Bugssth

The woman at Bowen Galleries remembered me, usually nobody does. I think I’m like a 4/10 on the scale of ‘memorable’. You’ve come in here before, why yes, and I always ask about the same artist because I want to make awkward conversation. Yeah thats me.

Caligo Memnon
Stephen Allwood
9 panels, 1020 x 1020 mm, 2012
Bowen galleries

Steven Allwood’s Insecta is a collection of insects. It is what is is really. They are painted really nicely although I don’t like the ones with the wooden frames painted in, they look a bit naff. A bit Etsy.

The amount of people who paint butterflies as pretty butterflies has made it very hard for me to see them as anything other than that. So often they are available en masse en bulke from those stores where you buy wedding gifts and mother’s day presents on a $20 canvas so you can literally litter your walls with them. To make these work you need to get as far away from that as possible, and although these are painted well, the intent just doesn’t shine through. I think the works are just too likeable to be allowed further likes. LIKE like.

The insects however, are painted expressively, impressionistic easy dreamy strokes each pinned with a tiny swirl of white against the canvas. The bugs are wonderful, the arrangements on the wall more like a natural swarm than a museum display. I think the bugs are great, it would be good to see these made on a smaller scale in larger numbers, or just to see him play with scale and arrangement on the wall more. Lovesth the bugth.

Vespula Vulgaris
20 panels, 2000 x 1720 mm, 2012
Stephen Allwood
Bowen Galleries

The best thing on Courtney Place

Max Bellamy
Carte Blanche
1:05 – HD video
Edition of 3

30 Upstairs, I read about this gallery on TheBigIdea (I think), and I finally went to a show on Thursday night. After talking to, hold on, listening to other people talk about Law at WYP networking cheap o’ wines (where’s my Man O’ War?) it was a great pleasure to sneak up the staircase beside El Horno and discover 30 Upstairs. I thought that I was going to see some of Max’s photos (because I can’t/don’t bother to read descriptions good and they work so well as stills) but it is actually five video works and two photographs, Borrowed Time is the name of the show, get there!

Can I say that I conducted an interview?

Broughton: Did you dress as a pilot while filming this?

Bellamy: No…

Listening to Max describe how exactly he achieved each shot which involved everything from zip lines to helium balloons and animation was a perfect accompaniment to orange slices and fetal spooning Campari. On edge of Fiordland National Park, the edge of civilisation, bounding through the beech forests and moss after a flying DSLR make believe passenger carrier preventing any dead camera body casualties and planes from smooching trees. Some of the shots in this remind me a lot of Home with the rattling little plane sailing along on its journey, and if you like this take a look at Microcosms.

Max Bellamy
Meme
0:24 loop – HD video
Edition of 3

The rat race that is Invercargill, McDonalds is frequented far more than the art gallery (that pyramid with Henry the Tuatara in it, who has his own blog?). This loop sits beside a film made at Monkey Island which took olympic feats of swimming, flying and gumboot wearing to make. In contrast, Meme is filmed from a stationary spot inside the William Hodges accommodation. Max is pretty flash just by the way, He was the William Hodges Resident in 2011 and stayed in the old white building overlooking the above, just off Gala Street.

I took my friend (also from Southland) to see both exhibitions today because I wanted to listen to the audio again without the excited chatter of an exhibition opening in the background. Interesting to note that neither of us saw Maroon; Blue as being an island because we were very familiar with the land formations in that area. It was wonderful to see someone appreciating the remoteness and inaccessibility (and Monkey-less-ness) of Monkey Island, and now we are both home sick.

I highly recommend braving 140km winds and torrents of water blowing out of the Dixon Street fountain to go and see this show. Follow up with a peanut butter (add chocolate) milkshake from Sweet Mothers Kitchen and some vege tortillas and you’ve just won Saturday.

Exhibitions 18th August 2012

With the intention of going to get a coffee, I trip-trapped over the motorway bridge and down to Cuba Street and found myself inside Bowen Galleries.

SOMEONE has some ceramic works in the window space although I don’t recall his or her name, Bowen Galleries update your Goddamn website so I don’t have to rely on my memory please. I even looked in my artnews mag and the info wasn’t there, yeah, analog research. Bowen, one of us needs to get our shit together.

Inside were works from Kim Pieters (who also currently has a show running at Artspace with Anoushka Akel). They are delicate and clumsy all at once, like the artist stuck pencils in her eyes and drew it like that. The more I think about it the more I’m convinced that was the case. The pencil case.

Kim Pieters – Bowen Galleries

I’m not sure about the scale of these works, I sort of glazed over them. They are about a metre square if my excellent memory serves me correctly, and the lines are softly tiny arthritic whispers amongst wet pink pastel. Maybe they weren’t quite suited to that space, I have seen other smaller works in there that were easier to view and more engaging. The space really impacts the experience of these works, you can’t step back from them, I don’t feel like they were well lit. This was pre-coffee mind you so it is highly possible that my eyes were half closed, take that in to account.

It reminds me of Melanie Bell and Saskia Leek; that minimal, not-trying to be art, purposeful but not, undefined lines that are somehow still defined, pastel, but on a much larger scale, with the same amount of care. I would love to see these somewhere with a bit more natural light.

Hamish Mackay was next, I look forward to going up here but their current show John Nixon is… lame potatoes.

Description: A4-ish sized works x 8, shit glued to it, spray painted silver. It makes me think of some of the crap I see on friends walls (sorry friends) when they want to brighten up a room. Warehouse canvas, poster paint, geometry, hey presto! I actually hated it, it is hands-down-pants the worst show I’ve seen the whole time I’ve been in Wellington.

John Nixon
Silver Monochrome, 2010
enamel and wood on canvas 305 x 230 mm

“To the uneducated an A is just three sticks.”- A A Milne

Usually after an exhibition I go home and see what other information I can find on the artist; this exhibition did inspire me to do that to see weather I was missing something. Apparently he has been around for a while; average time spent looking at the first entry on him on Google < 30seconds.