Speedy tour of Vancouver and Vancouver Island

As I am so far behind in my trip im going to catch up with a quick photo tour of the last few days. I visited Granville Island in Vancouver which was fantastic and houses the Emily Carr Art Institue and its Gallery which was very interesting. The i took the ferry over to Vancouver Island and had a great time, visiting the Vancouver Island Art Gallery which I will explain more of at another time. Until then here are some photos of some of the things I saw.....

Vancouver continued....

Wednesday - yes im a day behind with my posts but i'll catch up :)

Woke up and decided to go to Stanley park today. It’s a very beautiful park and although I just had a brief overview of the park I intend to come back tomorrow for a better look. Here is the picture I took of what I think may be the “lost lagoon” in Stanley Park.



Then went to an amazing organic shop called “Capers” for breakfast, needless information to you I’m sure.

Then I headed off to the Vancouver Art Gallery, totally unaware of what kind of place it is going to be.

On entering I see an open, empty looking corridor. I spot the “cloakroom” for leaving my coat and bag and I am served by a lovely woman who refuses to get off the phone with her friend as she serves me. Not a great start. However the person on the admissions desk was much more friendly and took my $15 ticket charge with a smile. I’m in and enter the first floor with an exhibition called “Truth and Beauty”

This contains some amazing old photographs, a lot of them too. I’m impressed by the selection and the way it is sectioned off into different subjects (Modernism, photography in print, pictorialism etc..) My favourite photographs were by Edward Weston, John Hagemeyer, Robert Demachy, Henrich Kühn, and it was lovely to see work by some New Zealand born photographers: Mary Moore and Mina Moore, Harold Cazneaux. I was also interested in the series called The Seven Last Words by Holland Day in which he depicted the crucifixion with himself as Christ. It brings to mind that then as now it is still a sensitive matter to depict religious subjects in photographs much more so than in paintings. That’s my opinion anyway.

Next floor of the Vancouver Art Gallery was “The Tree -From Sublime to the Social” an exhibition of mainly environmental concern and not much of the sublime. Perhaps as I get older I move further away from my conceptual roots but I found much of the work too blatant and quite ugly. To artists produced works of interest though, Karin Bibas created some large digital photographs, with a Pre-Raphaelite feel to them and a beautiful sheen.

Secondly was a work by Mungo Thompson who I believe was in the AAG’s last Triennial turbulence. This work “Silent film of a tree falling in the forest” was quote haunting, interdispersed with sections of blank white film. The effect was mesmerising.

Third floor has an amazing installation by Kutlu Ataman entitled Kuba, 2007, by far my favourite work and a great reason for being there. There were probably about 50 old TV sets and old chairs of various shapes and sizes with a chair for each TV set and each TV set showing an interview with a stranger. Each interview was subtitled, as the noise was hard to hear with everyone else’s. However I loved the mingle of the noise, the crowd like hum from all the interviews in the concrete room had the feeling of a train station or something. Quite overwhelming. The second part, or twin version of this installation was another called Paradise, 2007, which was similar except it contained interviews with people from California and was more colourful and glossy with large flat screen TV’s and white plinths holding headphones. So instead of the noise it was silent with just one interview being played out loud. You had to choose whom to listen to more carefully as more effort goes into putting those headphones on.

Obviously referencing the difference in the idea of wealth in both installations they were both totally fascinating.

The last floor had Emily Carr and the group of Seven, which I did not find particularly engaging.

So it was a mixed bag at VAG but a good visit. It also made me realize that I really am part of the AAG now as I was constantly comparing the labels, wall text, paint colour, hanging methods etc with our Gallery. Is that a good thing or not?

The rest of the day was full of tourist activities; Gas Town Clock etc etc… here are some photos of the day.

Roger-Ten-Four

Image: Vancouver Art Gallery


Well one of the reasons i thought this blog would be great was to talk about some of the visits to other museums/cities/countries that staff of the AAG often attend as part of the job. Whether being a courier for a work of art going on loan, conserving an artwork in another institution of many other reasons, the fascinating stories and wonderful images are always fun to hear and see on their return.

So.............. I received the Elizabeth Yates Grant from the Auckland City Council with the intention of furthering my career by funding a trip to Canada to attend the Museums and the Web conference in Montreal next week. As part of the trip i decided to take some time off and visit Vancouver on the way.......so here is am. It's 10.15pm and i seem to be just waking up, but here is what i wrote last night before i found the lovely wireless capable cafe that i am now.

"Well here I am finally, in Vancouver after a brief stop over in Los Angeles Airport. All in all the travel was not so bad, after the rush of the last few weeks it was just great to get onto the plane and stop for a few hours. First impressions of Canada are good.

Although it was getting dark as I arrived it was clear skies and I had a fantastic view of the mountain range with snow capped peaks. A very special view to arrive and see. My hotel however lost my booking but found me a room anyway, I had visions of myself spending the night, literally, in Starbucks or somewhere that is open for the most hours.

