Unnerved: The New Zealand Project
Gallery of Modern Art
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane.
Until July 4. Reviewed by Christopher Allen in The Australian, May 22 2010.

Christopher Allen’s details: http://confluence.arts.uwa.edu.au/display/~callen/Personal+Details

My comments in bold

UNNERVED is a survey of contemporary art from New Zealand in the collections of the Queensland Art Gallery, which claims to have the largest holdings outside the country itself. The exhibition is subtitled The New Zealand Project, suggesting a parallel with the earlier China Project, a comparison that the present show fails to sustain.

Australia and NZ are much less alike than foreigners probably imagine. True, we’re less crass, sexist, racist and rampantly nationalistic. In the first place the lands are profoundly different, from climate to topography: NZ is geologically newer, with dramatic scenery and high mountain peaks, while Australia is ancient and geologically worn down. NZ had no native mammals except for bats and, unlike Australia, no land snakes. And the relevance is?

The history of the two countries is strikingly different. Although James Cook claimed the islands for Britain, that claim was repudiated by the government. WHAT?! There were no official early colonies (Define early) and no convicts; missionary activity dates from the beginning of the 19th century, and it was only a generation or more later, in 1840, that Britain finally annexed NZ, to forestall unauthorised settlements by speculators and the arrival of French colonists.

When Sydney town was established, it was as far as possible from civilisation; everything had to be built from the ground up and survival was by no means assured. Nor were shiploads of convicts and their guards model colonists in any sense. There were conflicts within the community and disagreements with government in London.

When NZ was being settled, on the other hand, there were already important and growing cities in Australia. The modern world was not so remote or inaccessible.

I would hardly say that early British colonists had it particularly easy whereas Allen is pouring the romance on Australian history, and I still fail to see the relevance. Australia at this stage still consisted of separate colonies that weren’t federated until 1901. NZ’s colonists contained their fair share of colourful individuals among their number, and the modern world (other than, of course, Australia) was still on the other side of the planet and many weeks away. And, of course, we had the Land Wars.

Annexation was preceded by a treaty with the native people, and the British government, after the Canadian uprisings in 1837, was coming to terms with the idea of self-government for colonies.

For all these reasons, perhaps, Australia seems to have developed a more distinctive national character, even though we are today subject to such intense pressure from American mass culture. New Zealanders seem relatively more like British colonists; more refined than Australians, at times, but more provincial, with a lonely, neurotic edge.

That’s a particularly bold assertion. I don’t think “lonely, neurotic edge” remotely applies the vast majority of North Island art – maybe a lot of South Island art, but I’m not convinced. Are New Zealanders all that “more refined” or more “provincial”? I don’t think so, unless “provincial” also means outward looking and less solipsistic. This is apples and oranges – you can’t compare a federation of states with a single country. I would argue that Victoria and New Zealand are, for example, very similar. As for this cliché about Britishness, I would have hoped that someone like Allen would have known better.

The indigenous population is even more different. Whereas the Aborigines have been here since distant prehistoric ages, the Maori arrived in the islands of NZ as late as the 13th century. And while Aboriginal culture has a certain timeless and minimalist quality, developed for long-term subsistence in a land that for thousands of years has been growing hotter and drier, the Maori had a more elaborate material culture, lived in a richer land and were aggressive and warlike.

Maori represent a higher proportion of the population and seem more integrated than the Aborigines, so the NZ sensibility has elements both of the British settlers and of the Maori, with their warlike past and the often difficult present evoked in the book and film Once Were Warriors.

VERY simplistic and reductive, and somewhat patronising of Aborigines and Maori alike. And if “the NZ sensibility has elements both of the British settlers and of the Maori”, surely that is contrary to Allen’s assertion that Australia has the “more distinctive national character”.

The result is a sensibility that has been regularly described as gothic, as in a gothic novel or the popular youth culture that fetishises gloom and death; and that is what is suggested by the exhibition’s title, Unnerved. The term usually conveys a sense of sudden anxiety and uncertainty.

Again, a CLICHÉ of absurd proportions. What’s gothic about Auckland for fuck’s sake?

The show begins, however, with an experience that is less unnerving than sadly predictable: a monstrous inflated cartoon rabbit guards the entrance and another lies nearby. It’s one of those oh-no-here-we-go-again moments: straight into the swamp of large-scale international circuit art.

Oh dear. Bad Michael Parekowhai, naughty naughty, smack handies! How dare you leave your preordained Maori/Provincial colonial box? How dare you dabble in the forbidden waters of international art? Shame on you!

Michael Parekowhai’s kitsch bunny and its supine companion are meant to be meaningful — referring, of course, to the introduction of rabbits by settlers — but with art, meaning to be meaningful is like music meaning to be harmonious.

I’m a doctoral candidate in art history with an absurdly high IQ and I have no fucking idea what this means. Any thoughts?

