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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LIKE A BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WALTERS

April 29, 2010 – 8:32 pm by Andrew Paul Wood

Yes boys and girls, it’s time for my bi-yearly whinge about the Walters Prize. I was really hoping Rob Hood was going to get a look in this year as someone genuinely deserving of the recognition for his shows over the last two years. Here is the press release. Comments in bold are mine: Auckland Art Gallery MEDIA RELEASE Friday 23 April 2010 The nominees for New Zealand’s most important award for contemporary art have been decided. Once and for all, can we finally dispense with the absurd fiction that it’s a national award? The reality is that unless it was seen on K Road, it’s not in with any chance (which is ironic given Gordon Walters himself lived most of his life in Christchurch). The $50,000 Walters Prize is awarded for an outstanding work of contemporary New Zealand art produced and exhibited during the past two years. Which according ...

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A History of Sluts

April 11, 2010 – 6:18 pm by Andrew Paul Wood

When did being a slut become a bad thing (used by those jealous of the popular and sociable)? When I say slut mind you, I don’t mean the tragic peroxide-blonde wearing something your twelve-year-old niece couldn’t squeeze into, that launches into a drunken version of Papillon Soo Soo’s “me so horny” soliloquy from Full Metal Jacket at any mammal that stumbles between them and the bar. Nor do I describe the male version that funks around in a thick Bhopal-like miasma of Lynx and sheds its loud, un-tucked dress-shirt at the merest suggestion of a dance floor. This is merely your poor common-or-garden 3 am scrubber. Nor do I refer to the mere celebutart skanks and slappers that frequent the covers of the hag rags with their comings and goings – Paris Hilton (hatchet jaw, squinty eye, bleached Donatella extensions and drag queen facial expressions), Nicole Richie (a Giacometti sculpture, but ...

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Oh dear. Art and Crime.

April 7, 2010 – 4:53 pm by Andrew Paul Wood

A prominent New Zealand artist has been accused of raping a 12-year-old girl more than 30 years ago. - Fairfax http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/3556247/Artist-accused-of-raping-girl

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The Joys of Spornography

April 7, 2010 – 4:52 pm by Andrew Paul Wood

Although Dan Carter may be spending a lot of time in France these days, he is still with us (and all around the world) smiling beatifically in his underpants from those Jockeys posters – a multi-story colossus like something out of a Nazi-era Leni Riefenstahl film or Bruce Weber photograph. Wherever these goliath examples of perving material go up, there is rubbernecking and the inevitable car prangs. Well, can you blame them, he’s gorgeous. Even the most staunchly beer-drinking, red-blooded, one hundred percent heterosexual on the Kinsey Scale Kiwi male, breathlessly adores and is slightly in awe of Carter, and would probably offer up his wife or girlfriend in tribute without a second thought. This may sound somewhat counter-feminist, but given Carter’s appeal it would probably have been the wife/girlfriend’s idea in the first place. Being that I live in Christchurch, I have once seen the elusive Carter; like the Loch ...

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Dane Mitchell as smouldering sexpot

March 21, 2010 – 4:47 pm by Andrew Paul Wood

When I trot over the road to the servo to pick up my Sunday Star-Times, the Sunday magazine insert is normally something I let tumble to the floor to be ignored. Its vapid twittering tone grates. Similarly I harbour suspicions that Woman’s Day causes brain damage. But for some reason I was flicking through articles about shoes and other things I don’t care about written by twelve year olds, when my eye alighted on the magazine’s ‘feature’ on the ‘sexiest New Zealanders’. It was a fairly silly piece. For a start ‘sexiest mostly Jaffas’ would be more accurate, the ‘sexiest’ bit is entirely subjective, and one would have to question the mentality of any journalist who would list Australia, Chile, New Caledonia and Samoa as ‘home towns’. Duh. But right at the end, something caught my eye: Dane Mitchell, on the same page as a hirsute Willie Apiata and a pasty ...

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Why a lot of writers are pissed off at NZ Post

March 16, 2010 – 2:33 pm by Andrew Paul Wood

As a professional writer, It is somewhat expected of me to send out unsolicited manuscripts to overseas magazines and periodicals. Most of these publications demand hard copy by snail mail with a SAE and thus an International Reply Coupon. But for some reason best known only to NZ Post, no International Reply Coupons are available anywhere in NZ at present and haven't been for months, thus really screwing up my career. Gee, thanks NZ Post. Thanks for caring. Thanks for everything. PULL YOUR FINGER OUT!!!

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Moaning about John Reynolds Again

March 16, 2010 – 2:28 pm by Andrew Paul Wood

It’s not fun calling people names. Actually, that’s not true; of course it’s fun – it’s just not very nice, and that’s why I don’t normally do it when sober, but the time has come to call a spade a spade. John Reynolds has become an old art world whore. Lest I open myself up for litigation on grounds of libel, below are some examples of his outrageous whority of a sort not often seen outside the attention-seeking halls of AUT. I’m fairly sure they are all accurate beyond mere rumour and hearsay, but I’m happy to have errors and very egregious slanders pointed out to me for deletion – besides, it’s not defamatory if it’s truth: Designing the fabric for Karen Walker’s premeditated rape of the classic Swandri and thus confusing fashion designers into thinking they are artists rather than simply corporate idea factories for mass produced season-disposable rubbish worn ...

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Dutton Does It Again

March 15, 2010 – 5:20 pm by Andrew Paul Wood

It may seem to my regular readers that I have some sort of vendetta against Denis Dutton. No – not really, it’s just I am usually horrified by anything he writes. The latest atrocity to catch my eye is an Op Ed piece in the LA Times on why having separate Oscar categories for actors and actresses is a good thing. That can be read here: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-dutton72010mar07,0,7134426.story I have a problem with the reasoning, and to understand why one must look back over the history of women on the stage. Up until the mid to late seventeenth century, women were generally not allowed on stage because it was considered immoral. Female roles were played by young men. This was one of the key plot lines of Shakespeare in Love, which Stoppard derived from the complex cross-dressing plots in plays like The Merchant of Venice and Twelfth Night which sounds like a Blur ...

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Rugby and Squashing a Weta

March 15, 2010 – 5:15 pm by Andrew Paul Wood

http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/rugby-world-cup/3450374/Rugby-World-Cup-sculpture-unveiled Would someone please explain to me why the fuck Weta is doing this and not an artist? Why is Weta taking bread out of the mouths of New Zealand’s sculptors with this unimaginative pseudo-Fascist tat? Sadly it appears that art in this country is getting assimilated into entertainment, which means New Zealand audiences and patrons are going to have some very strange expectations of our artists. I would rather see the most hackneyed Neil Dawson (a giant lacework rugby ball probably) than this uninspired piece of Hitleresque nonsense. I took one look at that hideola monstrosity and immediately thought of Nazi sculptors like Josef Thorak and Arno Breker; sculptors of idealised, stalwart Kraft durch Freude (‘Strength through Joy’) Aryan youth and nude Übermenschen. For a fuller picture of the German art world under the Nazis, the reader is recommended to consult Jonathan Petropoulos (2000), The Faustian Bargain: ...

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