From a common ancestor
Auckland Museum's "most ambitious" travelling exhibition Vaka Moana - Voyages of the Ancestors is currently at Taiwan's National Museum of Prehistory and the National Museum of Natural Science. University professor and editor of the exhibit's companion book, Kerry Howe says: "The human settlement of the Pacific islands is not just a Pacific story. It is also the final chapter in the story of human exploration and settlement of our planet. With the settlement of the Pacific islands, we reached the end of our habitable world." Vaka Moana - Voyages of the Ancestors: The Discovery and Settlement of the Pacific won the history category of the 2007 NZ Montana Book Awards.
(25 April 2008)

Toast of TriBeCa 
New Zealander Claire Fergusson has become a mainstay of the annual TriBeCa Open Artist Studio Tour (TOAST) in New York. TOAST is a free, self-guided tour of around 100 studios in the TriBeCa area, which aims simultaneously to empower working artists and provide an educational opportunity for the public. Fergusson first established her reputation as a performance artist at New York's legendary Franklin Furnace studio in the late 1970s. She went on to stage many of her performance pieces in NZ, including My Grandmother, co-starring a then 79-year-old Jessica Fergusson. This year for TOAST Fergusson will be exhibiting watercolour paintings as well as a series of sculptures. The event runs from April 27-30. 
(March 2007)

Hurricane warning 
NZ artist Lisa Ferguson is aiming to crack the competitive New York market after a successful period in London. The former graphic designer has already made a strong impression, with Art World News (USA) praising her ability to "[conjure] images of a hurricane of colours and emotions that [invoke] a new story with each viewing." Ferguson is showing a collection of her abstract expressionist pieces at Monkdogz Urban Art Gallery in Chelsea, New York, from February 1 to March 10. 
(January 2007)

Abstract revisited
NZ artist Angela Dwyer is staging two solo exhibitions in Italy in early 2007. The first is at the AMT Gallery in Como, the second at Milan's Magrorocca Gallery. Born in Palmerston North, Dwyer has based herself in Berlin since 1984. The exhibition at AMT is based around her latest major work; a 180cm by 700cm oil entitled This is Sexy. According to the gallery's press release, "This is Sexy challenges preconceptions about abstract painting ... Angela Dwyer is a master of colour and her new work proves it."
(January 2007)

Exhibiting art with Edge 
Always at the cutting edge, Wellington's City Gallery is using an interactive website and podcast in its current exhibition, Patricia Piccinini: In Another Life. An Australian artist, Piccanini is renowned for her sometimes creepy studies of humans, technology and the environment, and the effects they have upon each other. "After meeting Patricia and hearing her talk about her ideas and work, we concentrated on how we could share that very cool experience with people that would visit the show," says LA-based Tom Eslinger of Saatchi & Saatchi, Worldwide. "How can we use interactive as a channel to connect people more closely with Patricia's ideas?" Visitors can either download artist commentaries to a portable media player to use as an exhibition audio guide or use one of the pre-loaded iPods provided by the gallery. 
(29 March 2006)

Expat angst 
Hamilton artist John Hurrell writes about NZ artists living internationally in the February issue of Art Monthly Australia. He discusses last year's exhibition 'The expatriates: Frances Hodgkins and Barrie Bates' in the context of the NZ government's current $850,000 campaign to lure Kiwis home from abroad. "[2005] is a good time to look at the lives of two of NZ's most recognised expatriate artistic talents - the time they spent on the other side of the world in England and the mental vacillations they went through concerning 'home' and identity." The ambitious exhibition, which showed at Victoria University's Adam Art Gallery Auckland University's Gus Fisher Gallery, drew parallels between the unlikely duo of modernist Frances Hodgkins (1869-1947) and conceptual artist Billy Bates (aka Billy Apple, 1935-). 
(February 2006)

WoWing the crowds
The 2005 World of Wearable Art (WoW) show – the first to be held in Wellington rather than Nelson – was a huge success, with a record-breaking 30,000 tickets purchased for the event. The show is widely regarded as a launching pad for careers in NZ’s booming film and fashion industries. Founder Suzie Moncrieff plans to stage the event in Australia, Canada, the U.K, and South East Asia in the near future, stating that “It has always been part of the vision to take it out into the world and be a showcase for NZ.” The supreme winner for 2005 was former Green Party MP Mike Ward.
(3 October 2005)
  