Parekowhai has a couple of other things in the show, including a seal balancing a grand piano on its nose, a work that is superficially striking but of no more significance than a corporate logo; typical, indeed, of the sort of work idle passers-by describe as cool before wandering off to the next attraction.

I’m sorry? And Duchamp isn’t? Did Pop Art completely pass you by, you grumpy bitch?

The other Biennale-grade artist is Michael Stevenson, who has made a raft inspired by the one Ian Fairweather built and on which he set out in 1951 in the vain hope of sailing to Bali, though he was fortunate enough to run aground on the last Indonesian island before the vast Indian Ocean.

Stevenson’s raft is ingeniously made. But the attempt to endow this with deeper significance is not convincing.

Haven’t seen it, can’t comment. But then again, I don’t really think of Stevenson as a New Zealand artist any more.

There are a couple of modest highlights in the show. The first is a set of beautifully made black-and-white photographs by Anne Noble of life in a Benedictine nunnery in London. Noble has captured glimpses of that world in sober, serene compositions.

Noble’s pictures are impressive, and some are especially moving, such as the portrait of two novices. In this photograph and in those around it, we are struck by what a radical commitment these girls have made.

For the artist too, these images remind us that good work comes from sincerity, respect and attention. Sadly, there is also a series by Noble in which she has relinquished the clarity of her earlier vision for the pseudo-philosophical theories of the body that were popular in art schools and the intellectually low-rent end of universities years ago.

Straight documentary photography: good (apparently). Theoretical exploration of the body: bad. Clearly he hasn’t a clue about Anne Noble’s “vision” in the first place, which has always been about the body in one form or another. The nun body is a chaste, covered, cloistered body etc blah blah blah.

The other outstanding photographic work is Mark Adams’s panoramic series, also in black and white, of one of the spots on which Cook first encountered the Maori people in 1773. In an unforced way, Adams achieves a solemnity and stillness; mystery, too, as there is no visible trace of this historic moment.

Couldn’t he have just said: “a photograph of Cook’s first landing place as it now is” without stating the flaming obvious?

There are other good photos by Bill Culbert, particularly one in which an old table is backlit by the slanting rays of what is presumably the morning sun. Laurence Aberhart and Fiona Pardington are interesting but fall short of being exceptional. Gavin Hopkins is rather less deserving of attention, with an interminable series of very ordinary shots meant to evoke homely reality.

Methinks he means Gavin Hipkins.

In other cases, the pictures by Duncan Cole and Shigeyuki Kihara, originally designed as part of a stylish commercial fashion shoot, are being remarketed as artistically significant, with the help of the ever-useful catalogue-essay writers. Also on a Maori theme, Greg Semu’s pictures of his tattoos, taken years ago, are indeed striking, but only because of the interest of the tattoos themselves. Semu’s self-portrait as Jesus on the cross is an embarrassing mistake.

Actually, I’d have to agree.

Then there are the videos, and this is where the sense of being unnerved is perhaps most evident. Between Florian Habicht’s Woodenhead and Sima Urale’s video of an old man contemplating murdering his dying wife, we find ourselves in a David Lynch world of the neurotic and the desperate.

In a more minimalist vein, James Oram has a split-screen video with the artist’s face on one side and his hand lighting matches on the other. As he lights each match he draws a breath, which he tries to hold until the match has burned down to his fingertips; he exhales and drops the match at the same time.

Depending on your point of view and perhaps your memory, this is a masterpiece or a tiresome re-run of the 70s. Oram’s work looks impressive, though, compared with Campbell Patterson’s video of two teenage brothers chewing gum.

Admittedly few artists born after 1975 seem to have any art-historical memory, but this is still a bit harsh. But does Allen think Oram’s work is a “a masterpiece or a tiresome re-run of the 70s”? Come on, make up your mind.

Indisputably unnerved are the photomontages by Ava Seymour, in which she has superimposed images of children on to photographs of council houses, and replaced the children’s faces with those of people with Down syndrome or other disabilities.

The catalogue assures us that this has something to do with the council houses being privatised in recent years, but the images are tainted with that smug sense of superiority and cruel lack of empathy that so often intrude when artists set about satirising the lives of the lower classes.

Except that Ava Seymour hardly fits the profile of the upper class, and is actually making a comment about the way such people are often treated by society and the state, with reference to the expressionist and Dada German collages of the Weimar period.

Painting is almost completely missing from the exhibition; a still life by Michael Smither, The Colander (1967) serves only to make the absence more conspicuous. We have to make do with a plethora of tiny men in canoes by Richard Killeen and some variable but minor work by several others who seem to be appreciated at home but whose claim to wider attention is debatable.

Ouch! Be-atch! Come on then, who are these “several others”?

One of the artists evidently considered most significant as a kind of standard bearer for contemporary NZ is Lisa Reihana, whose intriguing image of a Maori in a variation on formal Victorian dress and with facial tattoos appears on the cover of the catalogue.

