gallery36 vol 1 no 2 2009

Vo l.1 No.2 2009

A good time to pass the word on - Facebook, Twitter and good old email

Cover image: Kayla Dunn Did You Catch It? 2007 Video still

Editorial included in this publication reflects the opinions of the contributing authors and does not necessarily represent the views of Gallery36. Copyright for submissions belong to the contributors unless otherwise specified.

Gallery36 | Auckland, New [email protected]

Editor: Selene SimcoxPh: 021 169 9084E: [email protected]

It took me ages to sign onto Facebook, and it wasn’t until at least half of my fellow art school artists were already on there. You could say I was verbally battered into it. But now that it is cold, and I just want to stay by the heater, Facebook is a great way to stay in touch with everyone and all their news. Although I have resisted from joining Twitter - maybe because the name suggests something.

But there is a phenomenon that we are partaking in - living through our computers I mean, does have its’ benefits. Firstly I can research almost any artist I want, and see what work they do. Secondly, I can google map just about any place in the world - fun for so many reasons!

This month I have introduced a new section to the magazine, hoping to foster a art conversation through the magazine, that can eventually be continued on the website via the discussion panel. By offering a space for emerging artists to publish their writing, hopefully this will foster an environment where we as emerging artists can share important topics.

I would like to extend a bit thank you to everyone who has already been spreading the word and sharing Gallery36 with their friends and fellow artists. Thank you for your support!

I would also like to thank Teena from Upstairs Gallery for her support with Gallery36 and for us to have the chance to work together in celebrating emerging artists through Upstairs Gallery’s Emerging Artist Awards.

Winter

Gallery36 is dedicated to providing a place to showcase emerging artists and photographers from around New Zealand. Here at Gallery36 we want you to be profiled. Say what your work is about, what your passion is, and/or what influence you want to leave behind. This is your opportunity to be showcased and put yourself out there!

Gallery36 is dedicated to providing like-minded people around New Zealand with profiles of emerging artists and photographers they will love to read about, packaged up in a easily accessible format that supports our planet by saving trees.

Each issue of Gallery36 will provide you with profiles of artists and photographers who are passionate about art and photography and the role it plays in our society and culture.

We want you to participate by nominating yourself to be profiled, and by being vocal and letting us know what you like and what sucks.

If you are an artist or photographer who wants to be profiled, please submit (up to 300 words with up to 4 photos of your work (plus a photo of yourself, if you wish to), and email all this to [email protected]

Please also make sure you and your friends join the emailing list, so you don’t miss out on each publication. Just email me at [email protected]

So enjoy reading, submit your work, join our magazine and tell your friends!

Thanks

Selene SimcoxEditor

Gallery36 | Vol 1. No. 2 2009

Upstairs Gallery Emerging Artist Awards Winner

E: [email protected]

Linda DixonArtist

Win

ner

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My background in art includes a Diploma in visual Arts. Completed in 2007 at Rutherford College, Te Atatu, Auckland. And also Artstation, Painters Studio, Ponsonby, Auckland in 2008.

I frequently find myself in awe of the many birds that live and play in the trees that surround my home and the way they interact, nature tells you that there is beauty in harmony and that is where I receive my inspiration in all its variations.


Linda Dixon NuanceOil on canvas

Judges Comments:

Linda Anne Dixon’s work is a beautifully articulated, subtle oil painting. I love the scale of this piece - it shows a great confidence and clearly asserts this artist’s ability. The craft element is very strong.

Ruth Cole MFA Hons

Upstairs Gallery Emerging Artist Awards Runner-up

E: [email protected]

John SimpsonPhotographer

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I have had a love of photography from a young age. My first camera was a Kodak Box Brownie, which I still have today.

My first job was at the National Film Unit. I later moved into electronics and computers.

When photography went digital, it re-fired my passion. I found I was able to combine my computer skills to enhance my images, which opened up many new artistic possibilities for me.

My goal is to be recognised as an artist, and be able to exhibit and sell my work.


John Simpson Twilight Tide - Bethells Photograph

Judges Comments:

“Twilight Tide Bethells” is a beautiful rich subtle work - densly toned with many paint qualities. the lighting texture and subject matter echoe nineteenth century painting sources. I would very much like to see the photograph printed bigger. The craft element is very strong.

