Perishable Show - RM

This picture is from the last day of the shop so many items have gone.  Unfortunately, I didn't get a shot from the ground, because the plinths were fantastic.  The bases were comprised of all manner of fruit and vegetable slowly juicing themselves under the weight of the work. It forced the viewer to kneel down before the art or pick up individual pieces.  That was fine for the seed bomb necklaces and Art toilet paper, but posed more of an issue for the cast-candy, fancy-pants, car keys. 

The optimistic voodoo rings didn't fully eventuate, aka burn, because of a sensitive sprinkler system/fire alarms.  Tisk, Tisk, I will have to be a bit more health and safety conscious next year.

Happy Holidays!

paint by numbers style

Walking the Grey Area to Apparatus and Leonor Hipolito

Leonor Hipolito @Objectspace

I love synchronicity, who doesn't?

1.  The window show entitled Apparatus @ Objectspace came highly recommended by a friend.  So I went to see it.  It is a work that just sings.  The pieces are beautifully carved from natural, unstained wood.  The finish is smooth giving the objects a sense of light and weightlessness.  The forms are familiar but not necessarily obvious.  As a group, the work has a beautifully, lyrical quality.  I liked it.  The maker is jeweller, Leonor Hipolito from Portugal.

The description accompanying the work quotes Hipolito pertinent environmental concerns in saying, "Apparatus weaves a thread between the thought and the action.  Like a conscious gesture it leads to reflect upon a series of pertinent questions relating to global environmental relation."

2.  I have been reading walking the grey area blog that was created as a project culminating in an exhibition at the Grey Area Symposium in April 2010.  The concept is that a Latin American and European jeweller will be paired and tasked with investigating jewellery, global mobility and identity.  All curators and participants are migrants.   And guess who is participating?  Leonor Hipolito! 

The blog is a little overwhelming so I am taking it one pair at a time.  Hipolito originally paired with Miguel Luciano, ends up having a fabulous volley with Dani Soter.  And there are side conversations going on all over the show!

All in all, I have found her posts very interesting.  The project is a fascinating way to learn more about jewellers and their practice and modes of operation in a collaborative sense.  I love the fact that she would have been writing these posts as she was preparing and sending the above mentioned show, how fun!  Here are some of my favourite snippets from Hipolito.

Leonor Hipolito - December 11th

States of Mind

Illustration, Leonor Hipolito, 2009

Leonor Hipolito - November  24th

... Here I am quoting an extract of Keru Tuberg text for 'Chroma/Monochroma'

Nomad jewellery

Contemporary jewellery carries the philosophy of traveling in itself.  The one who makes jewellery is traveling, the one who wears it is traveling, and the one who notices it is traveling.  Paths are different and travelers are different, but at same point they all have recognised their resting place or their home in jewellery.  They have discovered something that accords with their nature.

Leonor Hipolito - September 29th

... It took me years of experiments to realise my realation with jewelry is that of mental correlation rather than material.  Materiality is indeed a great part of the process but not the leitmov.  I am very focused on stretching my thoughts about specific concerns.  I am keen to scrutinise some facets of the human psychology and defy the borders of perception. 
Jewelry is controversial and therefore an interesting open subject.

Dear Jewellery Gods:

I would like to know how my two most anticipated jewellery events of 2010 have ended up on completely separate sides of the globe within 12 hours of each other?  re-Source, Grey Area, re-Source, Grey Area.   Is it physically possible to actually be at both?
So, dear jewellery Gods, I will be expecting the help of both Superman and King Midas to get from Perth to Mexico city on April 12, 2010. 

(Actually, I am easy and will settle for either.)

- your unamused jeweller
K

BEST BEFORE: perishable artworks @ RM

If you are in Auckland this weekend come along to the opening/project launch at RM to the Perishable shop.  I have two little projects, Optimistic Voodoo: Rack-o Patriot Act Rings  (pictured above) and a wee collaborative piece via PaperWasp Collective which is a poem/ring, to read the poem you have to destroy the ring.  Fingers crossed that these don't trip the fire alarm/sprinkler system.