Reihana’s work, meant to represent Maori gods and spirits, is variable in its success. Enormous colour photographs belong to the domain of commercial illustration. Reihana’s judgment is not always good: setting a Maori warrior god on a surfboard is unfortunate.

Yes, well I agree it’s ethno-kitsch, but I disagree that “Enormous colour photographs belong to the domain of commercial illustration” – that’s a ridiculously pretentious thing to say in this day and age. But then again, I detect a sniff of disapproval that little painting was present, so the cards are pretty much on the table.

The only light relief in this disparate and mediocre exhibition is the set of videos of musical and comedy duo Flight of the Conchords. The episodes, about trying to be cool or dealing with the expansion of their fan club from one to three, are hilarious in a low-key and self-deprecating way that feels characteristic of NZ.

Flight of the Conchords is commercial entertainment, NOT art. Apparently things New Zealand only gain Allen’s approval when they keep to their stereotypes and amuse his highness with their antics. Bring me my vomit bucket!

The catalogue essays, as usual, try to spin straw into gold. There is an egregious instance where Culbert is said to work in “sculpture, installation and photography as well as related artistic genres”.

For a state gallery to confuse the distinct concepts of genre and media, which are fundamental to any theoretical discussion of the arts, is unacceptable.

Oddly, the exhibition made me want to know more about art in NZ, but only because it can’t all be as dreary as this.

Well, arguably if we were running around being colourful and flamboyant, we’d be Australians.

Perhaps someone who isn’t a curator of contemporary art could put together a valuable survey of what is going on in NZ today, beyond the bounds of official art.

Unless I’m very much mistaken, “official art” is still “going on in NZ today”. If not a “curator of contemporary art”, then who for fuck’s sake? The plumber? I very much get the impression that Allen went into the exhibition with some serious ants in his pants.

‘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 really wonder if New Zealand is so hard up that itmust keep claiming the long Berlin-based and Europe-exhibited Stevenson – a reflex more understandable in the musical sovereignty that is the Venice Biennale.

AAG Director Chris ‘Stains in Drains’ Saines noses out of his cave (which at AAG is disturbingly called the ‘Directorate’) and fields Frances’ thrust and parry:

“We’ve always had that focus on the work rather than focus on the artist. Otherwise you can fall into a prize for lifetime achievement of a prize for the artist whose work sold most successfully in a given year. It’s not about that. It’s about the impact and effect of a particular work at a particular time.”

Huh?! Judging from pervious selections, you could be forgiven for thinking that any of the above was the reason for the prize. And then there is the peculiarly concentrated nature of the galleries where the work was first exhibited – K’ Road, Jaffaland. None of the shortlisted works had made the slightest ‘ping’ on my radar.

Frances writes “The blogosphere thrummed with accusations of an Auckland bias for the national prize. An in-crowd talking to itself.” Well, sorry, no – intensive Googling (and believe me, I was searching like a stoat for its next kakapo) revealed only myself and the two-headed Jimmary had anything remotely negative to say on the matter in said blogosphere, or anywhere really. Please direct me links if I am being inaccurate. And what ‘in-crowd’ – this is New Zealand; everyone who has had any influence on the art scene, no matter how slight, is effectively in the ‘in-crowd’, including myself.

Sainsie again, apparently never having learned that the best gallery directors cleave to grace and humility: “What that’s telling me is this must be where a lot of really interesting work is being made and shown. If that happens to be a cluster of galleries that are in the same geographic zone, maybe they’re doing really good things there. I don’t feel like that’s something I should be apologising for.”

Aside from the fact we’re asking for checks and balances rather than apologies, this is disingenuous. It’s always in the “same geographic zone” – AUCKLAND, and even within that fairly broad collection pond, the shortlist consists of boring, BORING work by artists notable for being of generally less interest to curators and critics than to dealers.  Also the tendency to trumpet  the presence of two non-Auckland-based selectors is a bit of a red herring, given that the other two were Auckland-based. My suggestion: more selectors and only one from any particular centre, and some Autralians (oddly, they have more idea of what’s going on in New Zealand art than Auckland does).

Anyway, get to the staggeringly boring nature of the work (Persepolis would have been a relief), Saines:

“We talk about making an outstanding contribution, or doing something which is significant at a particular moment that people are talking about, paying attention to, seeing as being influential. Does that make it the best?”

The corollary is, of course, by that definition the prize might easily be going to the worst. Who was talking about these works, and where? Certainly not in my earshot.

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 odours persecuted,
Trembling at the slightest noise,
Cursing every passing minute that
Keeps his day from drawing to a close.