Ruth Cole MFA Hons

Twilight Tide - Bethells

The amazing light and energy that hit me at Bethells, inspired me to do this work. I have a passion to capture and portray the beauty found in our natural world.

Fina

lists

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Upstairs Gallery Emerging Artist Awards

Beth McFarlane Fructus Autumni (Fruits Of The Harvest) Collage, coloured paper

Jessica Kestle Migratory Movement IV Oil

Vera Limmer West Auckland Family Acrylic

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Oil

Gallery36 | Vol 1. No. 2 2009Fi

nalis

tsClarissa Ranchor Take-away Photography


Sally Buday Map To My Life Machine & hand stitching with acrylic

Marlaina Key Elena Acrylic

Keegan Vivian-Greer Gloomy Day Paint, ink, oil pastel, glue

Fina

lists

10 Lizzy Dickie Untitled Acrylic


Selene Simcox The Arch Of Profundum I 2008 Mixed media on canvas

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Fiona Lawrence Traditional Kete Riwai with pumice

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Marlene Milverton The Day I Took Robert Of Raglan To Titirangi Beach Acrylic


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Maurice Fernandes Evolution Acrylic

Kym Marsden The Writing On The Wall Acrylic on board


Fina

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Marlene Milverton Before The Storm, Muriwai Acrylic

Jacek Untitled Charcoal and chalk

The exhibition is open to the public from Friday 26th June until Sunday 19th July.

If you wish to view or enquire about any of these artworks, please contact Teena at Upstairs Gallery, or visit at Level 1, Lopdell House, 418 Titirangi Road, Titirangi. Phone 817 8030 ,

email: [email protected] or visit www.tcac.org.nz

Thank you to the judges: Ruth Cole, Luise Fong and Jo Duggan


Gallery36 would like to take

this opportunity to

congratulate all the finalists

for this years Upstairs

Gallery 2009 Emerging

Artist Awards

Matt MolloyArtist, Sculptor & DesignerM: 021 106 1443 E: [email protected] W: mattmolloy.carbonmade.com

Matt Molloy’s lugubrious and hybrid forms convey a vicarious sense of a mad scientist’s explorations. His selected materials hover at an uncomfortable closeness to our morbid fascinations and fears, likeglancing upon an auto wreck too disturbing and delicious to ignore. The amalgamated sculptures and installations appear slimey, viscous, and mimic various states of porous flesh, creating a primal sensation for the viewer; the objects become stand-ins for vivid emotional and psychological states of being.

The exhibition’s title, A Lower Animal, refers to the order and classification of things in an image and spectacle saturated world. The brutality of repetition in images, media and everyday

objects creates desensitisation, in turn subordinating the inherent values placed on the things we consume. Molloy describes the location of this condition as a “showground” and “battle zone,” where extreme and conflicting images and objects compete for our attention. His practice is concerned with discovering convergence points where new information and values can be assigned to signs and situations that were previously all too familiar.

Matt Molloy’s artworks develop out of experiments in the studio where rejected

parts, accidents, and failures can be re-worked into new aesthetic territory. Like the painter that flips their canvas upsidedown to

Dip CGD, BFA, PGDip FA, MFA(hons)

Matt Molloy Self Portrait 2008

A Lower Animal


freshly visualise a composition, Molloy also discovers new ways of creating objects and displaying them in unconventional means. This often leads to artworks that feature disparate parts joined together in a jarring and Frankensteinian manner. The process becomes a 3-dimensional response to the early collage works of Dadaists who attempted to unfurl radical meanings in existing images through striking and clashing juxtapositions.

Installation also allows Molloy to navigate different layers of reality which sit on the periphery of each other. Slaughterama appears as a visceral mass of desiccated limbs, artificial blood, stuffed rubbish bags, tarps, and foam. The casual nature in which these elements are nearly crammed into the back office space of the gallery questions its own status of existence. Is it being installed, packed up, or transported elsewhere? A popular installation strategy that provides generous amounts of space around artworks to designate it as such is rigorously ignored. The work spills out just inches away from the office desk and storage racks, blurring the suspension of disbelief traditionally sustained

in exhibitions. All of the objects, whether part of the artwork or not, sit in relation to each other breaking down the walls between a fictional and mundane situation.