BEST BEFORE: perishable artworks (the annual RM shop) and RM Archive launch

3pm Saturday 19 December 2009

room, ground floor, 295 K Road, Newton, Auckland

Here is what RM has to say about the event:
"Since 2003, RM has ended the year by bringing together a shop full of art multiples, miniatures, catalogues, handicrafts, food and beverages.  This year they thought they would change the format slightly - focusing on perishable art: objects with a shelf-life, art multiples with use-by dates, self-destructing sculptures, a slowly disappearing inventory of stock."
And all proceeds go back to the artists.
At the same time, RM will be launching an archive of the last 12 years of activity.  An exciting move for a space that has provided a consistent experimental outlet for Auckland art.

Jewellery on the Radio

Radio NZ interviewed Lisa Walker on the Arts on Sunday this past weekend.  Listen to the interview here:

picture via the New Dowse: Lisa Walker: brooch, 2007

Having listened to this a week ago, I am still loving the line, "Everything is food for jewellery"

feast-ive

~treats and surprises for feast~

Opening on Sunday 20th December between 3 – 6pm, ‘FEAST’,

a special satellite show hosted by Studio 20/17 and curated by Zoe Brand, on display in THE DEPOT GALLERY, as well as the completion of the second year at Studio 20/17.

Studio 20/17 has extended opening hours in the lead up to Christmas and both galleries will be open SUNDAY 20th through to Christmas Eve on THURSDAY 24th December from 11am to 6pm.

On failure and the love of liminal things

I cannot stop reading this lovely passage written by Ann Ellegood and continually interchanging the words art - sculpture - jewellery....

The artists' willingness to allow their work to suggest both a coming together and a falling apart is one of the most important, and distinctive, aspects of the work, resulting in an open quality that refuses to spell out or tie down its meaning. A visible awkwardness on indeterminateness may take on structural manifestations in terms of delicasy, precariousness, and the periodic use of inherently unstable materials, but the failure I am most interesting in here is the one that remains a possibility, as these artists simultaneously embrace and challenge the legacy of what sculpture can and should be. To put something out into the world whose meanings is opaque, value undetermined, and historically position ambiguous is, to put it mildly, risky (especially when the contemporary art world, and particularly the art market, increasingly demands facile interpretive meaning, an easily understood accompanying narrative, and legible and digestible formal qualities). Yet the possibility of failure here is not intended to be heroic. These are the small, daily failures that accompany an ongoing commitment to experimentation and refusal to become complacent.  And the result, it turns out, are not failures at all. These artists genuinely push against the parameters of the traditions of sculpture, taking an active role in parsing through its inherited languages while proposing wholly new languages as yet undefined. Samuel Beckett described this type of commitment to process and change beautifully, ‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.’* Despite the fact that the works contain elements that carry associations the views can sin their interpretive teeth into, these sculptures might be best characterized as liminal – somewhere between an object and idea, between matter and consciousness – and this is a radical place to be.


* Samual Beckett. Worstward Ho in Nohow On: Company, Ill Seeen Ill Said, Worstward Ho: Three Novels (New York: Grove Press, 1996; originally published 1984), 87.

_________________________________________

Ann Ellegood. The uncertaintiy of objects and ideas: Recent Scultpure. (Washington DC, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 2006) 15.

Publication worthy of its objectness

                     

The object and jewellery graduates from Unitec created a lovely little end of year publication called 3D Tales (full disclosure, I am part of that group).  It is a delightful object to behold, if I do say so myself.  We were all so pleased with the photographs taken by Jessica Goodall and the excellent design by Mark Lovatt.  There is an introduction by Pauline Bern and Ilse-Marie Erl, critical essay by Matt Blumeley of Objectspace, and end note by Kim Meek.

feast

"celebrating the predetermined and gloriously spontaneous moments" of the season,

this evening Raewyn Walsh, Lynsay Raine, Sharon Fitness, Anne Baynham

and I are shipping off our little treats to Syndey for Feast.

The brain child of Zoe Brand, as a special satellite Christmas exhibition of Studio 20/17, the show promises to be exciting. 

Syndey:  depot gallery 1, 20 - 24 December