SHOOTING DUCKS IN A BUCKET: THE WALTERS PRIZE AGAIN

July 27, 2010 – 8:38 pm by Andrew Paul Wood

Thumbing through the pages of Metro (July-August 2010), I was distraught that after only a few brief months of deliciously entertaining bitchiness, the mouthpiece of Auckland’s chattering classes was terminating (with extreme prejudice) the only recently revived Felicity Ferrit. ‘Twas with tears welling in my eyes that I turned to Frances Morton’s (delightful gel, adorable freckles on her hard boiled news-sniffing-out pixie-like nose) report on the Walters Prize (“Eyes on the Prize”, pp322-3). Rightfully she notes that the intent to “make contemporary art a more widely recognised, debated and prominent feature of New Zealand  cultural life,” has little relationship to the short bout of Auckland Art Gallery’s own press releases being “regurgitated” by the MEDIA. While it is shameful that Auckland Art Gallery that was too cheap to ship over and rent space for Michael Stevenson’s Persepolis 2530, (thus rendering it ineligible for the $50, 000 jackpot) one does ...

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALEXANDER CALDER

July 21, 2010 – 3:10 pm by Andrew Paul Wood

(Born July 22, 1898 – Died November 11, 1976)

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MAURICE ROLLINAT

July 21, 2010 – 2:55 pm by Andrew Paul Wood

Here are some of my translations of poems by 19th century French poet Maurice Rollinat. The Cow A cow lay, subdued, drooling at the muzzle, but her eyes were filled with nameless terror while the black bull, wild as a buffalo, watched her belly transfixed in growing fear. She was a grazing, gaping darkness. The trees and marshy creek became like ghosts. A yellow sky hung over the high grasses. At right, an old mansion - on the left a forest. Then the cow moaned low in this unusual place where seemed a hidden and magnetic power. By the second, her sleepy eyes grew wider. My curiosity overwhelmed me fiercely, and I approached, I saw her infant horror: a huge fat toad was sucking at her udder! Migraine To Louis Tridon He who keeps far from the masses In eternal isolation And smiles though he suppresses Inside a horrifying groan; He who goes beneath the sky, Sad and ashen as a grave cloth, Gesticulating, head bare to the Sun, and talking to himself. By strange ...

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GENDER-BENDER MESSIAHS IN MYTH AND FICTION: A SHORT HISTORY

July 20, 2010 – 7:25 pm by Andrew Paul Wood

Although usually suppressed and marginalised, there is, surprisingly enough, quite a strong genre in Western Literature that I am choosing to call "Gender-bender Messiah" Lit. To attempt a definition of what I mean, we can go all the way back to classical times. For the Romans, the odd gods tended to come from the eastern part of the Empire, Syria, Phrygia, Anatolia and so forth. Notably, rather than go on crusades to exterminate other religions, they would import them as their own. Cybele was just such a case, the Great Earth Mother. Let’s be clear, it is pronounced Kiy-Bee-Lee – so not the same as the New Zealand fashion designer. Attis was the son, grandson, lover, and eventually daughter of Cybele. Yup, the soap opera writers of today had nothing on the ancients – oh yeah! Jupiter, serial rapist of the Roman pantheon, got the hots for Cybele, but she pointed out "No ...

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SPRINGTIME FOR JOHN KEY

July 18, 2010 – 5:51 pm by Andrew Paul Wood

  Hmmm. Is this New Zealand in 2010 or Germany in 1933? The National (Socialist) party is busy cosying up to whatever business interests we have left in this country, telling the independent judiciary its business, crushing democratically elected local government bodies (the blitzkrieg on ECan, the Auckland supercity anschluss) and stamping on the unions with jackboots. The Rugby World Cup is clearly going to be our 1936 Olympics with Peter Jackson standing in for Leni Riefenstahl. The Minister for Culture is a lawyer with the cultural imperatives of Goebbels (classical music and showing off how well he speaks French) who appoints lawyers and classics professors to the CNZ board. The only thing we can be thankful for is that the predominantly National-voting NIMBYs would never tolerate a concentration camp built in their school zone (where they might accidentally see it) – which, unfortunately, was probably Paula Bennett’s ‘final solution’ for ...

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YAY ALL WHITES!