Perhaps the aftermath of a strange adventure or crime, Slaughterama’s vicinity to the working office and gallery staff, cheekily implicates the latter’s involvement in the event. The collision of fantasy and reality, art space and life space, brutality and humour contribute to the overall effect of Derrida’s notion of undecideability or what Freud

might describe as the uncanny. Molloy asserts that this is the idea behind the grotesque – “the point where unusual and strange elements are experienced in the same instance as more familiar ones; where disgust and amusement are equally felt at the same intensity.” The Vienna Actionists and Jake and Dinos Chapman, Paul McCarthy, Janine Antoni, Mike Kelley, and Tony Tasset are some of the artists well-known for their no holds barred investigations into this arena.

- Young Sun Han 2009City Art Rooms

Matt Molloy Slaughterama 3 2009

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Matt Molloy holds an MFA from the Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland and a BFA from Whitecliffe College of Art and Design. He was the winner of the

1st annual Young Blood Salon student artist competition and has previously held exhibitions at Cross St Studios and the Gus Fisher Gallery, Auckland, and two solo shows at City Art Rooms.

Matt Molloy Slaughterama 2 2009

Matt Molloy Slaughterama (Installation view) 2009

Matt Molloy Fly Baby 2009

16

Kayla Dunn

My practice examines areas concerning phobias, compulsive behaviours and obsessions. I examine this through the complexity of human relationships, identity and communication, and how these can be translated through the use of instinctive reactions, facial and bodily gestures and language. These notions are translated both on personal and universal levels.

Using mixtures of part performative, part instructional surveillance-like videos, sound and installation, the pieces depict common and simply repeated actions; often without any progression and which are frequently accompanied by an oral component. This draws attention to the ultimate strangeness of something so familiar.

Much of the work I have produced has been pushed towards and stems from the frustration and the annoyance of others. The concept of this is explored in the course of intimate, personal,

mundane and irritating actions; through creative gestures of the virtual, the actual, frustration and annoyance. My work is essentially site specific and is designed to follow viewers throughout the site, creating sculptural environments that draw upon forced oral and

Artist M: 021 220 6069 E: [email protected]

visual components. Because there is a form of annoyance, frustration and disturbance created by the pieces, often in the repeated placement of video monitors or speakers, there is room for specific relationships and physical responses to be made between the pieces and

Kayla Dunn Did You Catch It? 2007 Video still


Kayla Dunn Kiss 2007 Video still

Kayla Dunn Just Juice 2009 Video still

the viewers.

American born artist Bruce Nauman has been a major influence in a majority of the work I have produced to date. Nauman combines a conceptual rigor with at times a discouraged feeling towards humanity. Some of the most imperative pieces that relates to my own practice which Nauman has produced comes from frustration, frustration about the human condition and how people refuse to understand other people, how they communicate or fail to communicate.

The way in which I install my pieces has also been largely based on Nauman, choosing to use each site in its entirety. Using the entire space available adds to the exasperation of the video and audio works, disrupting any natural flow throughout the gallery space. The installation of my works can evoke a sense of being there whether or not you are actually watching or consciously listening to them. This can be seen through the unconscious trade of contagious senses or bodily motions such as the exchange of a smile or a yawn. Through the aid of several video monitors a forced type of domino effect is anticipated in the viewer’s reactions, stimulated by the visual works.

Exhibiting Now

18

OrganisationCrossover is an organisation for emerging artists across the creative industry in New Zealand. Whether it’d be visual arts, music, poetry, writing, photography, fashion, jewellery design, and graphic design etc., there is a need for a platform for the next generation of potential artists and we want to provide opportunities for them to practice and showcase their talents.

We want to create a place where artists with different disciplines and concepts of art can develop their artistic skills and confidence

in showing their art. By doing this, we can help develop these artists to become confident in their own work and to help them grow into established artists. In

our day in age, as artists ourselves, we see that there is a gap in our society between emerging and established artists and we want to be able to bridge that gap where in the future, our emerging artists will be able to ‘crossover’ into

being established.Crossover’s pioneers consist of artists from Whitecliffe College of Arts & Design and Elam with different disciplines, qualifications,

age and ethnicity. This reflects Crossover’s vision in establishing a creative factory that is a collaboration of talents throughout all

creative sectors by ‘crossing over’. Passion for photography, fashion design, graphic design, fine arts, music and poetry are seen and felt from these artists, hoping to influence each individual artist to relish and embrace their own

“Art is one of the core layers of New Zealand’s cultural fabric and

has played an important role in preserving our culture over time.”