Practice makes perfection
Painter Max Gimblett is the subject of a lengthy article in premiere US art magazine, Art in America. Gimblett’s latest works were recently shown at the Haines Gallery in San Francisco. Critic Thomas McEvilley describes the exhibition as capstone or summation of an impressive 40 year career. “That there might be an overlap of meaning and intention between the New York School tradition and the Rinzai tradition of Zen painting has been remarked on before, but there has perhaps not been as perfect an avatar of the intersection as Gimblett … Like a traditional Zen painter, he will repeat a basic brush stroke over and over to arrive, through practice, at perfection through true spontaneity.” Gimblett has been based in New York since 1972, where he worked closely with kinetic artist (and fellow Kiwi) Len Lye, until the latter’s death in 1980.
(October 2005)
  

All Things Wild and Innocent.
One of our most internationally prominent artists, NYNZer Max Gimblett exhibited at San Francisco’s Haines Gallery in April. The 30 year New York resident’s refined and harmonious canvases are created utilizing a process akin to alchemy. Says critic Alan Bamberger: “I considered the considerable logistical challenges Max Gimblett must surely hurdle on the way to completing his art, including mastery of unconventional uses for unconventional mediums (polyurethane, polymers, gold, epoxy), and especially the skill and attention which he devotes to his art's edges (why so many artists think that nobody's ever gonna look at the edges, I have no idea, and I can't tell you how much art I see with edges that absolutely suck). Considerations duly considered, Max Gimblett gets thumbs up, hands down.”
(2005)

Archiball
Artist Martin Ball was the first New Zealand resident artist to be a finalist in Australia’s premier portraiture award, the Archibald Prize, with his painting of artist John Pule. The prize was won by Australian artist John Olsen. 
(May 2005)

Headlining act
Neil Dawson’s Fanfare sculpture provided the focal point for Sydney’s famous New Year celebrations. The 20m steel sphere, studded with more than 300 light reflective pinwheels, was suspended from the Harbour Bridge in the semblance of a giant disco ball. Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore described Fanfare as “stunningly beautiful.” The sculpture remained on display for the entire month of January. Dawson’s sculptures have hung in Paris, Kuala Lumpur, and Canberra as well as in Wellington’s Civic Square and Victoria University.
(14 December 2004)

   

From South Korea with love
NZ launched its inaugural South Korean Film Festival in Auckland on October 22. Actresses Chang Mi-hee and Park Sol-mi, directors Kang Je-gyu and Kwak Jae-yong, and critic Yu Gi-na attended the week long event, which featured such films as Tae Guk Ki, Yopkijogin Kunyo and Untold Scandal. NZ will also host its first major Korean art exhibition at the Waikato Museum of Art and History next year. Entitled 'Poetics of Line and Color: Korean textiles and costumes of the Choson Dynasty,' the show focuses on traditional Korean wrapping cloths (bojagi).
(27 October 2004)

Edge dimension
Textile artist Clare Plug contributed two works to the Fiberart International 2004 biennial, which recently moved to New York’s Museum of Arts & Design from the Pittsburgh Centre of the Arts. A review in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette describes her pieces, Resonance and Promenade, as “exceptional … tactile and dimensionally illusional.”
(31 July 2004)
     

Paradise wow
The Asia Society Museum in New York is to host a major exhibition of contemporary New Zealand and Pacific Island art entitled Paradise Now? from February 18 – May 9. Michael Tuffery’s contribution, Povi Tau Vaga – a large bull (and functioning barbeque) made out of corned beef tins – will direct foot traffic to the gallery’s Park Avenue location, where works by artists including Lisa Reihana, Michael Parekowhai, John Pule, Peter Peryer, John Ioane, Ruth Watson, Niki Hastings-McFall, Shane Cotton, Bill Hammond, and Sofia Tekela-Smith will be exhibited. “The Asia Society is proud to be presenting this cutting-edge exhibition of works, which is the first US exhibition of contemporary art from NZ and the Pacific,” says Museum Director Vishakha N. Desai. “Not since the Metropolitan Museum of Art presented Te Maori in 1984 has there been a significant museum exhibition on art from this region.” Curator Melissa Chiu: “NZ is the cultural, social, economic and political hub for the whole region and the centre for exciting work by a new generation of artists. The nation’s fascinating cross-section of European, Maori indigenous and Pacific Islanders exists nowhere else in the world, and its unique multiculturalism has not yet been explored by an exhibition of this scale.”
(21 January 2004) 

