now at lumiere.net.nz
Sticks and Stones: NZ art criticism online
MARK AMERY trawls the internet in search of New Zealand art criticism.
IF EVER there was a bad adage it’s the sticks and stone one. Words can hurt you. Equally however in the visual arts they are a vital constructive tool.
The paucity of art criticism in New Zealand has long been commented on. With this column then I’m aware that one of its most important functions is to provide impetus for further discussion. Readers need not agree with the views expressed, but it hopefully leads them to more openly express their own thoughts amongst themselves in response.
The internet has naturally become an increasingly important site for those discussions, and in recent years comment around the visual arts in New Zealand and the reproduction of artwork has grown exponentially online.
The publishing freedom that sites, blogs and forums provide sees a wider range of opinions and texts able to be accessed. Yet as elsewhere in the virtual world the authority of the printed word needs to be approached with some caution as to its source. Online, things can get awfully personal.
Review site Artbash is welcome for its usually intelligent reviews of exhibitions in the main centres, and its Christchurch bias. Yet, as the website’s title forewarns, you can be in for an unwanted earbashing sometimes on the sites very active forums. The freedom the pseudonym provides for people to state opinion is not always welcome. Recently Prospect 2007 and an exhibition in Christchurch of Ian Scott’s Model Series have created a deluge of discussion, within which you need to pick out some rewarding threads musing on artistic and curatorial practice.
From where I’m googling however local online publications providing art criticism remain scant. Quarterly Australasian journal Natural Selection is now five issues old but only represents a fraction of the visual arts spectrum and has gone quiet, whilst sites like New Zealand Art Monthly are conversely too scattered and undefined in their editorial approach. The Lumière Reader’s cultural reach is growing but it maintains a principle focus on film. Online print publications like Art New Zealand and recent additions from Wellington White Fungus (www.whitefungus.com) and from Auckland Crease provide some limited content from their editions and valuable catalogues of past issues.
Where the discussion is growing and advancing in form is with forums and blogs. Where it isn’t working is within an institutional framework. When Christchurch biennial of art in public space Scape added a ‘blog’ section last year it was interesting to see (with the exception of a couple of notable contributions) the lack of critical response.
Where it is working is where the publication remains firmly independent. Such an example that manages to steer clear of banal personal reflection or tiresome rant is Over the Net and On the Table, from curators, collectors and writers Jim and Mary Barr. It has its fair share of whimsical art observations, with a recent highlight being a series on art gallery signage, and is also a conveyer of delicious art world gossip, from the publication of selected contributions sent into their email address (a choice pick: ‘Rohan Wealleans has joined the roller door studio set”). But it also frequently makes up for what the mainstream media doesn’t provide with pointed pithy revelations about various political goings on in the art world (Creative New Zealand and Venice always being particularly ripe for it).
Some artists too are writing back. Amongst a number of New Zealand artists’ blogs and web pages I find myself returning to is photographer Peter Peryer’s. It is a fine artist’s notebook. In words as in images Peryer’s lens may appear cool and matter of fact yet finds the gleams of cultural resonance in the objects around him and the experiences he has. It’s revealing of his artistic process in the far-reaching cultural connections made between things over time. One moment it’s motifs employed by Matisse, the next its frozen Morton bay bugs or an observation of three Russian ‘yak’ planes passing overhead. While there are the odd expressions of concern over some tendency or other in the art world, mostly the blog operates as accompaniment to his photography’s joy in studying the world around him.
Artists’ are employing the internet to engage in criticism and commentary in interesting creative ways. A good example is another site linked from Over the Net, Stimulus Response. Highlights have included drawn cartoon responses to exhibitions, translations of provided texts, and reviews which consist of detailed descriptions of everything the author saw on entering the gallery space.
The blog appears particularly well used by photographers, who take the opportunity to make connections between created, found and contributed images, and you’ll also find a large number of sophisticated photographer’s websites on line. Dealer galleries are also increasingly using their sites to provide reproductions of entire exhibitions.
I return often to the website for excellent photography gallery McNamara Gallery in Wanganui for its extensive links and images. Currently up on the site are reproductions of the first New Zealand exhibition of the work of Australian Elaine Campaner, whose photographed installations employing found objects and recycled materials on her kitchen table play beautifully and dramatically with the tensions between the real and the fabricated, the found and the symbolic.
Yet it took a trip to the gallery in Wanganui last week to see the large scale printed photographs to remind myself that the power of the image can be muted when, like those blog discussions, it’s scanned through on-line. Website reproductions are often thumbprints; seeing the work in situ in the gallery more often reveals the artist’s entire hand.