July 13, 2010 – 8:50 pm by Andrew Paul Wood

Beautifulpeople.com is way off base. Ryan Nelson is smokin’ hot. Look at the sensuous generosity of his nose and mouth, the boyish twinkle in his eye, the honey bourbon of his crooked, full-lipped smile, the ruggedly masculine forehead and the strong, marble-hewed jaw. Woof! Bonzai! Mazel Tov! However, "All Whites" was still a very unfortunate name to play under in South Africa. And hey, how about that oracular octopus Paul - spooky!

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WILD WEST: OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE AND THE SEXUALISATION OF THE OTHER

July 13, 2010 – 8:48 pm by Andrew Paul Wood

Even for someone who has only watched a few episodes of the New Zealand television comedy drama Outrageous Fortune, it must be immediately obvious that one of the touchstones of its style is the heavily charged erotic atmosphere of free-ranging uninhibited sexuality. Within a few minutes of the beginning of the very first episode, characters were vigorously having sex. The majority of the cast is undeniably attractive (Robyn Malcom being chosen as Metro magazine’s sexiest woman in Auckland). Many of the characters are subversively appealing as if calculated to resonate with certain popular fetishes: Wolf West was the criminal bad boy with the heart of gold and in need of saving (bit of ruff 1); Cheryl West is an archetypal MILF with a slightly tarty, cougar-like taste in fashion (ie: leopard print and low cut tops); Pascalle is the attractive, uncomplicated and available bimbo (does ‘Pascalle’ refer to the philosopher Pascal, ...

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MORE WALTERS PRIZE UPDATES

July 7, 2010 – 9:49 pm by Andrew Paul Wood

Yes, so now (in this rather sad example of cultural cringe and defference to the UK - why do we need a foreign judge anyway?) the Walters judge for this year is Vicente Todoli FORMERLY of the Tate Modern. http://www.thinkspain.com/news-spain/17799/valencias-vicente-todoli-to-leave-london-tate-modern-in-summer http://www.tate.org.uk/about/pressoffice/pressreleases/tatemoderndirector.htm http://www.tate.org.uk/about/theorganisation/seniorstaff/ http://auckland.scoop.co.nz/2010/06/judge-for-walters-prize-announced/ I'm not sure that I agree with John D-P here (though delightful conversationalist he is, having had the pleasure on the occasional media junket) - I wouldn't call any of them "emerging" http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/emerging-artists-line-walters-prize-122233 More examples of Auckland's naval gazing - Auckland university steaches a paper on the Walters - which I guess would be like Canterbury offering a paper on SCAPE for some bizarre reason. http://www.ccecourses.auckland.ac.nz/course.cfm?ClassNumber=38136

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DEAD MEN’S BONES (don’t wear plaid)

June 16, 2010 – 7:43 pm by Andrew Paul Wood

Italian Authorities claim to have discovered what they believe to be the mortal remains of everyone's favourite Baroque krypto-hetero closet-straight (he would have sued Derek Jarman had he not been dead for centuries) realist chiaroscurist painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravagio. http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/europe/3823138/Is-it-really-Caravaggio Don't they look gorgeous on the red velvet in their little perspex reliquary (ah - you can take the Italian boy out of the Catholic Church, but you can't take the Catholic priest out of the Italian boy - snigger, snigger). Now if they let Damien Hirst cover it with diamonds http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6712015.stm and sell it, they might be able to save the Italian economy from the shitter!

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UNBEBIEBERBLE / BILLY DON’T BE A HERO

May 2, 2010 – 7:38 pm by Andrew Paul Wood

I really don’t get the whole Justin Bieber thing – but then I’m not a paedophile. As far as I’m concerned the little under-baked rubber-faced goblin with the girly voice is creepy as hell, especially when doing all that whigger nonsense while inanely grinning with relentless cheesy conviction. Bah humbug. Moving directly from the immature and callow to the elderly and overripe, I note in this month’s Metro that artist/scientist Craig Hilton (conceptually trying to straddle physicist/novelist C.P. Snow’s “two cultures” of science and art and never the twain shall meet because both spheres have elaborately overspecialised cultures with no common language) has cultured a cell line (effectively immortal) from ancient self-promoter Billy Apple’s B-lymphocytes. Presumably this means a part of the elder statesman of narcissistic and obsolete conceptual art will continue to bore people for centuries to come. Cloning is the ultimate vanity, and perhaps in some dystopian future when they’re ...

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