It’s Auckland Artweek (12-20 October) and we’re doing our bit by shining a light on the people behind the city’s commercial galleries. Welcome to The Spinoff Art’s inaugural Art Dealer Questionnaire: an insight into the lives of the people who represent the interests and work of our artists. As the answers below reveal, they can’t … 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
Tongan New Zealand performance artist Kaisolaite Uhila is the current visiting artist in residence at Dunedin Public Art Gallery. Whether he’s living homeless around the boundary of Auckland Art Gallery for the Walters Prize, or sleeping with pigs in Aotea Square, Uhila uses his body and its labour to start uneasy conversations that break down … Read more
In this instalment of Things I Learned At Art School, Bob Jahnke talks Māori identity, education and, on the occasion of the Tuia 250 commemorations, “getting Cooked”. Bob Jahnke is the winner of the 2019 Wallace Arts Trust Paramount Award and an officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to Māori art. … Read more
Art activist group the Guerrilla Girls has been calling out gender bias in the American art world since 1985. Their survey show, Reinventing the “F” Word, is in its final weeks at Auckland Art Gallery. But what’s the picture on gender representation closer to home? How equal are the opportunities for male and female artists … 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
To mark Arts Month, the prime minister shares her thoughts on the future of the arts in Aotearoa. In my office in the Beehive, there are a couple of artworks that are very special to me. I mention this because, while it feels like the nation has been talking about nothing but a certain world … Read more
Covering Climate Action: Ahead of the UN’s Climate Action Summit, artist Joseph Michael and composer Rhian Sheehan teamed up to create Voices For The Future, a 30-minute installation projected onto the UN buildings. The Spinoff’s participation in Covering Climate Now is made possible thanks to Spinoff Members. Join us here! Joseph Michael is walking along Wakefield … Read more
The paintings of Colin McCahon convey dissonance and uncertainty, writes Shannon Te Ao. So what does this say about us? And why are we maintaining this Pākehā male narrative at the expense of more inclusive representation? Ka pōraruraru ahau. I am troubled. Colin McCahon would have turned 100 on August the 1st. If you keep … Read more
The Future of Work at Hutt City’s Dowse Art Museum makes visible our changing work conditions. Mark Amery took a tour, and even got some work done himself while he was there. I’ve gone to work at the gallery. And I’m making an exhibition of myself. Making my labour visible. I’m writing about the exhibition … Read more
Lana Lopsesi on tatu maker Julia Mage’au Gray, the revival of Melanesian female tattoo practice, and an exhibition paying homage to her remarkable work. I remember turning up before the chaos. It was just me and Julia Mage’au Gray. Her daughter Vasa had run out to get some gloves. Looking at my body, she asked … Read more
Here: Kupe to Cook is an exhibition that challenges the discovery narrative that’s the cornerstone of Pākehā national history. Reuben Friend, director of Pātaka Art+Museum in Porirua, discusses the ethical framework for a show that serves up the skeletons in our collective closet. I had reservations about using Greg Semu’s photograph The Arrival as 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
To mark the centenary of Colin McCahon’s birth, a weekend of events in August included a bus ride to experience ‘McCahon’s Auckland’ and an ‘open home’ at the McCahon House Museum. Paula Morris takes the trip. Buckle up. The first bus to Titirangi leaves at nine AM on Saturday and there’s a certain giggly excitement … Read more
Hope, censorship, the Hong Kong protests and their threads across Asia and the Pacific: a conversation with artist Yuk King Tan, whose show Crisis of the Ordinary is at Starkwhite gallery now. A lattice screen made out of white plastic zip tie police handcuffs. Batons, bottles, drones and other protest objects, wrapped in many-coloured threads, … Read more
1000 Words is a Spinoff series talking to the photographers behind our most iconic political images. In this instalment, Don Rowe speaks to Chris McKeen, the photographer who shot Pania Newton at Ihumātao. The story of Ihumātao is, in a certain sense, one of timing and potentiality. At a moment of ascension for a new … 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
Split Level View Finder: Theo Schoon and New Zealand Art is the exhibition that sparked a protest over issues of cultural appropriation and institutional representation. Theo Schoon is a divisive historical figure. But is his art any good? Martin Patrick reviews. See also: Lana Lopesi on The debate over Theo Schoon, who built his career … Read more
Who makes up the royal ‘we’? Lana Lopesi reviews a massive show at ST PAUL St Gallery in Auckland that investigates questions of community, culture and conflict. How to Live Together at ST PAUL St Gallery could hardly have been better timed, opening just days before the protection of Ihumātao in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland reached … 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
Caroline Moratti goes all the way undercover to discover the truth about nude modelling for artists and photographers, in this story first published in Critic Te Arohi, the University of Otago student magazine. Like any woman, it’s fair to say I have a complicated relationship with my body. By complicated, I mean a lifelong obsession … 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
David Eggleton considers the remarkable radiance and Canterbury swamp fog of Tony de Lautour’s paintings, in this mid-career survey at Dunedin Public Art Gallery. Resembling a giant blackboard covered in graffiti, ‘Underworld 2’ (2006) by Tony de Lautour is spectacular. This painting is a phantasmagoria of signs and markings, intended to bring to mind Christchurch … Read more
An exhibition of Dutch-New Zealand artist Theo Schoon at the City Gallery in Wellington has set off a debate about the place of racially problematic work in public spaces. Lana Lopesi reports on the ongoing protests, and how they connect to the activism at Ihumātao. When Theo Schoon: A Biography by Damian Skinner was released … Read more
A bus stop, a soap dish, beer crates and a pile of rubbish: in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the National Contemporary Art award, we look at the media beat-ups, lessons learnt and collateral damage from the competition’s first two decades. Congratulations! Ayesha Green is the winner of the 2019 National Contemporary Art Award … Read more
At the last election, Metiria Turei stood down as Greens co-leader amid the controversy that followed a personal and polarising speech, the reverberations of which are felt to this day in the party. She has since stayed out of the public spotlight and immersed herself in art and performance. In a rare interview, she sits … Read more
Artist Nikau Hindin is reviving a contemporary form of Māori art that was largely lost after the extinction of the aute plant in Aotearoa. Ngāpuhi and Te Rarawa artist Nikau Hindin has recently been taught by ancestors in Hawai’i the skills of beating tapa or barkcloth, reviving as contemporary form a Māori art largely lost … Read more
Francis McWhannell goes on a grand tour of escapism, adventure and parochialism with our quintessential expatriate artist, Frances Hodgkins, at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. Few artists from Aotearoa deliver escapism like Frances Hodgkins (1869–1947). She has a gift for teasing out the transcendent in the world about her. An early watercolour depicts a … Read more