He is: Looking edge-ward for inspiration
This year’s recipient of Australia’s $20,000 Dobell Prize for drawing – Aida Tomescu – cites a work by Colin McCahon as the inspiration behind her winning piece, Negru III and Negru IV. “It triggered a series of memories or connections, some of them autobiographical,” she said of the unnamed McCahon.
(11 September 2003)
    

Crimewatch goes global
NZ tourists Olive and Graeme Reed have provided Scottish police with crucial evidence in one of the world’s biggest ever art thefts. The couple used their digital camera to snap shots of the robbers and their getaway car outside Drumlanrig Castle, as they made off with a Leonardo da Vinci painting worth between ₤25-50 million.
(7 September 2003)
   

Art-attack
September’s Art Monthly Australia includes celebratory reviews of Michael Stevenson’s This is the Trekka exhibit at the Venice Biennale, and the Stedelijk Museum’s Colin McCahon retrospective, currently showing in Melbourne. Louise Tegart on Stevenson: “This is the Trekka brings together a number of disparate objects to examine NZ’s industry and culture in the Cold War period, and opens up debate about the state of the visual arts in NZ today […] The new national economic project for NZ is to use art to place NZ on the world stage.” Mary Eagle on McCahon: “Any viewer, of whatever persuasion, who stops and looks is hit with a wham, for McCahon easily achieves his goal that the ‘emotion of a painting should fill a room’ […] Fuchs and Bloem [Stedelijk director and curator] say the voice spoke to them in Amsterdam from a dark corner of the Pacific and colonised their global sensibility.”
(September 2003)
  

Glass master #1
Wanganui artist David Murray has won Australia's prestigious Runamok Prize for Contemporary Glass Art for 2003 for his work entitled 'Gatherer'.
(September 2003)
 

East-side story
Te Papa's 'Japonism' exhibition reviewed in August's Australian Vogue. A joint collaboration with the Kyoto Costume Institute, the show explores the influence of Japan on Western fashion from 1860 to the present. 'Japonism' - which comes "in perfect sync with fashion's latest love affair with Asian influences" - brings together designs by Worth, Givenchy, Gucci, and Dior, as well as showcasing such Japanese luminaries as Issey Miyake and Yoji Yamamoto.
(August 2003)
  

Kiwi snaps up award
NZer Antony Rieck was named Photographer of the Year at the annual Florida Association of the American Institute of Architects design awards held on August 2. Rieck, who has a background in structural engineering and fine arts, was commended for producing "high quality and original still photography … that advances the cause of outstanding architectural photography."
(28 July 2003)
   

Serious as anything
NZ-born Mambo creative and ex-Mental as Anything guitarist Reg Mombassa turns his satiric talents to serious effect for Isle of Refuge, a show of 13 high-profile Australian artists protesting the treatment of refugees. "I felt ashamed about the way the [Howard] Government was treating them." Works include a "Beer-toting, olive branch-waving Jesus on horseback welcoming boatloads of refugees" and a tongue-in-cheek self-portrait as "a nerdy, thick-accented, gumboot-wearing refugee from New Zealand." 
(12 June 2003)

Seriously comic
The Weekend Australian profiles NZ-born and Ilam (University of Canterbury) trained graphic artist Colin Wilson. Virtually unknown in the antipodes Wilson has millions of avid overseas fans and after his accliamed work on the 2000AD (Judge Dredd) and French Blueberry comic series he is "a star ... in the pantheon of Eurpean cartoonists" with his original drawings coveted by collectors. Now Melbourne based Wilson is currently winning plaudits for his work on the futurist comic Rain Dogs and the noirish Point Blank. "I approach each story with the same excitement which a director brings to a film, which is really what comics are to me - mini-films. If I do my part well, hopefully, they come to life for the reader as well.
(14 June 2003)

