work is the function behind the form and the form of my carvings brings meaning to the function.
confused yet ?
So was I until I realised that my greatest creations actually created themselves like witers who finish award winning novels and at the end say "It practically wrote itself" or when I carve a Taonga I have an Idea of what it will look like in the end but once it is finished it always looks slightly different which leads me to the theory that form and function come second to instinct and meaning .Emma mc Lellan is a prime example of someone who is slave to neither form or funtion and instead creates through a feral instinct in the dark not knowing what a piece may look like when the light is turned on.
Forming without function and creating function without form is experimenting learning growing and is the at the base of indulgence in the world of art.Creating just because.

Emma Mc Lellan and Xavier Mead

Maha Tomo -LNP NZ election 2011 political poster

Xaveir Meade - Blessed virgin of the barricades

Emma mc Lellan

Emma McLellan

Emma Mc Lellan Is interested in curiosities such as Wunderkammern (wonder room)cabinets which are like miniature museums of collected oddities from the past which began in the 16th century

Her work is heavily influenced by bestiaries also known as beast compendiums from the 12th century.

She builds up layers in her works randomly doing what feels right to her experimenting and gos with the flow she mergers painting and screen printing to create her work she also appropriates William Morris patterns for her backgrounds she uses a dry paint method to achieve a smokey effect in her paintings called scumbling which makes her CMYK screenprints look like paintings

She is interested in genetic engineering and especially mutations because she sees mutations as the catalyst for change I have a different theory though I think survival and evolution is the catalyst to mutations.

Having Kids is what sparked her interest in genetics and hereditary histories.

I find her work very visceral,organic and unplanned and random like Dr Frankenstein she creates a menagerie of mixed up and sewn together believable beasts of beauty but on canvas.

How does Xavier Meade approach screenprinting differently ?

Xavier has a very different approach to screenprinting he is very much concentrated on what is happening in the world around him today right now as opposed to Emma's references to the past

Where Emma's work is quite personal and almost private like looking into a museum window box by yourself Xavier's work is political and public he sees his artwork as a vehicle to take political veiws to street literally.

His work is for the freedom fighters the poor and the illiterate I remember him saying that Mexico has a very low literacy rate so the posters are all about the image not the text and they have to catch the attention.

Xavier is very in touch with indigenous cultures and shows alot of admiration and understanding to the Maori people in his project Purakau he show cases Maori , NZ and Cuban artists and his booklet is translated into Te Reo , Spanish and English.

His art work pictured at the top is called Blessed Virgin of the barricades which is a prayer or an

homage to all the street artists ,political activists, freedom fighters and protestors of the world

The Virgin Mary /Virgin of the barricades is someone for them to pray to which literally illustrates the power of the poster !

I connected well with Xavier as I appreciated his respect for Maori Subsequently we exchanged gifts he gave me a poster booklet of Purakau and I gave him a political poster I had made called LNP (Labour National Politics) NZ election2011 (Pictured at the very top) the Idea for this poster came to me in May2011 I felt strongly about how detrimental nationals policies were against students and minorities and how they see money as power in the blue at the top is John key all the figures are white and the further down the pyramid you go the less empowered you are.

In the red which symbolises labour all the figures are equal and are linked also they are red not white although I concentrated more on the context than the form I was pleased that I made it when I Did it was a raw expression of protest in a poster and I was glad to give Xaveir one of the originals there is still one in the mac suite at the msva and I have ben inspired to make more after hearing Xavier passionately speak about voicing expressions through posters.

Seek Collaboration and Auckland Mueseum visit

Today we talked about the SEEK exhibtion.

This exhibition was a collaborative effort consisting of 3 artists -

Dion Hitchens who specialises in sculpture and installations this drawing is called Kingdom of the dragon king"

Bill Riley who specialises in painting this installation is called "Stacks"

James Ormsby who specialises in Drawing the image in the background is called piece is called " mine mount mine"

I found this peice to be the most intriguing because there is alot of history behind it and I appreciate the uncanny appropriation of the Image I also like the third dimension of it revolving like a record.

This is a moving image piece it is a photo of a Mine that James Ormsby used to cycle past everyday as a child in Waihi.

He saw the Image in a pamphlet and decided to appropriate it into his work obviously not bothered by copyrights.

At first glance I thought this was a picture of a planet (Mars) because of the circular form and because it was set against a black background.

If I had to describe this peice of work in one word it would be "transfomer " because it is the epitomie of more than meets the eye from a distance it looks like a planet upright and upclose it looks like a crater or a mine and once it rotates upside down it resembles a mountain with a bike track hence the name " mine mount mine" Very innovative use of an everyday image to create a powerful work of art showcasing how artistic views of mundane objects can provoke thought .