Those who open up their curtains
With a limping shell-shocked shudder
And whose bad-tempered visions
Are full of darkness and disorder;

He who goes haven to haven,
never finding the peace he seeks,
who envies the dead within their graves
And haunts high stone parapets;

He who is devoted to his mistress
But after the deceitful pleasure
Finds himself unable to possess
His pain at the point it surges over;

All who linger near the coughing
Consumptive in their final hour,
While composing morbid music
For Dies Irae and chapel bell;

Whoever, in nocturnal hours,
With tiny steps like some vague spectre
Escorts to the cemetery
The funeral of any stranger;

He whose soul abandons him
At the coiling of the worm
And who said: “The hour has struck,
I must pick up my gun,

This time I choose suicide
with a quick twitch of my finger!”
Not that he ever decides
to finally pull the trigger:

This man has a migraine,
The torture invented by Satan;
It squeezes, heated in hell’s flame,
Biting into his throbbing brain! …

The Trees
Trees, large plants, martyrs of wild seasons,
Whether you’re deciduous or bald,
Dark winds, play like lyres you black musicians,
The poet loves you, and shares your mood.

When the painter thirsts for the picturesque,
It is you his gaze drinks avidly,
For you are the great and wonderful fresco
Whose landscape adorns Earth’s nudity.

From you emerges strange magnetism
Filled with bitter poetry and pungent flavours;
And when you rustle, you speak an idiom
That nature shares with all great dreamers.

When lightning storm and tempest swell,
Forests are seas, each tree is a high
Surge and all the giant oaks and hazels hail
In the dense tangle with long, soft sighs.

Sometimes you stand as dumb as statues,
You sleep, like hearts without remorse,
You twist your huge arms, you yell, poor trees,
Mauled by the unmuzzled elements.

In summer, languidly, the bird closes its eyes
And peacefully sleeps in your rustling hammocks
You are the ornament of the herbs and stones
And you mix your shade in the cool lakes.

And in the heat wave, your life is miserable
Brown stagnant ponds reflect the slender rushes,
In the plague-fermenting heavy atmosphere
You droop your listless branches.

Your sadness at the end of autumn
Is trenchant, without flowers, nests or leaves
Under a cloudy sky rift hourly by thunder,
You seem overwhelmed by your yellowed eaves.

Only in those warm May nights, under the stars,
Scented by earth’s secret censers breathing
You sometimes forget your secular
Pain, sleep-lulled by the breeze of evening.

A fragrant mist flows all around you like
Perfume when dawn dispels night’s stupor,
And when you loom greatest in the dusk
The poet shudders in his fear.

Knowing strange dramas play out in your domes
For the small beasts of the day, at night by ghosts.
On prowling wolves and spectres dragging shrouds
Your unseen eyes open at the slightest noise.

And the sun bites you, you whip the North Wind,
In winter you sew them alive in a cold white pall
And you suffer through life until the axe finds
your flesh with whistling slice and slashing fall.

Wherever you live, oaks, poplars, elms,
In the cities, fields, deserts and mountains,
I keep brotherhood with you in enormous sadness
Where your dark branches spread like fountains.

The Blacksmith
In his low walled forge that daylight has abandoned,
Tall and taut through arms and legs and shoulders,
Like a machine in a leather apron,
He pumps a pair of bright steel bellows.

He regards the fork, glowing blue-white
Unfinished in the flames of his stove,
And now the bell tolls the coming of night:
Twilight is suddenly over.

Crossing his thin and hairy arms
He thinks of she no longer there
And in his eyes tears start.

There is only this fire he keeps on stoking.
On his cheek each tear evaporates
In the fire’s heat.

Two beetles

It was exactly at this bewitched time,
when the fragrant fields resurrect their censers,
when space is bathed with languid nonchalance
in the solemn reddish light.

The sun lit up that summer mist
which leaves drink, sponge-like, and grow heavy.
Was the Christian’s dream of paradise thus drawn
from such a garden’s modest intimacy?

It was then the rose revealed an enchantment -
small creatures in armoured
in emerald and diamond:
I watched at length
the love-match of two scarabs.

They seemed, just like the human ilk,
lost in the torpor of caress
uncovered on their bunk of carmine silk
with infinite tenderness.

I dreamed of all dead lovers whose kisses
reincarnated through metempsychosis
in these two small entangled insects
adoring each other in the heart of a rose.

The Squirrel
The squirrel performs his feats gymnastic
On a gloomy old oak abounding in branches.
The rays of the sun, becoming languid,
gild the ravine in a day fantastic.

The landscape’s daze is all ecstatic;
Indistinct as if loosely drawn in a sketch.
The squirrel performs his feats gymnastic
On a gloomy old oak abounding in branches.

All the hour, the night, the great narcotic
Put her black foot on the sun and conquered;
But by then, all alone, with a charm exquisite,
The furtive acrobat of the branch elastic,

The squirrel performs his feats gymnastic.