Hillary on show
The National Geographic Society's Explorers Hall in Washington has opened an exhibition to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Sir Edmund Hillary's Everest climb. Curiosities include the ice-axe Hillary used in the last few metres of his climb and a model crevasse which visitors can attempt to cross.
(17 April 2003)
   

Scream queen
"Eye-catching" sculptures and drawings by ex-pat Kiwi Francis Upritchard are currently on show at London's form-setting Institute of Contemporary Art, as part of the annual Beck's Futures award exhibition. Referencing Mike Kelley and Tony Oursler, "she has torn up the floorboards and installed a creepy little bandaged mannequin, surrounded by souvenir-like, Egyptian-looking funerary urns. […] Nearby, drawings and notes appear to provide proof that Prince Charles is really the Beast of the Book of Revelation."
(8 April 2003)
   

What is this? New works by Frizzell
"They can be seen as postmodern hymns to invention and appropriation, or they can be read as theoretical texts that map the visual culture of at least two phases of the 20th century." Dick Frizzell's latest series of work, based around comic strip hero The Phantom, applauded in SMH. "The images float at the edges of the big story: saved or drowning heroines, domestic glimpses, coastlines and jungles strangely not unlike our own."
(5 December 2002)

Big Tex inspiration
Leading NZ artist Julian Dashper is currently on show at the Campbelltown City Bicentennial Art Gallery. The varied and interactive works (created during his residency at the Chinati Foundation in Texas) include a reproduction of his CV and a sound recording of public reactions to paintings by Jackson Pollock. Overall the exhibition reveals "a pared down aesthetic, a quality rather than a quantity."
(13 December 2002)
  

Magic: It's academic
Prominent University of Melboune based NZ-born theorist Simon During's Modern Enchantments reviewed in Guardian. During's "thorough and compelling" study challenges commonly held beliefs about the role of performed magic throughout history: "we milk the spectacle, he claims, not the other way round." His view that "academic neglect of the magic assemblage has blinded us to the immunities that audiences can (and do) develop" is an interesting spin on the modern tendency to blame mass media spectacle for societal ills. Harvard University Press: "During's superlative work [...] gets at the aesthetic questions at the very heart of the study of culture."
(28 September 2002)

Politically correct

First
Wellington's City Gallery hosts a major retrospective of the work of internationally renowned Australian artist Tracey Moffat. Curated by Lara Strongman and Paula Savage, the important 15 year survey of her film, video and photo based work includes excerpts from the recent photo series "Fourth," featuring TV-swipes of the Sydney 2000 Olympics.
(26 February 2002)
        

Moment in time
Photographic heavyweight Regan Cameron engages his lens in some model-watching to  "express the emotion" behind the new range from high-end watch-maker Patek Philippe.
(January 2002)
         

Cartoon commies
Cartoons from New Zealander David Low's ("the greatest cartoonist of the twentieth century") "Russian Sketchbook" on show alongside high-profile Russian cartoonists in the first exhibition run by Britain's new Political Cartoon Society.
(26 June 2001)

Kiwi curator appointed to prestigious post
Dr Christopher de Hamel has been appointed to one of the world's most prestigious library posts at Cambridge University's Parker Library. Formerly a senior valuer at Sothebys, de Hamel is the first Donnelly Fellow Librarian at Corpus Christi College, overseeing the construction of new housing for "one of the greatest treasuries of learning in Europe". 
(17 July 2000)
            Dr Christopher de Hamel has been appointed to one of the world's most prestigious library posts at Cambridge University's Parker Library. Formerly a senior valuer at Sothebys, de Hamel is the first Donnelly Fellow Librarian at Corpus Christi College, overseeing the construction of new housing for "one of the greatest treasuries of learning in Europe". 
(17 July 2000)
           

Pastoral in pieces 
Auckland pebble mosaic artist John Botica has created what is considered, in the specialist publication Mosaic Art Now, one of the world's top 100 contemporary mosaic works. Botica's 'Tree of Life' was commissioned by the North Shore City Council and installed at a children's playground in Greenhithe. The 4.2m diameter mosaic took him three months to complete, and that working 12-hour days, seven days a week. Botica says: "I've discovered the passion of my life and I want to promote New Zealand world-wide through my art. I work both domestically and internationally, providing a full service from original design to final installation of pebble mosaics." 
(28 April 2008)

