Spring 2023

Art New Zealand

New Zealand’s leading visual arts magazine

Art New Zealand1 min read
Art New Zealand
Editor: William Dart; Deputy Editor: D. G. Abbott; Founding Editor: Ross Fraser Printing: SCG Subscriptions: One year (four issues) within New Zealand, $35; Two years (eight issues) within New Zealand, $65. Advertising and editorial enquiries: Detail
Art New Zealand3 min read
Sue Crockford (1948-2023)
On 17 July Sue Crockford slipped out of this world. I had lost not only a dear friend but someone I had been connected with for over 40 years. When Sue Crockford closed her gallery in late December 2012, it marked the end of an extraordinary reign of
Art New Zealand6 min read
Jim Allen (1922-2023)
Since Jim's departure, I've been re-reading his extraordinary collection of interviews The Skin of Years, which my partner Pauline and I received as a gift shortly after it was published in 2014. In 2015 Ian Cooke, PhD art researcher, asked me the fo
Art New Zealand5 min read
Evan Webb (1952-2023)
Evan Webb, who died in Christchurch in May, was a major kinetic artist. Kinetic art, which explores the aesthetics of motion, has a long history, including many modernists such as Marcel Duchamp and Naum Gabo. It had an upsurge of popularity in the 1
Art New Zealand8 min read
Peter Robinson's Kā Kaihōpara
Peter Robinson's Kā Kaihōpara is one all-enveloping sculptural installation, an environment assembled out of myriad bits and pieces. It is at once allusive and elusive in meaning, and the problem that confronts the gallery-goer is how to disentangle
Art New Zealand19 min read
Exhibitions
Orexart, 6 June–1 July DON ABBOTT In Jacqui Colley's We played here once both heart and mind are on show. Each painting is more than just one thing; the artist's layers of pigment create works that are multifarious and profound. They deal in dichotom
Art New Zealand13 min read
From Pakuranga to the Taj Mahal
Octavia Cook's career has had two main phases. From the early 2000s, in Auckland, she worked under the name of a fictional company, Cook & Co, and was known particularly for brooches in the style of Victorian cameos, often bearing her own profile, so
Art New Zealand10 min read
Stranger Things
Marvelous artists are made of elements which can't be identified … Their work is strange and will never become familiar. Philip Guston.1 This first retrospective of Pauline Thompson's art since her death in 2012 features 49 oil paintings and watercol
Art New Zealand9 min read
A Question of Audience
I never saw any of Peter Roche and Linda Buis's performances and I suspect the same is true of many, perhaps most, of those who will visit In Relation. I know of some of those works but that, of course, is not the same as being physically present. Th
Art New Zealand8 min read
Fragments & Fabrications
Sometime in the mid to late 1930s, New Zealand painter Florence Weir undertook an artist's residency at Villa Margaux in the south of France. Surrounded by other artists, and absorbed in the idiosyncrasies of place caught within this transient commun
Art New Zealand5 min read
The Direct Source of Truth
Watching my step (on crutches, accessory: moonboot, gaze necessarily at floor-level) my first encounter at the Michael Lett exhibit is a waste paper bin. On closer inspection one containing the sad residue of left-over bulldog paper clips. et al.? Of
Art New Zealand2 min read
Play With The Nonplaces
In every city, there exist spaces often overlooked—forgotten corners, grey alleyways, empty lots. The nonplaces. For Nela Fletcher, a Swiss-born artist now based in Invercargill, these nonplaces are the stage for her photographic series fitting in—a
Art New Zealand13 min read
Three Into One
Throughout much of his career Colin McCahon manifested a great liking for the triptych format—that tripartite art form deriving from hinged medieval altar pieces and ubiquitous in Christian art and western art generally, from Giotto and Simone Martin
Art New Zealand11 min read
Painting the Town
Since the arrival of Europeans, the natural landscape has dominated the easels of New Zealand's painters. The attraction of the pristine environment has no doubt been due to its magnificence, picturesque potential and accessibility thanks to a genera
Art New Zealand9 min read
A Photographic History for Us All
Through Shaded Glass: Women and Photography in Aotearoa New Zealand 1860–1960 Te Papa Press, Wellington 2023 NINA SEJA A testament to both photographic history and the women's experience, Lissa Mitchell's new book is a strong contribution to the cult

Art New Zealand

More Issues From Art New Zealand