What Does The Night?
What does the night, when the soul of the fens
climbs the air on so many strange white voices
and the nightingale sings cadenzas in the forest
with sobs that make the angels stoop to weep?

What does the night, when the baleful glow-worm
Illumines caves with trembling emeralds,
when whispers and perfumes, as prowling breezes,
cross the vague shadow where the day goes down?

She thinks that by wetting the earth with tears
She is more beautiful, with her secret spells,
Than the brash day is full of light and noise.

And – her eyes open to the stars – The Night
drunk on her furtive, ecstatic melancholy
always to the magic of things, aspires.

The Phantom of Crime
The bad thought comes into my soul
In any place, at work, I find at any time.
To be pure, I reprimand myself severely
For all that evil brings into our minds,
The bad thought comes into my soul.

I listen to myself despite notes infernal
That thrill my heart at Satan’s knocking;
And though I hated Saturnalia vile
Whose shadow only causes indignation,
I listen to myself despite notes infernal.

My skull is a dungeon of horrid hot flashes;
The ghost of crime prowls through my reason
Like the piercing gaze of a fairy.
Should my virtue drink this poison
My skull is a dungeon of horrid hot flashes.

Murder, rape, theft, parricide
Pass through my mind like fierce lightning
And though for good I always decide
I shudder to see in my hell crawling
Murder, rape, theft, parricide.

The murderer in my eyes is a viper;
I am the lesser villain, like a leper.
I curse the son who stabbed his father.
Often to my scared heart speaks murder,
Yet the murderer in my eyes is viper.

I pity sincerely the raped girl
And I take revenge if I had the right;
But impure desires harass my soul
with a clever way to seduce the child;
I pity sincerely the raped girl.

Evil strikes me like waves on the strand:
He runs, licks and runs away, leaving no silt,
But, alas, the memory of the dream remained
Where I almost bleed beneath the demon’s nail.
Evil strikes me like waves on the strand.

Satan, king of hell where burn the damned,
You covet a heart that is not born to you;
Ruler of an empire where people swarm,
What do you need again beneath your roof,
Satan where in hell burn your victims?

O you! Prime Mover, the end to which it goes,
In Lucifer’s eyes my flanks sail naked!
And in the terrible disconcerting danger,
I feel safe if I am supported
Through you, Prime Mover, the end to which it goes!

Thus man is perverse, or heaven ferocious!
Why is the evil instinct is so strong in us?
What will we suffer in that terrible yoke
At a time when prayers just skin our knees? …
Thus man is perverse, or heaven ferocious.

The Old Hate

Death came there for the landlord
Who in life did as much harm as he could.
So there, work interrupted, the tenant stood
To watch his enemy at last being buried.

Looking at the grave he laughs and laughs,
And all old grievances ferment at length.
His memory, malignly clear, evokes one by
One, proud sleights that stand up in his heart.

But, while he sneers at the corpse he hated
The earth, water, sky, air and clarity -
Everything is pity, forgotten, quiet! He begins
To suffer, bit by bit, a bout of clemency;

Always Nature, preaches in its broad largess
Respect for the dead and forgiveness:
Mercy finally opens up his soul,

So when the coffin before him passes,
Tears gleam in his dull eyes,
His creaking knee bends and he prays.

Devil’s Villanelle
To Theodore de Banville.

Hell burns, burns, burns.
Sneering in tones clear
The devil prowls and turns.

He watches, forth, reverses
Zigzags, as lightning in the air;
Hell burns, burns, burns.

In the cell, and in dens,
Dank cellars and upper atmosphere
The devil lurks and churns.

He is dragonfly and bloom
Black Cat, Green Snake, or Woman there
Hell burns, burns, burns.

The moustache like a comma’s turn
With perfume of vetiver,
The devil lurks and churns.

Wherever men swarm
Ever, summer and winter,
Hell burns, burns, burns.

There, like a bubble floating,
Crawling like a worm, here
The devil lurks and runs.

He is a great lord, scum,
Student or schoolmaster.
Hell burns, burns, burns.

In every soul he stains
With his bitter whisper
The devil lurks and churns.

He promises, trades and earns
From the complacent and superior.
Hell burns, burns, burns.

The unscrupulous he spurns
Of the unfortunate loser,
The devil lurks and churns.

He makes the good absurd
And the old naive, infirm.
Inferno burns, burns, burns.

The soul and flesh concerns
Him, of priest and unbeliever
The devil lurks and churns.

Woe to the worshiped ones
Whom he calls “my dear”.
Hell burns, burns, burns.

One of the tarantula’s friends,
From orabre and odd number,
The devil prowls and churns -

- A clock strikes midnight’s turn
If I see Lucifer? …
Hell burns, burns, burns;
The devil prowls and churns!

Pendants
Counselled by the treacherous wine
The man yields to his last disgrace.
Passing the rope around his neck,
he sticks his tongue out into space.