Art of ice 
New Zealand artist David Trubridge features at San Francisco's Natural World Museum in an exhibition entitled Melting Ice: A Hot Topic, which addresses the theme of climate change from a global perspective. Trubridge's 'On Thin Ice' is a series of three panels of "dark rolled steel sheeting riven by laser cuts, with the cracks getting bigger in each panel until the last one shatters into a maelstrom - a schematic of melting sea ice as seen from above." Trubridge's trip to Antarctica as an Antarctica New Zealand Arts Fellow in 2004 inspired the installation. Melting Ice next moves to Chicago where it runs until September 1. 
(21 April 2008)

Sculptured theme park 
Since 1992, New Zealand art collector Alan Gibbs has commissioned both national and international artists to contribute to a sculpture park on his farm in Kaukapakapa, Auckland. New York artist Tony Oursler's video projections are the latest addition, to what Men's Vogue describes as the most outlandish private art playground on earth. Oursler's images are floating women, writhing snakes and pyrotechnics. Sculpture is Gibb's main interest and artists include: Ralph Hotere, Daniel Buren and Richard Serra. Alan Gibbs told Vogue he wants his sculpture large: "I don't want any wimpy pieces in the landscape."
(February 2008)

Drawn on difference 
Preeminent documentary photographer Mark Adams is making his North American debut with the exhibition Tatau: Samoan Tattooing and Global Culture at Canada's Ontario College of Art & Design. The exhibition explores the Samoan tattooing tradition of tatau as an example of cross-cultural collaboration and cultural diversity. Gallery curator Charles Reeve says the "beguiling" photographs describe distant cultures while raising relevant issues in Canada. Adams' work has been shown extensively throughout New Zealand, Europe, Australia, South Africa and Brazil. His books include Land of Memories and Cook's Sites. The exhibition runs 15 February through May 18, 2008. 
(14 February 2008)

Portrait of a lady 
New Zealander Daisy Wilkie has been immortalised in oil for Australia's leading portrait prize. Australian artist Malcolm Smith chose Wilkie as his Archibald Prize subject after meeting her at one of the art classes he hosts in Cronulla, Sydney. Wilkie, 75, was born in NZ and is a descendant of Te Rauparaha. "I've always been terribly proud of my heritage; there is something spiritual that ties me to New Zealand," she says. The AU $35,000 Archibald Prize is Australia's most prestigious award for portraiture. This year's Archibald winner will be announced in March. 
(8 January 2008)

Magic realist 
Aotearoa North Carolina (US) artist Robert Johnson has just returned from a three month stint in NZ. The magic realist painter bought an old van in Auckland and toured the country from north to south. His resulting works are being shown in Asheville, North Carolina, in an exhibition titled Robert Johnson's New Zealand. "[NZ has] evolved quite separately from all other parts of the world," he says. "New Zealand is one of those places I've always been fascinated with." Johnson's works combine meticulously rendered flora and fauna with native motifs and unusual representations of space and dimension. Robert Johnson's New Zealand is on at Asheville's Blue Spiral Gallery until December 29.
(2 December 2007)

Hot shot 
NZ photographer Stefanie Young is part of a group show called Tripping the Light Fantastic, which has just opened at the Agora Gallery in Chelsea, New York. Young, who currently lectures at the Waikato Institute of Technology, describes her black and white prints as "translating a representational, perceptual experience". Young holds a MFA in photography from the prestigious Pratt Institute in New York, and has exhibited widely in NZ, Australia and the US. Tripping the Light Fantastic runs from November 20 to December 11. 
(November 2007)

Geddes gets personal

Bold type 
Auckland-born artist Rosalie Gascoigne (1917-1999) features in graphic design magazine Eye's special typography issue. Gascoigne's large, collage-like art works are primarily made from found objects, including abandoned road signs, stencilled packing materials and other text-heavy forms. Gascoigne moved to Mount Stromlo, just outside of Canberra, in 1943, and at the age of 64 became the first woman to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale. Eye: "Approaching 70, she hit her stride, making electric images of distilled experience, visual poems that meld culture and nature, language and landscape ... This creative response to her countryside produced some of Australia's most inventive typographic imagery, now celebrated as some of its most iconic contemporary art."
(September 2007)