It’s 9.11pm here and I have been for a walk up Robson Street and checked out the location of the Vancouver Art Gallery where I will be going tomorrow. It’s a very pretty street, fairy light tree clad, with shops still open now. I’ll try and take a photo another night. I have picked up a copy of Canadian Art magazine, which at first glance looks ok with an interesting feature on Chen Zhen who it seems, works in Paris. I’ll be reading it again when my eyes are working properly; lack of sleep is making it hard to concentrate. Flicking through it is disappointing to see how so many art magazines all over the world look the same, I guess it’s a formula that must work but I’d love to see something a bit more adventurous in the magazines design.

So i'm off back to the streets for a walk then back to my room to prepare for an exciting day tomorrow. Can’t wait to get stuck into Vancouver. Find out what the art culture of this place is like."

I'll email today's adventures shortly

Over and out for now.......

Reading Room Action

Just as I sit here nervously awaiting the arrival of the journal for the launch tonight, I thought we might try celebrating it electronically. About to be posted on e-flux as "the Asia Pacific’s newest peer-reviewed journal of contemporary art and culture"... this is now the second issue of Reading Room. RR is an annual publication, and an enormous undertaking by all involved. With eight substantial essays it feels more like a book in fact (and selling for just $25 is quite a bargain). Not to mention the contemporary yet elegant design...

This issue explores the theme "Transcendental Pop". And the purpose of the issue was to examine how Pop Art - but in particular Warhol - continues to influence contemporary practice. But more specifically, it's about how artists reuse Pop, extracting Warhol's belief in surface alongside his glib banality - then bending it. (Just think of his fantastic phrase I never fall apart... because I never fell together). The issue explores the artistic impulse to override surface with "depth". Where the language of popular culture is tampered with… just possibly by applying transcendence...

OK, so I’m writing this with the luxury of hindsight, but you never really know whether a subject is going to encourage other writers. It was one of the delights of the issue that there was such good pick-up from writers on the theme. Conversation took place snippets of conversation during travel, over email, and in response to both work and writing, as we attempted to broaden the subject to as many different contexts as possible.

There's an engaged, ponderous and searching feeling in all the essays which try to examine how Pop is both valued and re-utilised. The essays discuss artists: Kamrooz Aram, Eric Baudelaire, Harun Farocki, Douglas Gordon, David Hatcher, Damien Hirst, Giovanni Intra, Jeff Koons, Ed Ruscha, Darren Sylvester, Andy Warhol and more...

All essays are newly commissioned for this issue. Look for especially good writing by Aram Moshayedi, curator at LAXART, Lars Bang Larson on the art of the Occult, Rex Butler on Andy Warhol and the “Religious” Dimension. I can't mention my own of course, on football in recent art (which I thoroughly enjoyed), but in the archive section there's also a great conversational piece by Robert Leonard on the Giovanni Intra archive, and one by Ron Brownson on the 1978 Ed Rusha show at the Gallery.

There's also a new work by Gavin Hipkins in this issue, a photo series which in my opinion is one of his strongest. The commission asked Gavin to make a body of new work based on the Warhol Index Book which was signed and gifted by Andy Warhol to the E.H.McCormick Research Library, in recognition of their subscription to Interview magazine (the only one by a library in the Southern Hemisphere).

Anyway... we look forward to seeing it... and, we hope people read Reading Room. RR is published annually by the E.H. McCormick Research Library at the Auckland Art Gallery, and is edited by Christina Barton, Natasha Conland and Wystan Curnow. It is initiated and overseen by marvellous managing editor Catherine Hammond and would not be possible at all without the vision of Dr Mayo and the establishment of the Marylyn Mayo Foundation!

For any other information (including purchasing) go direct to the website: http://www.aucklandartgallery.govt.nz/research/journal/issue2

A Man Of His Time - Peter Tomory 1922 - 2008

I heard this morning that Peter Tomory died yesterday. Peter was the second professional director at Auckland City Art Gallery between 1956 and 1965. He then taught at the University of Auckland and had several academic and gallery posts in America before finishing his teaching career as Emeritus Professor of Art History at La Trobe University in Melbourne. During this time he built up a very fine print collection, which he used for teaching purposes - lucky students to get invited home on a Friday for a glass of wine, and be able to run your fingers over prints! Although you can't do that with an exhibition print, Peter believed firmly that you needed to feel a print in order to really understand how it had been made. Our director, Chris Saines, was one of those lucky people.

When I first started work at the Gallery ten years ago, I learned very quickly just how much I owed to Peter Tomory. Not only was he the first person to introduce systematic research into our international historic collection, but he also made his name internationally when he discovered what were to become our remarkable Henri Fuseli watercolour collection in a private home in Dunedin. At the same time he did much to promote New Zealand artists while he was here. Colin McCahon was working at the Gallery at the time, and they had a great regard for one another, even if sometimes Colin felt that Peter's natural attraction for international historic art meant that that part of the collection received more of his attention.