It’s cold there beneath the beam
when perpendicular is achieved,
by this acrobat, subtle and thin,
the spider at the end of the thread.

Then, before the gathered masses
his dead weight grimaces,
she said, praising his fate,

sly in her philosophy:
“It’s true that it is Death
who is Life’s counterpart!”

The Fool
I dream of a country reeking of red slaughter,
Bristling with green trees whose shadows smother
The roadside crosses nearby, and moreover
A pool harbouring a maelstrom’s maw.

Shy and in love with medieval dungeons
I buried myself beneath an ancient mansion:
Like the breath of swimming mystery
In walls hung with black velvet tapestries!

For gardens, I’d like two or three graveyards
Where I might simply prowl for the whole night;
I walked both mournful and triumphant,

By lizards escorted, as big as those of Tigris.
Smoking opium from the skull of an infant,
My legs casually resting on a tiger!

Laughter
The nervous laughter so sardonic
Of those who wince in awful pain,
whose identifying stamp satanic
Is the melody of their misfortune.

The laughter of the fierce pariah,
When, quick and feral as a stoat,
He slipped the poison in her mouth
Or puts the rope around his throat;

Laugh more bitter than complaining
More painful than acute diseases,
More sinister than a sad lamenting,
Terrible laughs identical with tears;

Sarcasm intimate, inexorable
Returning as a nauseated retching
For the lips of the wretched
Passer-by who offers only mocking

Since, in all my suffering,
Your bitter irony reveals its teeth
And to all my expectations
Your explosion titters: “Death!”

I offer up this Fantasy
Wherein I enjoyed without fear
The abominable poetry
Of your prodigious horror.

I want you to look upon these plates
Your peal of long and strident laughter
And in them vibrate as if hit
Like the ardent flame jets fire!

I laughed the laugh of Bedlam
At the death of a beloved father;
I laughed, when in my whole being
Darkens and sinks the Dies Irae,

The night on which my mistress died,
I laughed in deviousness and danger!
“I do not want myself to win!”
I yelled, shaking with dreadful laughter.

I laughed – and O the supreme scandal! -
The morning that I contemplated
At the morgue, on the coroner’s table,
My best friend, green and naked!

I laugh in love at a funeral.
All stare and soon are gone;
I laugh when in the darkness,
Fear calls me and bids me on.

I laugh at the evil devouring me
I’m always laughing through the years,
I laugh upon the land and sea
With a heart full of tears!

When sweet, blesséd Death cries to me:
“Poet! I have come for you,”
The rattle of my agony
Will sound a hideous laugh to you!

Blue eyes
Your eyes as blue as cornflowers two
Pursued me onto the sere grass
and near the lake the slender reeds
With a wild, unruly breeze
Were dancing minuets.

Dear Angel, how we did decrease
The shadows of my destiny,
When you moved closer, next to me
With your blue eyes.

My pique and spleen, you did allay.
For once my life was not so damned,
but rather prosperous and healthy
where in my shaking soul, stealthy
you insinuated tenderly
with your blue eyes.

Breasts
I made these subtle lines, polished like rings,
To immortalize the glory of your breasts
That weigh upon my fierce desire like wild things.

Let them bloom eternally pink and healthy,
Perky, and proud as the icy peaks
They scoff at the century of the stealthy!

On your blouse, child, my eyes rest their kisses
And that mere friction makes their buttons pink
Already now, the thought makes me dizzy.

If you dare! You smile, seeming to say: “Dare!
My voluptuous breasts desire your lips
And need to be watered with a lover’s tears”

To compensate for nights I’m weaned from you
You hide them in your long black hair
Thick as the bushes that goats nibble and chew.

They are all that I want! Drunkenness:
Because my fingers slowly caressed and tickled
Combining touches. The chill makes them nervous.

And when you vibrate on my lips harassing,
Dragonflies of love descending on your flowers
Your blushed crimson, points bewitching!

Ruby nipples, from your pallor rising.
You whet my lips with my playful biting
at the beaks of your magic birdies whistling.

And you shudder with adorable pouting
While at the click of your gold bracelets
Your hand toys in my hair, dominating!

In vain the wind howls down the hallway.
You smile, languishing on the ebon sofa
By the fireplace where flame sleeps peacefully.

Me, I burn in panic, hardly can stay calm;
Yet my desire that creeps to your knees
Knows that patience always wins a bargain.

But you drop your burnoose, as if to prove
Defiance, modern Houri of the Arab Paradise,
And leaping nude, shout “Let us make love!”

O, as we moan those magic syllables,
In that priceless moment, the better to embrace,
Our legs and arms are clench like crabs’ claws!

My lust at last unleashed that once was pent:
Not a corner of your body spared my lips graze
You make me drink, I peak, and when I’m spent

Admire your lovely breasts, breathe, fall and rise.

The Beautiful Cheese
To Charles Fremines.