The seek collaborative stands for activating thought in their audience rather than being activists they combine informal interaction and are against being branded or labelled finally the key theme to keep their work authentic is that they interact and comminicate with local communities as pictured above where they exchanged art for food to give to the local foodbank at their Sydney exhibition.

THE AUCKLAND MUESEUM

At the Auckland mueseum I really enjoyed this installation called the gold wall it consists of hundreds of gold leaf squares that have been burnished on individually square by square (15cmx15cm) the gold leaf contains real gold and cannot be touched by hand so is picked up by static cling. the thing I liked most about this wall was the way it reacted to the flash in the camera in this first photo I used no flash in the second photo I used a flash which as u can see created an illuminating effect reminescent of the regal ballrooms of the french renaissance period.

Eldon Booth Blog

Eldon Booth is a moving Image artist one of the first short films he produced was called "Withdrawl" it was a lo fi production on VHS he worked with Jason Crane on this project and his aim was to create an imperfect moving image with an imperfect amatuerish realistic feel.

He tries not stage scenes to make them look more natural one of his tricks is to not tell the actors in his films the trajectory of the camera.

This technique reminded me of a game I played on xbox 360 called Kane and Lynch 2 dog days

in this Game the video image is given a realistic feel by immitating cell phone video footage as illustrated in the images above.

One of the highlights of his career was to work with screenwriter Robin shawl who is famous for the movie once were warriors.

Eldon became intrigued and determined to do dialogue driven piece after veiwing a heavily sensationalised 60 minute interveiw what spoke to Eldon was how the veiwer was manipulited by emotive music, closeups, and cut scenes which led him to make the Short film "5 good reasons" in this movie he is able to reflect the ideas of the sensational 60 minute dialogue driven scene effectively using his own script and his own archived footage.

Eldon's current movie project is called finding Honk in it he has father and son non proffessional actors he states that it was an advantage as he was able to access archival video footage and photos.

He suggests that it is better not to give to much infomation to amatuer actors to bring more authenticity to the footage he also tricked his actors by deliberatley not informing them of the situations he may be putting them in.

In this film there are 2 scenes in which Eldon utilises the phantom camera one is with the glass smashing and the other is with a car doing burnouts.

The phantom camera captures 1500 frames per second and can slow down images with crystal clarity so every minute detail can be veiwed something which normal video cameras are incapable of.

We watched the Movie elephant by americn director Gus Van Sant in it he blurred the line between fact and fiction by taking an actual event the columbine school shooting massacreand recreating it as a movie utilising fragmented cut scenes and non lineal time footage to create a slowbuild to a climatic finish he interweaves time superbly and uses a shallow depth of feild ( similar to Steve Roods photos . Van Sant also uses text of names of students to create a personal friendship between the veiwer and the characters .

In this movie everyone shows indivduality but in the end they are all in the same predicament .

The Banksy film exit through the gift shop is a Mockumentary that blurs the line between fact and fiction through showing actual art and using actors to portray fake events.

Steve Rood Blog

Steve Rood specialises in digital photography .The catalyst of his career was when he was 10 years old and photographed a compost heap which later the same day spontaneously burst into flame thus igniting Steves passion for photography.

The 2 above photos are were done by Steve Rood using shadow making machines which if done correctly can transform the everyday Mundane to the magnificent as this quote describes-
"The Shadow Making Machines bring the darkness in everyday life to light.They urge us to closely look within the shadow to ascertain the light." - Patricia Rood,2008 I

I enjoy these photo's because they blur they line between the traditional and the modern.

The sepia finish resembles photos done in1835 using the daguereotype method and the play with shadows using the shadow making machine gives it a modern futuristic feel.

Steve Rood specialises in digital photography .The catalyst of his career was when he was 10 years old and photographed a compost heap which later the same day spontaneously burst into flame thus igniting Steves passion for photography.

Years of experience has led Steve to an almost minimalist approach to his photography preffering to leave more to the veiwers imagination as shown in the above photos these are some of Steves fashion photos where he utilises out of focus and overexposed techniques to create almost ghostly,dreamlike images.

Steve Rood tries to connect with each photo in an attempt to spark the interest of the veiwer in his series of food photography he wanted a unpredictable feel to it as beleived that contempary food photography had become invalid some of his techniques using light reminded me of the Curuscao ( light and dark effect ) first used by the painter Carrivagio.

Frances Hansen and Steve Clothier images