E: [email protected] W: www.crossover.org.nz


discipline of art.

The official launch of Crossover occurs with the launch of our website: official www.crossover.org.nz coincides with a celebration exhibition at Reagan Lee Gallery, opening 6pm, Saturday 15 August – 28 August 2009. The exhibition will be a diverse display of styles, reflecting the diversity of Crossover’s pioneers. We would like to thank Yayu Gao and Regan Lee for this opportunity to showcase the work of the founding members of Crossover.

We extend an invitation to artists and individuals who are interested in New Zealand’s creative industry to come to our exhibition to show their support in growing New Zealand’s cultural fabric.

Once Crossover is up and running there will be studio spaces for rent. For those artists that rent studios and work with us, we will offer support as well as joint shows that you will be able to exhibit in.

If you would like to have a show with us or have any enquiries, please email us at [email protected] or add us on Facebook at http://groups.to/crossover

We will soon be having a Market Day to kick start off our journey with Crossover to fundraise for our new location, which is at King’s Square in Newmarket. The date of the market is still yet to be decided, so come and support us by joining us at Facebook. Some of the founding members of crossover

Let’s make a start to uplift New Zealand’s creative industry with emerging artists like yourself...your art; music, writing, poetry

and designs are more than appreciated.

In a state of emergingWhat actually is an emerging artist? What boundaries or freedoms do they have as opposed to an established artist? What the actual state of an emerging is in the artistic world is not one that appears to be answered easily. Age, qualifications, whether or not the artist is represented by a gallery, if the artist is a full time artist or has another job, and how long the artist has been practicing all seem to be raised when discussing what an emerging artist actually can be classified as.

As any technology addict would, I hit the internet in a quest to find the answer to what an emerging artist is. Well nothing is definite. But I think that is good. We as artists are also people. Both artist and person are capable of making decisions and choices regarding who they are and what status they have. Therefore they are also capable of deciding what artistic stage they are at, whether emerging, established or in-between.

On my internet hunt, I stumbled upon Edward Winkleman’s blog,[1] an art dealer from New York. In one article, he invites others to comment on his questions about emerging artists and there was one response that jumped out at me:

“Artists experience multiple and varied ‘art emergences’ throughout their life.

I’ve never heard the term applied this way, but this is what really happens”. [2]

I would not be surprised that this comment is by an artist. As an emerging artist myself I can not respond with a historical perspective, but the idea of evolving with multiple art emergences feels right to me. I will not always create the same art that I do now, and some will make it into a gallery, and others will not. I myself evolve, therefore my artwork does.

Another response I thought worthy to mention was a reference from the glossary of the Canada Council for the Arts (2005), of who claim an emerging artist is “an artist who has specialized training in his or her field (not necessarily gained in an academic institution), who is at an early stage in his or her career, and who has created a modest independent body of work”. [3]

If we as artists accept one of these definitions of an emerging artist, then we must fit into a point on a predetermined and rigid timeline of artistic achievement. But such a timeline doesn’t allow for the late career change, or the artist who is highly gifted at a young age and producing high quality work at school leaving age. Predetermination of something as creativity doesn’t fit with the ebb and flow of creativity.

And since we have the Upstairs Gallery Emerging Artist Awards, I think it is relevant to mention that they classify an emerging artist as “still finding their art feet… who has had little or no exposure to the public, and they should be ready to present their work on the exhibition market”. [4]

So, although there is no definite list of where you can tick the boxes, an emerging artist is an artist usually considered as someone who although newer to the game than an established artist, they are still evolving into a more defined artist. But in honesty, the title escapes definition and classification, because to define it is to put it in boxes and label it, and to do this goes against the grain of what art/creativity is. Although a dealer would disagree, I believe only the artist can make the decision of whether they are emerging or something else. Good luck on finding your own feet and where you fit within the art world.

Selene SimcoxEditor

[1] http://edwardwinkleman.blogspot.com/2006/04/what-is-emerging-artist.html

[2] http://edwardwinkleman.blogspot.com/2006/04/what-is-emerging-artist.html

[3] http://www.canadacouncil.ca/help/lj127228791697343750.htm

[4] http://www.tcac.org.nz/exhibitions/upcoming-exhibitions.html

gallery36 vol 1 no 2 2009

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