Through the inflamed street, I walked disquieted,
The sun crawling like a gas, I saw
Through a grotesque shop window
Where butter and cheeses were all spread
A beautiful girl, admirable
And buxom bosomed.

The fact is I’ve never grabbed a girl
Like her, and never did my eyes stare crazily
At more alluring beauty!
A saint of ardent youth and health
Haloed by her flesh’s cool puberty
Still sleepy.

She was in charge of the narrow store
A helmet of hair black as coal
And in second-hand clogs with soft soles,
She lent a gay air to cranny and corner,
While stinking cheeses, yellow like quinces
melted at the bells of her laughter.

Armed with a little wire, her fingers bright
Carved the rancid butters quickly
For buyers almost as sickly
(The butter smelled well past its use-by date)
Who sweated in horror in their piteous clothes
Like starving men in rags.

When her blade started Gruyere or Roquefort
She pressed down and her effort shows,
The rind brushed by her pretty nose,
And nothing was as sweet as her pretty fingers
Cutting the rotting Marolle where, in places,
Vermin dug their roads.

About the humble counter lay the vast
Géromés like drunkards sprawled
Oozing down their wattle straw,
But though nauseating, foul and rotten
Even the flies that buzzed around them,
Never stopped to feast.

She, though, breathed at ease amid
This pungent stench where blue Roquefort
Sweated next the bloodless Chester
In this vile pile of curdled pus.
Delighted, she sank her small white fingers,
That oft she let in her mouth linger.

Oh her tongue! Living, crimson jewel
Strutting with viper-like flickers
Charming and haunting!
Miraculous coral moist and velvety
Whose pointy end delightfully pierces
My flesh, mad with lust!

So, I loved this exquisite cheese,
I loved to the point of dreaming rape! But
I thought this miasma, this disease
Eventually, should permeate, corrupt
Her beauty, and disgust, that thug for hire,
Hunted down all my desire.

Yet, every day, glued to her window,
Both my eyes devoured! In vain the Livarot
Exhaled its pestilent odour,
I was there, exhilarated and so pleased
At seeing her hands in the soft cheese
I was riveted in ardour!

Soon, my confession flourished its blush;
To say “I love you” in the pensive hush,
It was all a little show;
Then she smiled, her skirt came asunder
One day, her ribboned shoes uncovered,
And stockings white as snow.

She wanted me to be everything! To me,
She dared send kisses full of emotion,
This ingénue raised me up to heaven,
So, with our love confessed,
One spring evening, I undressed
And saw her naked beauty!

Her hair flicked wildly as a banner,
And with my eyes I licked her rind
That did me such great honour
With flesh sixteen and ripe for fun!
O flavour! She blazed with desire
And the cheddar? Never mind!

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 reducing the numbers of the unemployed (Arbeit Macht Frei stencilled above the doors of every WINZ office in the country).

I once made a staunch National voter’s head explode (shades of Scanners) simply by pointing out that war hero Willy Apiata is Maori, thereby resulting in an ugly internal conflict of prejudices and right-wing jingoism like the sort of paradox that used to cause evil supercomputers to melt down in 1950s science fiction. It was magic to behold.

And now, as if we needed any further examples of stupefying idiotic National Arse-Hattery, silly old Tertiary Education Minister Steven Joyce has floated the old chestnut of linking university and polytechnic funding to graduate employment outcomes. This is, of course, not new (National is incapable of innovative ideas), and, indeed, is fairly typical regurgitating what the filthy Tories in London come up with: http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/3156/full Of course, the UK isn’t quite as Philistine as Aotearoa, and the academic fraternity is slightly more secure, and of course, many Tories come from elitist backgrounds where a passing knowledge of Renaissance art or conversational Swahili are useful shibboleths of class distinction.

I would be worried (but not surprised) if the Minister of Foreign Affairs had never reflected on international political philosophy and post-war history, or the Ministers for Justice and the Police pondered the complexities of morality and ethics.

Perchance a few philosophy, literature or history papers might have enlightened Joyce enough to think outside the box long enough to realise that this sort of thing is entirely detrimental to a nation’s overall intelligence and creativity. Is it any wonder that the vast majority of New Zealanders are so inarticulate and culturally illiterate that Matt Suddain from the Sunday Star-Times magazine insert passes for wit? Fuck me gently with a chainsaw, Heather, please.

If the National party had a few more humanities graduates (and no, I don’t include Law, after all Michael Laws has a degree in that – ew, yuck!) it might just possibly have realised that the gods tend to punish hubris. Voters certainly do. And no, we don’t really need hundreds more MBA clones with absolutely nothing interesting to talk about. Who the hell is to say what educational experiences will have eventual application in someone’s abilities in their job, especially as creativity in problem solving and the ability to generalise are so essential to the postmodern economy. Qualifications for short-term employment prospects mean diddly-squat and might as well be purchased off the Internet for all the use they are – that is not what universities are for. Stupid half-arsed thinking like this is the reason New Zealanders get sucked into investment scams and our productivity base and added-value export industries suck. It might be years, for example, before a scientist makes the breakthrough that cures cancer or the creative writing grad pens a best seller that changes the word – but no one could doubt their education contributed to their successes (and not just in terms of profit).