It was only after I met Peter for the first time in 2004 that I started to become curious about him as a person rather than simply as an important part of the Gallery's past. He asked me down to Dorset, where he had a tiny flat above the Conservative Club. By this stage we were in the process of acquiring his collection, so his flat looked rather empty. There in the street was this beautifully dressed man in a pinstripe blue shirt and tie, back bent from osteoporosis but a beam on his face. Upstairs he had prepared a veritable feast, (indeed the salmon and fresh shrimps had been laid out under the summer sun for some time), and we sat down for what became a four hour conversation about his life, over several glasses of good NZ wine that I had purchased at his local Co-op.

Peter was a bit of a gypsy from early on in life. He was born in Hong Kong, and educated in India and Britain; doing some temporary teaching before the outbreak of the Second World War. Joining the Royal Navy, he served on convoy escort in the Atlantic and an Inshore Squadron in the Mediterranean, which sounded fairly hair-raising. In spite of many trials and tribulations he managed to keep fairly sanguine about the experience, and in a draft of his memoirs that now form part of his archive here at the Gallery, he demonstrates an infallible skill in tracking down gin in even the most remote parts of the Mediterranean.

Taking the opportunity offered to ex-servicemen and women to study at a tertiary level, he then trained as an art historian at the University of Edinburgh, and worked in three regional museums before taking up his position in Auckland. His decision to come here appalled the senior art historians he had met in Europe, until that is, he found the Fuselis. Those contacts were invaluable for the Gallery, however, as he wrote ceaselessly to them all asking advice. I visited Peter again when he was in a home in Bovey Tracey in Dorset, at which time I gave him a copy of the article I had written about him in the Australian magazine, Art and Antiques. I was eager to get more information out of him about his relationship with Colin McCahon, but when he discovered that he and my husband had naval interests in common, I had to kiss goodbye to any juicy additions to my knowledge.

In recent years, Peter has experienced poor health, but when I spoke to his nurse in February she said he was happy in himself, so I am glad that he died without too much suffering. All our sympathies are extended to his sons Nick and David and their families, and I would also like to extend my personal sympathies to Christopher Mendez, who has been dealer and fast friend to Peter for many years, and Elizabeth Cross, another student fortunate to have shared Peter's love of European art.

Peter was nothing if not a character, but how lucky we were to have him, and he will be very sorely missed.

Government blog

As here at the Auckland Art Gallery (part of Auckland City Council) we try to adhere to e-government guidelines I was most interested to find that there is now an e-government blog called In Development. Todays post raises the question faced here of whether to have a staff policy for blogging, they have published theirs here.

Post from from a writer of In Development, Lawyer Richard Best:
"On In Development I propose to blog about legal issues and developments relevant to the work of the ICT Branch that I am able to share with the wider community. Needless to say, I have to be fairly careful as to the subject-matter of my posts so as to not breach client confidentiality, but I’ve blogged on legal topics before and am confident that the right balance can readily be struck. I’m open to discussing the content of my posts with others but please bear in mind that I’m not in a position to provide and will not be providing any legal advice to anyone other than my employer, whether through commentary on In Development or otherwise. With that somewhat pesky caveat aside, let the conversation commence."

Creating more gallery nerdsters

Well so far this has been a blog written by me but i am determined to encourage the other members of staff here to contribute. So far they have been keen but not quite taken the plunge, (apart from one great post from the library)

I have been encourage by a great post on Best-of-3 on Museum blogs, definitely worth a read and shows the potential for our blog. There are some fantastic Museum blogs out there, something to strive for.

Maybe i'll have to resort to bribery to get things started!

http://best-of-3.blogspot.com/2008/03/nerds-words-and-novel-uses-for-blogs.html

Qeen in 3D

Not being able to see this in the flesh im not sure exactly how it works but im fascinated by this new portrait of the Queen by Chris Levine showing at the Stolen Space Gallery in London. Apparently it is a 3D and light based portrait. It looks like one of the better portraits of the Queen I have seen.

Even more interesting to me is that it's an artists from the Channel Islands, Jersey where i used to live. Not known at the time for it's groundbreaking art, it seems that the art scene over there is looking up.

http://www.stolenspace.com/section.php?xSec=174

Chris Levine Lightness of Being

Amazing where your art turns up!

Yesterday Rachel, our registrar, showed me that Desperate Housewives (season 4 episode 6 ) are quite fond of the art from the Auckland Art Gallery. In the background, behind Brie, looks suspiciously like (a copy of) our very own Frank Bramley painting For of such is the Kingdom of Heaven 1891. We had not heard from them requesting a reproduction order but presume that the letter is in the post!

Desperate housewives, season 4, episode 6

Frank Bramley For of such is the Kingdom of Heaven 1891 oil on canvas Mackelvie Trust Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, purchased 1913

The Gallery will close in 5 minutes.....

So…… the last visitor left the building and the grill came down as the main building officially closed for development at 5pm last Friday night (the Auckland Art Gallery will still operate as usual out of the Auckland Art Gallery, New Gallery across the road during the development).

The staff congregated to toast the main building on it’s way.

There was gossip
The motley crew we call the staff...... at least some of them.

And some fun to be had as we celebrated our individual times in the bulding as it is now before the transformation begins.