Glass half full 

High price for Anzac artwork 
An iconic Anzac painting has sold for more than twice its estimated price at an auction of wartime artworks in Sydney. Simpson and his Donkey by NZ artist Horace Moore-Jones was purchased for $120,000 by an anonymous buyer. The painting depicts an unknown wounded soldier on a donkey being led by an Anzac medic, with the Gallipoli peninsula in the background. Controversy surrounding the medic's identity probably contributed to the unexpected sale price. While some believe the artwork represents John Simpson Kirkpatrick, a British-born medic with the Australian Field Ambulance, others claim it is taken from a photograph of NZ Field Ambulance medic Dick Henderson, who replaced Kirkpatrick. Moore-Jones produced five originals of the painting in 1917 while living in Dunedin. 
(30 April 2007)

McCarten joins local colour
Auckland-born Donald McCarten is a featured artist in the upcoming ColorField.remix event in Washington D.C. The four-month event celebrates the American capital's influential 1950s/1960s Color Field visual art movement, of which McCarten was a pivotal member. "This is an exciting opportunity to examine and celebrate Washington DC's artistic history, its international context and the impact of Color Field painting," said Judy A. Greenberg, director of The Kreeger Museum. "The number of organizations participating in this celebration is evidence of how profoundly the Color Field movement permeated the consciousness of Washington's cultural life in its time, and how it continues to sustain and inspire artists today." Donald McCarten, who died in 2003, studied at Auckland's Elam School of Art and the Central School of Art in London. He spent time painting in Australia, England, Europe and South Africa before immigrating to the US in 1958. His boldly coloured works, frequently on abstract-shaped canvasses, were exhibited alongside those by Color Field contemporaries Jacob Kainen, Howard Mehring, William de Looper, Paul Reed and Gene Davis. ColorField.remix runs from April 1-July 28. 
(March 2007)

Indigenous art in the spotlight 
The Musée du Quai Branly, French President Jacques Chirac's long-awaited €235.2 million shrine to indigenous art, was officially inaugurated on June 21 in Paris. The Quai Branly boasts a collection of 300,000 works from Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas, including a 19th-century Maori woman's cloak, the prows of a war canoe and a carving from a marae entrance. Contemporary photographic works by Michael Parekowhai and Fiona Pardington are exhibited in the museum's garden. French opinion is hotly divided over the Quai Branly - while some hail it as a symbol of the universality of art, others see it as an archaic reminder of European colonialism. Chirac has made it his project since 1996. "There is no hierarchy among the arts, just as there is no hierarchy among peoples," he proclaimed at the inauguration. 
(21 June 2006)

A life in pictures 
NZ born artist Derek Ward was the subject of a retrospective exhibition recently staged in Norwich, England. Ward was born in Richmond, NZ, in 1922 and relocated to England with his family aged 7. "Art for me is essentially a form of meditation and I avoiding discussing my work with others for this reason," he says in an interview with Norwich Evening News. "If I feel the need for recharging my work I walk along a Norfolk beach and look at the pebbles there." 
(21 March 2006)

Nature’s best
New Zealand enjoyed success at the 2006 Black & White Spider photography awards, with Jason Boa winning third place in the Nature category for “Field Waimate” and Jocelyn Carlin gaining an honourable mention in the same category for “Cabbage Tree”. The prestigious annual black and white photography awards are judged by some of the most highly respected members of the industry, including David Clarke, Head of Photography at The Tate London, Alicia McWhinnie, Editor of Black & White photography magazine and Eric Browner, Administrator of the Man Ray Trust.
(13 February 2006)

Up-and-coming Upritchard 
Artist to watch Francis Upritchard features in the 48th issue of Object magazine. "An exciting talent … Upritchard's art locates value in the personal and the imperfect … [She] finds a way of accommodating beauty, rendering it approachable, a part of life, freeing it of conspicuousness and convention." The Ilam graduate is now based in London, where she has set up the Bart Wells Institute (an emerging artists' gallery collective) with friend and fellow artist Luke Gottelier. "It is hard to make art on your own, and in NZ you are very much alone," she explained in a NZ Herald interview. "[But] my family is here, and I want to suck NZ back into me because I'm a colonial in England. My friends forget about that, but I need to stay different, I need to stay a visitor."
(December 2005-March 2006)

Army colonel turned art critic
Prince Andrew made a fleeting visit to NZ this month, chiefly to spend time with the army’s Logistic Regiment, which he has headed since 1996. The Prince made international headlines with his humorous interpretation of a new sculpture commemorating the 200th anniversary of Nelson’s death at Trafalgar. “This sculpture is, um, interesting,” he said of the tangled knot of grey steel rods before being drowned out by laughter from the crowd. He then pulled it together with “Those ties finally bind victor and defeated. They also bind countries like the UK and NZ together,” amidst a storm of clapping.
(1 October 2005)
   

Midwestern Dashper
The Sioux City Art Center is to show Midwestern Unlike You and Me: New Zealand’s Julian Dashper. This is the first ever travelling retrospective of a New Zealand-based artist to be organized by an American museum. Dashper has maintained a prolific international art career from his home base in Auckland since the early 1980s, having participated in over 100 solo exhibitions worldwide. His art is in the renowned collections in Australia, the Netherlands and Germany, and all the major public and private collections in NZ. Spanning the past 25 years of Dashper’s art, the exhibition features over 30 works including paintings, photography, sound recordings, videos and readymade objects. Through a concept-based art which focuses on both the formal and conceptual elements of the artwork, Dashper explores the global exchange of ideas about so-called international styles (such as American Modernism); the reception and dissemination of visual culture; and the subversion and re-positioning of what is often considered marginal elements of the artworld, such as its institutional framework. The show opens August 6 for three months. (27 July 2005)

National Ikon
An Independent obituary for Pat Hanly calls him “the jester of modern NZ art … His images - exuberant, colourful, feisty and humorous - reflected the personality of their maker.” The subjects of Hanly’s works ranged from domestic scenes to re-enactments of his famous anti-nuclear protests. In the 1998 film Pacific Ikon, shortly after he was diagnosed with Hodgkinson’s disease, Hanly stated “We are awaiting death with interested anticipation. Some of my best friends are dead.” He is survived by wife, muse, and fellow artist Gillian Taverner (Gil Hanly).
(19 November 2004)

Textile success
Promenade by Clare Plug won the Marianne Kor Award for Distinguished International Entry at the 2004 Fibreart International exhibition in Pittsburgh. Two of Plug’s pieces were selected out of 1,600 US and international entries for the prestigious 62-work exhibition.
(August 2004)

Sterling edge
Leading contemporary jewellers from both sides of the Tasman took part in a Melbourne exhibition entitled Cross Pollination. Curated by Vicki Mason (NZ) and Anna Davern (AUS), the brief was to design a modern interpretation of the fern brooch presented to Queen Elizabeth at the 1956 Sydney Olympics. NZ participants included Warwick Freeman, Kirsten Haydon, Niki Hastings-McFall, Lynn Kelly, and Tania Patterson.
(27 July 2004)

Tales from the city's edge
Canterbury School of Fine Arts graduates Kent Bell, Sara Givins, Damon MacLeod, Rachel Brown, and Reece Sanders have mounted a joint exhibition at Melbourne's Conical Gallery, running April 23 - May 8. Entitled City Psyche, the show wittily explores the often tenuous relationship between fantasy and reality informing our everyday urban existence.
(23 April 2004)

Brothers in arts
An opinion piece in the Age asks: “Why don't Australian and New Zealand arts sectors cooperate more?” The lengthy article examines the difference between the two nations in regards to arts funding, profiles the few artists enjoying a successful trans-Tasman career, and addresses the film industry phenomenon that is Peter Jackson (“Before Peter, people like Jane Campion had to go overseas to build their careers.”) NZ film commission head, Ruth Harley, suggests forming Tasman Inc. to promote industry development on both sides of the ocean: “The Scandinavians do it and so, on a broader scale, does the European industry as a whole. There is already a good level of collaboration, but I don't think that Australians realise the NZ industry is relevant.” Post-Oscars claims of an Antipodean invasion of Hollywood - such as the Guardian's 'The Australasians are coming!' -   hint at a powerful and unified strength amassing Down Under; perhaps it's time to make it official.
(24 March 2004)
   