Quickly, make Joyce Chancellor of the University of Zimbabwe.

No, the National party don’t want to encourage people to learn how to think – then they might question the logic in still clinging to purist supply side economic models when the spectacular failure of Ronald Regan’s presidency to stimulate economic growth through tax cuts should have put it to rest (and what is the point of a tax cut that gets swallowed almost immediately by carbon tax and hiked GST, except for the rich, who can afford accountants and lawyers anyway). People might start questioning the privatising of health, accident insurance, education and other infrastructure with business models that only work in populous, rich countries and favour profits for shareholders over quality of customer outcome. People might question just how much John Key really understands about what it’s like to be poor today when he was raised with the full support of a welfare state and is now a rich prick (recalling the maxim that Rich Pricks look after their own). They might wonder why none of the ministers of the ‘soft’ social portfolios seem to have any relevant qualifications, rudimentary professional experience or in depth understanding in the fields in question.

People might even begin to wonder whether Rodney Hide is, in fact, a Sontarran. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sontaran

Every time I hear someone from the Business Round Table demand that we emulate certain Asian economies, I wince – where would we put the slums? But again, these are people who are ignorant of issues and subjects and stay in posh hotels.

Does the Maori party ever feel the need for a nice hot shower and a bleach scrubdown after a session in Parliament in bed with National. Might a few purposeless humanities papers open their eyes to the hopeless narrowness of their policy spectrum in the face of a vast and implacably hostile geopolitical reality?

Of course, tertiary education has always had commercial imperatives, and the oldest of them were founded out commercial imperatives (the needs of state and so forth) rather than out of some airy-fairy pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, and rightly so, but those imperatives should not be allowed to overburden universities to the point they garrotte themselves with the bottom line.

It’s bad enough that these days students are so focussed on strategising to the completion of their qualification (demanding spoon-fed ‘facts’, bullying lecturers and tutors, dumbed-down assessment processes etc) that they don’t learn anything anyway.

C’est la vie. The Nazis, in their own evil, perverted way, at least took an interest in the arts. Perhaps I should be grateful that National doesn’t. For that matter, even the Nazis with their peculiar yolking together of nature and nationality, wouldn’t put a mine in a national park. Duh!

However, “All Whites” was still a very unfortunate name to play under in South Africa.

And hey, how about that oracular octopus Paul – spooky!

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, who was terrified of the void?); Van, the innocent man-child (bit of ruff 2) who has the added attraction of being the identical twin of Jethro – his suave, sophisticated and wicked mirror image, and thus suggests the possibility of that Holy Grail of the ménage a troi.

The fictional West family represent a marginalised subculture within the Auckland milieu: West Auckland, the Westie or Bogan with all of the connotations of motorhead redneck white trash, criminality and impoverishment of the stereotypes (although notably Fortune – which is essentially Bread relocated to the Antipodes – doesn’t patronise, or at least, not often). As Edward Said pointed out in Orientalism, the West has long fictionalised the East as a stage on which to enact its most prurient fantasies, usually grossly exaggerating and fetishising the sexual proclivities of its ‘other’. To an extent this can also be said of Fortune’s fictional reinvention of West Auckland.

This has also been idealised to an extent – possibly reflecting media Political Correctness – as can be seen in the tolerance the characters’ incessant bed hopping, the strange characters they take into their beds, a tolerance for homosexuality and transexuality (the character Angel for example) and sympathy (as in the case of Nicky’s incestuous relationship with his sister).

At the same time, we might draw parallels with the way middle class Victorians viewed the poor as being particularly prone to incest, prostitution, criminality, drunkenness and a whole host of other vices. The extent that Victorians found this as titillating as they did shameful (especially taking into account their own suppression of their sexuality) can be seen everywhere in Victorian popular culture from depictions of fallen women in Pre-Raphaelite paintings, to the novels of Dickens. The lumpenproletariat can be ‘other’. For similar reasons, the European rich of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries collected genre paintings of drunk, fornicating peasants, most notably in the Low Countries – the Dutch and the Flemish.

In a sense we can read Outrageous Fortune as a similar contemporary expression of voyeurism made safe and palatable by convoluted fictional narratives worth of a Telemundo soap opera. Basically it is the spectacle of the primitive, Rousseau’s ‘noble savage’ rendered for the palate of twenty-first century New Zealand.

If AUT (and believe me, it’s exactly the sort of thing they’d do) ever has a conference on the subject of the Wests, I may very well contribute a paper.

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

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!