Megan Dunn takes a long look at the art in the Auckland Hospital collection and finds out that yes, there is art, even in intensive care – but the price of seeing it is everything. I got the pamphlet in the mail back in January. It says after someone close to you dies it is … Read more
Curator and art writer Justin Paton on the process of writing McCahon Country, homesickness, and uncontemporary art. Plus his top tips for art writers. Justin Paton is the author of the award-winning How to Look at a Painting. A book so popular it inspired a TV series of the same title, which Paton also presented. … Read more
At Wellington’s New Zealand Portrait Gallery for one last week is Jacqueline Fahey’s Suburbanites, a survey show showcasing 60 years of the Auckland artist’s riotous oil paintings. Megan Dunn writes a fan letter, in lieu of a review. Dear Jacqueline, I wanted to make time to review Suburbanites but a four-year-old daughter, my own half-written … Read more
In 2020 the Royal Academy of Arts in London opens the exhibition Rita Angus: New Zealand Modernist. It’s the first-ever show of a New Zealand artist in an institution that dates back to the days of Captain Cook. And it all came about because of a railway shack. I first saw Cass, in the art … Read more
The Guerrilla Girls are an infamous group of feminist art activists who’ve been calling out sexism and prejudice in the art world since the 80s. On the eve of her first trip to New Zealand, group member ‘Frida Kahlo’ talks to Megan Dunn. In 1984, the Museum of Modern Art in New York launched the … Read more
In the third instalment of Things I Learned At Art School, Megan Dunn talks to Yvonne Todd, the 2019 Arts Foundation Laureate who has received the Theresa Gattung Award for Female Arts Practitioners. Todd discusses fashion, Madonna’s aging process and what photography students never need to photograph again. What did you learn in art school? … Read more
Fashion, beauty and modernism all play a part in the exhibition Frances Hodgkins: European Journeys. Megan Dunn talks to fashion designer Karen Walker and the show’s curator Mary Kisler about their collaboration and Frances Hodgkins’ close ties to fashion – plus the cheeky question, “was she gay?” This year is the 150th anniversary of the … Read more
The giant hand that captivated, delighted and disgusted the nation is now settling into its new Wellington home. For City Gallery Wellington’s blog, Spinoff arts editor Megan Dunn talked to Ronnie van Hout, the man who made Quasi. “Quasi is in the wrong place,” wrote art critic Warren Feeney in 2016, arguing it should be … Read more
Things I Learned at Art School is a new series featuring artists discussing how they do what they do and know what they know. In the second instalment, Megan Dunn talks to Berlin-based New Zealander Simon Denny about Michael Parekowhai, teaching and technology, and an idea involving the online shoe store Zappos that didn’t work … Read more
The best little art show about the environment is big on charm and low on preaching and you can find it at Robert Heald Gallery in Wellington for one more week. Megan Dunn reviews. Are we all screwed? Pastorale, the current show at Robert Heald Gallery in Wellington, suggests not yet, but we might be … Read more
Things I Learned at Art School is a new series featuring artists discussing how they do what they do and know what they know. In our first instalment, Megan Dunn talks to photographer Edith Amituanai about Mean Girls and getting an MNZM for services to photography and community. Edith Amituanai is an Auckland-born first generation … Read more
Launching today, and co-edited by Megan Dunn and Mark Amery, The Spinoff Art will bring you the big and little stories about contemporary art in New Zealand. Like this one about a small pointy-headed heist. On a trip to Auckland last week, I heard about an art heist. It was small but perfectly formed: the … Read more
Megan Dunn looks back on this year’s Auckland Art Fair and what the fair means to New Zealand art galleries, buyers and artists. A curator friend recently said to me, “everyone loves to hate art fairs.” True, but only because everyone loves to go to them. In 2018 there were over 260 art fairs in … Read more
The fifth work in Yona Lee’s In Transit series is currently exhibiting at Wellington’s City Gallery. Megan Dunn writes on the aspirations of the piece and how comfortably it sits in a gallery context. On a Sunday afternoon I opened my laptop and sat in In Transit, the most ambitious and nimble exhibition on in the country … Read more
Mermaid expert Megan Dunn reviews horny fish-fucking novel, The Pisces, which she celebrates as “funny, profane, nasty, disturbing and taboo-breaking”. There are books that make you think and books that get you off. Melissa Broder’s first novel The Pisces does both. Never the twain shall meet, and when they do there might be rimming. Scratch that: anal. But sensitively, … Read more
An excerpt from Tinderbox, the new memoir by Wellington writer Megan Dunn. One night shift at Borders Islington the alarm on the ground floor went off just after 8pm and a bum stumbled out of the fire doors in a brown corduroy suit. “What were you doing?” I asked. “That area is for staff only.” … Read more