Mccahon's edgy new-world modernism 
Peter Hill's review of the Stedilijk Museum's Colin McCahon exhibition - now showing in Sydney - perfectly encapsulates the New Zealand Edge. "Enough time has passed for a shift between the centre and the edge of modernism to occur. Rudi Fuchs, director at the Stedelijk Museum and veteran director of the Venice Biennale says: 'When Edvard Munch became more and more personal and introspective in his art [...] he was discarded for a while; the same happened with Asger Jorn, and also with Joseph Beuys in his early years. We now see those judgements as wrong. When such different positions slowly begin to emerge at what before had been considered the periphery, the centre automatically weakens and can no longer maintain its authority. So it was from this perspective that I began to see the work of Colin McCahon.'"
(14 November 2003)
    

Big McCahon: harbinger of art globalisation
In a substantial feature, 'Spreading the word', in international art world standard, ArtForum, Thomas Crow talks to Stedelijk Museum curator Marja Bloem about the growing international reputation of Colin McCahon. Crow urges globalisation in art to extend to the edge. "Globalization, our mantra of the moment, only carries so far where art is concerned. A case in point: A major contemporary of Rothko, Newman, Pollock, Twombly, and Johns - an artist fully at their level of achievement - is in the midst of his first major touring retrospective. Most of you reading this will be in no position to see it. The artist is Colin McCahon, and, yes, he is that good." Crow ends with the powerful prophecy: "That leads to the question: Might McCahon be better or more usefully understood outside of his own time? Beyond New Zealand and Australia, at any rate, he's a new artist. Might it be the case that his day for Europe and for America has only just arrived?" Above: North Otago Landscape 8 (1967)
(September 2003) 
      

Twisted sister
NZ artist, Anne Shelton, featured in Vancouver’s annual gallery-crawl, Swarm – described as “for many … the only gallery-going to be accomplished all year.” Shelton’s eerie photographic diptychs portray the scenes of actual murders: “Each location, photographed in a cinematic style, forces the viewer to consider the ways we fictionalise tragedy - we make stories, movies, myths, out of someone else's disaster. The broad daylight in these landscapes is a deep freeze; the absence of any human life makes them gorgeously austere.”
(9 September 2003)
    

The poetry of exile
Displaced artists and writers from around the world gathered at Auckland University in July for a 3-day conference examining the link between exile and creativity. Organised by Professor Mike Hanne and officially opened by PM Helen Clark, 'The Poetics of Exile' brought together artists from Iraq, Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan and Nigeria. Hanne described the conference as "an opportunity to review the extraordinary creative contribution that people who have lost their homeland so often make to the country they settle in. Specifically, it is a chance for New Zealanders to understand that refugees aren't just people who need help to fit in, but people who have much to offer." A message that speaks to NZ's own creative diaspora?
(17 July 2003)
    

Kiwi car culture laps Venice
NZ's representative at the Venice Biennale - Michael Stevenson - praised in Time Pacific for his "finely calibrated sense of irony." Stevenson's main installation - 'This is the Trekka' - places NZ's Cold War era attempt at a mass-produced all-terrain vehicle in the incongruous surroundings of an 18th century Venetian church. "Employing fictional devices and conspiracy theories, Stevenson cleverly concocts a time capsule of NZ before globalization, of innocence mixed with paranoia."
(27 August 2003)

In love with Earth's wild places
Celebrated NZ photographer, Wayne Papps remembered. Papps was best known for his striking images of Antarctica, which he produced as a member of the Australian Antarctic Division. Regarded as one of the world's premiere wilderness photographers, Papps, 43, fell to his death while taking pictures on Bruny Island last month. Australian Antarctic Division director, Tony Press: "Few people have captured the many moods or the spirit of Antarctica as Wayne has done … He was a consummate perfectionist and, like a number of truly creative and sensitive artists, an unassuming and modest man."
(4 June 2003)
     

Peter Robinson: "Migrateur"
Artist Peter Robinson, exhibiting in Berlin, described in ArtForum as "[fitting] the profile of the artist as a global playe