Peter Wareing at Enjoy Gallery

Just a quick plug for Peter Wareing's excellent exhibition now on view at Enjoy Gallery in Wellington. The show entitled Stuggorings and Fijetterings is a dual screen black and white video projection pairing appropriated and re-edited footage from Italian director Pier Paulo Pasolini's 1966 film The Hawks and the Sparrows and a series of sequences of the artist Eugene Kreisler walking through the streets of New Plymouth gesturing, dancing, and grimacing. The work is disarmingly powerful and very much worth checking out. Through the 7th of June. 

Bryce Galloway's "LUV CARD" zine!

The ever industrious mighty czar of zines around these parts, Bryce Galloway has just shared with me a priceless (well, actually it costs a few bucks I think) example of his newest iteration (#53) of his long-running publication Incredibly Hot Sex With Hideous People. The thematic emphasis this time around is a set of "instructional LUV CARDS for uptight professionals and other animals." The reader is meant to cut out 32 cards which can be held together within a fancy red pack which requires DIY assembly (aaah... the work involved in zine consumption!!!) According to the author: "When the day is feeling a little loveless, take a card at random. Follow the instructions on the card, preferably within the next 24 hours." A nice alternative to tarot or magic wizard inner-child decks. If you are interested, please do contact the publisher: stinkispinkis [at] yahoo.com. Bryce also just curated an exhibition of Aotearoa's zine makers at RAMP gallery in Hamilton entitled small press. (He does have good taste as he included zines by my three daughters). Bryce was also instrumental in initiating the recent Hamilton Zinefest. 

The Divine Ms. Divine

I highly recommend I am Divine, a 2013 documentary on the superstar of 1970s and 80s trash-glam-gay-cinema culture Divine, best known as the muse of director John Waters and formidable iconic figure in such films as Pink Flamingos, Desperate Living, and Polyester. Divine also achieved considerable success in drag revues in SF, off-Broadway productions in NYC, and recorded disco hits that topped the UK pop charts. The charismatic artist who was born Harris Glenn Milstead in Baltimore, Maryland is given full-scale star bio treatment here by director Jeffrey Schwartz. Divine’s dark humour and immense energy infuses the totality of this homage.

Pictures I have taken vol 2.

Another picture from my days as an aspiring "street photographer."

Punk Scenes in China!

Cultural hybridity is such an amazing thing. Not long after writing a review of traditional and modern Chinese art now on view in Wellington, I've been catching up with material on the contemporary punk scene in Beijing. There seems to be quite an explosion of emerging punk and noise bands, both influenced by the interwebs and a rapid increase in exposure to punk history as well as the considerable pressures related to developing creative and critical voices in the current climate of China. NZ photographer John Lake recipient of the 2013 Wellington Asia Residency has been working to document this interesting period of change, and there are other documentaries of interest such as Beijing Punk. You can consult the up the punks nz site for a downloadable zine on Chinese punk and check out this blog post for an interview with John on the occasion of his subsequent exhibition held not long ago here in Wellington.

My review of Chinese exhibitions at Te Papa in NZ Listener

My extended review of the the two excellent exhibitions of Chinese art on now at Te Papa in Wellington (Throne of Emperors and Shi Lu: A Revolution in Paint) appears in this week's issue of the New Zealand Listener. 

Lucy R. Lippard's new book on Land Use in the American West

Lucy Lippard is a tremendous heroine of mine, in her various (and intermingled) roles as a brilliant art critic and historian of conceptual art and multicultural practices to that of a feminist spokesperson, environmental activist, and advocate of the impact of smaller scale "local" actions. In the new issue of Artforum, Lippard speaks briefly about her newest book which sounds timely and fascinating, entitled Undermining: A Wild Ride Through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the American West. Have a look....

Sun Ra: Space is the Place

I've been reading a terrific biography of the visionary jazz musician Sun Ra by the formidable writer and historian John F. Szwed. Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra (1998) both ably contextualizes and unearths so much fascinating information on this "unearthly" figure, arguably one of the most mysterious of the twentieth century. Sun Ra was such an intriguing self-taught amalgam of different things: exacting, disciplined musical arrangements and free-form individualistic expression, Biblical study and Egyptology, poetry and pacifism (he was a conscientious objector during the Second World War), communal living and health food, extravagant theatricality and cosmic obscurantism. Here are just a handful of the many documentaries and videos on this great artist.

Artist Maddie Leach's Adventures in Western Australia

This evening I unfortunately missed my colleague (and current Walters Prize finalist) Maddie Leach’s talk at Massey about her recent residency undertaken in in the smallish Western Australian city of Mandurah (located about 70 km south of Perth). Maddie has a habit by now of going to relatively isolated locales and circling slowly around their local histories, lived spaces, and quotidian ephemera in order to create a constellation of potential materials from which to work, though in a relatively characteristic “post-studio” manner.  Maddie’s weekly blog entries are fascinating reading, highly engaging in their discussions that range from research into meteorites, indigenous-settler relations (including the chilling Pinjarra Massacre that occurred in 1834), events surrounding a local crab festival, local dialect and slang, bike hire, the 1980s pop of The Triffids, regional cultural activity, a miniature version of Ludwig II’s castle crafted by a Bavarian stonemason, and “thrombolites.”

"One Eyed Jacks": the most bizarre western ever?

Here is a photo of director Stanley Kubrick and actor Marlon Brando shot during the pre-production preparation for what I would call (and I've seen a lot of them) the most extravagantly fucked-up western ever made, One Eyed Jacks (1961). Notable as the only film Brando ever directed, this is largely due to Kubrick, the original director, leaving after purportedly telling the idiosyncratic Brando, "Marlon, why don't you go fuck yourself?" It's said that Brando shot way more footage than industry standard and that his initial cut came in at about five hours, before the studio took the reins, so to speak. Dialogue and scenarios are utterly crazed at times, but brilliant writers and script doctors came and went including the formidable director Sam Peckinpah and novelist and screenwriter Calder Willingham. It's kind of like some sort of wide-screen (last picture shot in VistaVision, apparently!) lurid Douglas Sirk spectacle, far stranger than Dennis Hopper's later The Last Movie or Peckinpah's (still stupendous) Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. It clocks in at over 2 hours and many won't have patience with the schmaltzy music and erratic pace but if you are into the real deal cinema, this is a good'un. For more on the troubled production of this film and the source of the fantastic pic above, see one of my favorite blogs Cinephilia and Beyond's post. Below you can view the full film (also available for free download at the Internet Archive.)