Tag Archives: Art at Te Papa

Art on TV

16 October 2009 – 7.52am

New ArtlandFans of art and TV on demand may already know about the great series New Artland hosted by musician Chris Knox on freeview TVNZ 7, and available online.

The programme invites artists to make a new work involving a community. Series two has recently been uploaded, and they are already up to Episode 7. If you haven’t seen it yet then you’ve got some great catching up to to do via the internet.

Oddooki, Seung Yul Oh

Seung Yul Oh, Oddooki, Te Papa Sculpture Terrace, Level 6.

Episode 6 which screened on 3 October featured artist Seung Yul Oh. Seung recently created a project for the Te Papa Level 6 Sculpture Terrace called Oddooki.

Seung’s Oddooki project was on the Outer Terrace until early June of this year. You may have missed it, but if you did you can see a snippet of the work in the New Artland programme.

For the first programme of its first series New Artland made a programme with Ronnie van Hout.

Te Papa has a number of work of Ronnie’s in the collection and also a current Sculpture Terrace project by Ronnie called A Loss, Again.

A Loss, Again, Ronnie van Hout, Te Papa Sculpture terrace, Level 6

Ronnie van Hout, A Loss, Again, Te Papa Sculpture Terrace, Level 6

A Loss, Again will be on show until mid 2010 so there’s plenty of time to see the work on your next visit.

On 28 November we will be opening a new project on the outer Terrace. The project by Paul Cullen is called A Garden. Here’s an image of the artist’s model as a bit of a teaser.

Paul Cullen, artist's model for A Garden

Paul Cullen, artist's model for A Garden

In the meantime there are lots of great New Artland programmes to watch including Lisa Reihana’s one which is about her work
Mai i te aroha, ko te aroha also currently on show here at Te Papa in the Te Ara a Hine space, Level 2.

Lisa Reihana, Mai i te aroha, ko te aroha, Te Ara a Hine, Te Papa, Level 2

Lisa Reihana, Mai i te aroha, ko te aroha, Te Ara a Hine, Te Papa, Level 2

Many of the artists who created projects for New Artland are also in the Te Papa collection, you can search under their names through our Collections Online.

Happy viewing and searching!

By charlottehuddleston | Posted in Art | Also tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (1)

New arrival

24 March 2009 – 7.53am
te-papa-store-2

Art at Te Papa in stock at Te Papa Store

Last week we took delivery of Art at Te Papa, the big book on the art collection. We are absolutely thrilled with it.

The book’s official launch isn’t until next week, but Te Papa store already has an impressive display in its window.

Some numbers: The book features 419 works in the collection by 300 artists. There are 343 individual essays by 38 writers. About half the essays were written by Te Papa curators and staff, while the rest were commissioned from colleagues outside the museum. It’s been the result of about three year’s work. The flexi-bind edition weighs in at a hefty 2.6 kilos (5lbs, 11 oz).

To celebrate the launch, on Thursday next week we’ll be having a special tour of Toi Te Papa with some of the contributors to the book, starting at 6pm. It’ll be a bit like a speed dating version of meet the author, as everyone will have about five minutes to talk about a work in the exhibition that they wrote about. It should be fun.

By williammcaloon | Posted in Art | Also tagged | Comments (0)

It’s home and it’s up!

17 March 2009 – 3.37pm
John Reynolds, Cloud, 2006

John Reynolds, Cloud, 2006

John Reynolds’ work Cloud has come back from its stint at the Auckland Art Gallery for the 2008 Walters Prize exhibition late last year and it is now up and on show in the Contemporary Focus section of Toi Te Papa, Level 5.

John came down from Auckland to install Cloud and it went up in only 6 days – we were expecting it to be 12.  I guess practice pays off alright. This is the third time John has installed the work and, with the help of the organised and efficient installation, collection management and conservation staff, it went up in record time.

Here for your viewing pleasure is a short video edited together by Te Papa photographer Michael Hall from footage shot during the installation. It includes footage of John talking about the work and shots of the completed installation.

You may know that Cloud was commissioned for the 2006 Biennale of Sydney where it was shown in the entrance hall of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Then it became part of the national art collection at Te Papa. After that it earned John a nomination for the Walters Prize.  Cloud is also the work that represents John in the forthcoming Art at Te Papa publication.

John Reynolds and Cloud in Toi Te Papa

John Reynolds and Cloud in Toi Te Papa

If you are an art follower you are probably already quite familiar with Cloud and the time and effort that has gone into the making, cataloguing, storage and installation of the work. There have been many articles that talk about this major work, including those in Art News, Art New Zealand, and The Listener , and the Auckland Art Gallery blogged  about the installation of this and other 2008 Walters Prize works.

Cloud also features prominently in the recent publication Certain Words Drawn: John Reynolds Continued.

John Reynolds, Cloud, 2006

John Reynolds, Cloud, 2006

John also made another work using The Dictionary of New Zealand English. The work Looking west, late afternoon, low water, a companion piece to Cloud, uses all the Māori words for the Dictionary. This work is in the Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection meaning that it belongs to the same institution that also houses and runs the New Zealand Dictionary Centre which is the home of The Dictionary of New Zealand English.

Cloud is up at Te Papa until late August so there’s plenty of time to come in and do some cloud gazing.

John Reynolds, Cloud, 2006

John Reynolds, Cloud, 2006

In the meantime though if you are a keen cloud gazer you could warm up with some ‘famous clouds’ from artist Douglas Bagnall’s  Cloud Shape Classifier, where you can also choose your own favourites and train the software to find them for you. Or you could check in with the Cloud Appreciation Society to see Clouds That Look Like Things.
Happy cloud spotting!

 

By charlottehuddleston | Posted in Art, Collections Online, Exhibitions | Also tagged , , , | Comments (4)

Cover version

29 January 2009 – 2.09pm

Don’t judge a book by its cover, the saying goes. There’s no doubt, though, that a book’s cover can say an awful lot about what’s inside.

Michael Illingworth, Untitled 1971

Michael Illingworth, Untitled 1971

Deciding what work should go on the cover of the forthcoming book Art at Te Papa — Michael Illingworth’s Untitled 1971 — wasn’t easy.  We tried lots of different possibilities, shopped ideas around, got sometimes contradictory advice and then, after nothing quite seemed to work, the Illingworth presented itself as one of those ‘what if we tried this…’ ideas.

It works amazingly well — striking, enigmatic, iconic —  and what better cover image for a book about art than one that stares back at you.  The final design was done by Neil Pardington at Base Two.

The painting was part of a wonderful collection given to the museum in 1995 by Wellington collectors Hans and Martha Lachmann. It was also featured in the 1992 exhibition Headlands: Thinking through New Zealand art at Sydney’s MCA, which led to a reassessment of Illingworth’s status in New Zealand art. He’d kind of fallen out of fashion and Headlands showed him a new light.

In a clear light. Visble are works by Gordon Walters, Don Binney, Ian Scott and Michael Illingworth.

Collection focus - In a clear light. Visble are works by Gordon Walters, Don Binney, Ian Scott and Michael Illingworth.

Two works by Illingworth — Untitled and Pah Hill — are currently on show in the collection focus part of Toi Te Papa. This selection of works was meant to have been on show during the Rita Angus exhibition (the Lachmanns were also the donors of this painting, one of my favourite Angus works) but things didn’t quite work out that way and it went up a couple of weeks before Rita closed.

Speaking of which, the Rita Angus exhibition finishes at Dunedin Public Art Gallery on 15 February. The gallery’s been running a nice events programme with the exhibition and if you’re there during the last weekend, you can catch two contributors to the catalogue, Sarah Hillary and Vita Cochran, talking about Angus’s work.

By williammcaloon | Posted in Art, Exhibitions | Also tagged , | Comments (3)
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