* * *
IF EVER there was a bad adage it’s the sticks and stone one. Words can hurt you. Equally however in the visual arts they are a vital constructive tool.
The paucity of art criticism in New Zealand has long been commented on. With this column then I’m aware that one of its most important functions is to provide impetus for further discussion. Readers need not agree with the views expressed, but it hopefully leads them to more openly express their own thoughts amongst themselves in response.
The internet has naturally become an increasingly important site for those discussions, and in recent years comment around the visual arts in New Zealand and the reproduction of artwork has grown exponentially online.
The publishing freedom that sites, blogs and forums provide sees a wider range of opinions and texts able to be accessed. Yet as elsewhere in the virtual world the authority of the printed word needs to be approached with some caution as to its source. Online, things can get awfully personal.
Review site Artbash is welcome for its usually intelligent reviews of exhibitions in the main centres, and its Christchurch bias. Yet, as the website’s title forewarns, you can be in for an unwanted earbashing sometimes on the sites very active forums. The freedom the pseudonym provides for people to state opinion is not always welcome. Recently Prospect 2007 and an exhibition in Christchurch of Ian Scott’s Model Series have created a deluge of discussion, within which you need to pick out some rewarding threads musing on artistic and curatorial practice.
From where I’m googling however local online publications providing art criticism remain scant. Quarterly Australasian journal Natural Selection is now five issues old but only represents a fraction of the visual arts spectrum and has gone quiet, whilst sites like New Zealand Art Monthly are conversely too scattered and undefined in their editorial approach. The Lumière Reader’s cultural reach is growing but it maintains a principle focus on film. Online print publications like Art New Zealand and recent additions from Wellington White Fungus (www.whitefungus.com) and from Auckland Crease provide some limited content from their editions and valuable catalogues of past issues.
Where the discussion is growing and advancing in form is with forums and blogs. Where it isn’t working is within an institutional framework. When Christchurch biennial of art in public space Scape added a ‘blog’ section last year it was interesting to see (with the exception of a couple of notable contributions) the lack of critical response.
Where it is working is where the publication remains firmly independent. Such an example that manages to steer clear of banal personal reflection or tiresome rant is Over the Net and On the Table, from curators, collectors and writers Jim and Mary Barr. It has its fair share of whimsical art observations, with a recent highlight being a series on art gallery signage, and is also a conveyer of delicious art world gossip, from the publication of selected contributions sent into their email address (a choice pick: ‘Rohan Wealleans has joined the roller door studio set”). But it also frequently makes up for what the mainstream media doesn’t provide with pointed pithy revelations about various political goings on in the art world (Creative New Zealand and Venice always being particularly ripe for it).
Some artists too are writing back. Amongst a number of New Zealand artists’ blogs and web pages I find myself returning to is photographer Peter Peryer’s. It is a fine artist’s notebook. In words as in images Peryer’s lens may appear cool and matter of fact yet finds the gleams of cultural resonance in the objects around him and the experiences he has. It’s revealing of his artistic process in the far-reaching cultural connections made between things over time. One moment it’s motifs employed by Matisse, the next its frozen Morton bay bugs or an observation of three Russian ‘yak’ planes passing overhead. While there are the odd expressions of concern over some tendency or other in the art world, mostly the blog operates as accompaniment to his photography’s joy in studying the world around him.
Artists’ are employing the internet to engage in criticism and commentary in interesting creative ways. A good example is another site linked from Over the Net, Stimulus Response. Highlights have included drawn cartoon responses to exhibitions, translations of provided texts, and reviews which consist of detailed descriptions of everything the author saw on entering the gallery space.
The blog appears particularly well used by photographers, who take the opportunity to make connections between created, found and contributed images, and you’ll also find a large number of sophisticated photographer’s websites on line. Dealer galleries are also increasingly using their sites to provide reproductions of entire exhibitions.
I return often to the website for excellent photography gallery McNamara Gallery in Wanganui for its extensive links and images. Currently up on the site are reproductions of the first New Zealand exhibition of the work of Australian Elaine Campaner, whose photographed installations employing found objects and recycled materials on her kitchen table play beautifully and dramatically with the tensions between the real and the fabricated, the found and the symbolic.
Yet it took a trip to the gallery in Wanganui last week to see the large scale printed photographs to remind myself that the power of the image can be muted when, like those blog discussions, it’s scanned through on-line. Website reproductions are often thumbprints; seeing the work in situ in the gallery more often reveals the artist’s entire hand.
Mark Amery’s visual arts column courtesy of the Dominion Post, Friday March 23, 2007.
Luke wrote: