accumulations

78 rpm: candle-wax meets shellac - 2

candle-wax meets shellac - 2
Originally uploaded by fflap2

candle-wax [solidified] from hole in a dying spherical candle meets shellac of 78 rpm record - while arrangements of folk songs are playing [unheard] with shadow of a plastic chair [otherwise unseen] - still-life - homage to Hans Arp - see companion photo with the dying candle on http://www.flickr.com/photos/fflap/

pastry both sides

kauri---bark---piece---handsize---rough---bristle---hair---white---gouache---acrylic---green---red---pastry---design---both---sides------side1---
---other---side---
---photo---paintings---dripping---wet---

Gordon W]alters

Auckland Art Gallery << Now showing in/ [new line] HEI KONEI MAI:/WE'LL MEET AGAIN / Row of 32 or so blue full stops / MAIN GALLERY, /GROUND FLOOR >> 2 in red circle ref to plan of Gallery<Patere 1977>> description is derived from Curator's Description on gallery's registration details - http://collection.aucklandartgallery.govt.nz/results.jsp?view=detail&pos=1&id=14912 - gallery website says no image available for website - but is reproduced nevertheless in gallery newsletter ---- would it be foolish to expect from newsletter image frameless bleeding its whites into surrounding white page to see image 27 horizontal stripes mainly black & white with circles appended variously in printer's inks applied 85 x 66 mm on white gallery wall image which then would take large expanse of white as ground to which blacks have been subsequently applied as figures on ground interesting as they say image for hei kone mai colon new line we'll meet again ? who's we ? read intrusions of white outgrowths fern frond canoe prow living attached to body of progenitor group or frond finished completed circles see how numerous how lined up apparently all interlocking within black field yet note one greyish about 1 black to 7 white mixture cirrcle isolated between two whites yet reading so and more so and more blacks pushed to edge inequalities inequities as if Gordon painting in NZ Aotearoa white liberal scholar wife translator into literary English of Maaori poetry wdn't notice such obvious allegorical possibility pains to get every edge distinct avoiding complications artist persona decorative taste distraction politics so evident Gordon did not elucidate next door Maaori neighbour asked me to confirm that I was a pacifier maybe yes as Eldridge Cleaver Malcom X used to ask of liberal intellectuals not appeasement of black but voicing concern as white with government policy as here now deploring lack of care in Auckland City Council Art Gallery with about 100 staff employed for cataloguing and registering for what is announced same page as [large blue lettered heading]<Patere1977/[smaller black type] Acquisitions text includes text<<...The title Patere has many/meanings in Maori, but in this case can be interpreted as a chant because of the painting's fluid, melodic quality...[other works named] of the same year have a similar sense of harmony and balance>>language vague abstract <> only justifiable as acutely paradoxical liquid viscose or not 'dried' on this painting in 1977 <> unspeciified way of reading painting as musical score <>can be attributed to any work whatever with a little ingenuity this text effectively helps people to slop while distracting them from issues of serious import on Waitangi Day & every day honour the treaty & honour those who seek to honour it by meditating on it as painter Gordon did for about 40 years effort recuperated in NZ official culture by formalist autonomy critical language & address to anyone who could read discouraged also for Maaori by attack on Walters as racist appropriator for arty formalism thus failing to attempt to read his paintings as messages to government with paintings structured as coded for relations between competing pairs looking more like backgammon than chess noticeably gridded in to zones by simple implied divisions and/or golden mean but always the competing light dark inerlocked within one territory each painting asks for an answer to the question is this how it looks in NZ Aotearoa with identity groups signatories to a treaty but also image can be laid over relationship in a marriage or good and evil nature and culture body and soul mind and senses or any such duality cheers T

Oxyrhynchus papyri

Lisa Jarnot’s blog on Wednesday this week http://www.angelfire.com/poetry/lisajarnot/blog/ ran a story that began in The Independent newspaper

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=630165 concerning the possiblility that a large amount of ancient literature will come to light as a result of a new photographic campaign on the Oxyrhynchus papyri.The key website is http://www.papyrology.ox.ac.uk/ with copious links.

In the explanation of the methodology for photographing the papyri is this comment, that interests me greatly [see my ‘Poussin’s Humour’ blog: http://Tony_Green.typepad.com/pouhu ]: "A picture is worth a thousand words; but that is also to say that every picture tells a particular story. Each image is arguably an interpretation of the original artifact, which contains any number of ‘stories’. These might include:

• ink traces
• fibre structure (often very important in placing fragments)
• surface texture and general condition of papyrus
• aesthetic qualities of papyrus
• structural qualities of papyrus
• the traces of the material’s passage through time:
  • reuse(s): mummy cartonnage, for one
  • patterns of damage (natural history of papyrovore invertebrates?)
  • patterns of accretion (taxonomy of Egyptian dirt?)

The setup(s) we choose are determined by the kind of ‘reading’ of the original we are aiming to produce. In general, academics look at papyri for texts, meaning it’s the ink traces that really count: the colour of the material, for instance, is regarded as less important".

Watch out for the papyrovore invertebrates. You never know when they’ll turn up on CSI

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Peter Hooper

two pages from Peter Hooper's book 'Earth Marriage' 1972-- with photos by Brian High & Greg MacKenzie -- published by David Young & David Waddington in Christchurch.

The poems on these pages quoted, famously, by Colin McCahon in his 'Scrolls' of 1969 & again in paintings in 1972, sadly overshadow the fame of the poems, the poet and the book. Is it true that, as I've heard somewhere, that Hooper was displeased that McCahon had appropriated the poems without asking him? McCahon quoted the title of IX of this sequence: "Can you hear me St Francis?" & XIII "Poetry is for peasants" which begins:

"Poetry

isn't in my words

it's in the direction

I'm pointing"

which is remarkably like the much-quoted comment of McCahon of 1972 in the Survey exhibition catalogue [Auckland City Art Gallery] "My painting is almost entirely autobiographical -- it tells you where I am at at any given time, where I am living and the direction I am pointing in."

The book is dedicated to Hooper's thoughts living in the remote West Coast, a long way from his origins in England, with acknowledgment of his sources in Thoreau and in a range of nature poets, some of whom, like Hopkins, Donne and Baxter were dear also to McCahon.

This sequence takes off hesitantly from the more recognizably formal nature [Georgian?] poetry he writes into a less certain field for him, uncertain, because he associates it with what he sees in his other poems as evidences of modern [modernist?] social failure, from which he has retreated. It is called "Notes in the Margin". I. Dedication:

"I think these

words of mine

don't make poems

but they may be

a sort of non-poem

in a world of non-men

non-love non-faith

anyhow

they're for Jeff

and Nig

and the boys

if they're still alive to read them"

[quoted with affection and respect for the book, but without permission] 

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Ans Westra: "Handboek"

Last Thursday I went to see Handboek: Ans Westra photographs -- curated by Luit Bieringa -- a new Auckland Art Gallery exhibition -- a big collection of original [and new] prints [mainly black & white] by Dutch-born New Zealand documentary photographer Ans Westra who specialised in the 1960s in photos of Maori especially in rural situations. Many of them were published in narrative photo-books -- notably Washday at the Pa & Maori. The books are on show with accompanying text in vitrines. The prints of the photos are cut loose from their original narative and displayed on the walls.

Handboek is also a handsome book with photos printed on a large scale with informative and valuable critical essays -- by Luit H Bieringa, Lawrence McDonald [editor], John B Turner, Cushla Parekowhai, Damian Skinner, Kyla McFarlane, Gavin Hipkins, and Christina Barton -- published by Blair Wakefield Exhibitions ISBN 0-476-00807-7

<a href=http://technorati.com/tag/photography rel="tag">Photography</a>