Articulate June 23 - 30

Glaister Ennor and Barfoot and Thompson Graduate Arts Awards
Oedipus Rex Gallery
Until June 30th

This week I judged the Glaister Ennor Arts Awards which are open to Masters students enrolled at the tertiary art institutions in Auckland. Eleven works were selected from the art schools

There was a very high level of consistency in terms of technique and the ideas, which showed a high degree of sophisticated thinking, study and application.

The winner of the Barfoot and Thompson Award was Tracey Porteous from the Whitecliffe College of Art and Design for her photograph Kaipara 7008

I said of the work that I was impressed by the way in which it confused and tantalized and that for a photographic is appeared to be more abstract than real.

The title suggested a landscape but what component of landscape – land, sea, underwater, sky or mist was ambiguous.

The veils of colour are suggestive of something like an aurora australis or even waves of wispy human hair.

What the photographer provides is a sense of mystery in terms of both the subject matter and the technical accomplishment.

There is a sense of waking as from a dream or the sudden exposure to a dramatic event.

As with many photographers there is an interest not so much in subject matter, but, like the Impression painters an interest in colour and light

The winner of the Glaister Ennor Award was Diane Scott from the Elam School of Fine Arts for her painting Zero Degree.

She has reused or appropriated a common abstract device, the square. In this she refers to artists such as the Russian Malevich who painted pure squares of colour 100 years ago. She acknowledges the American artist Donald Judd and New Zealand artists such as Max Gimblett and Stephen Bambury.

Paintings such as this where there is minimal subject matter works on a more contemplative and mesmeric level with the viewer having to engage with the visual experience.

There is subtly in the paint application which results in an interesting optical phenomenon, the quicksilver surface shimmering and shifting as one passes by.

The surface seems as though it is it metallic with the surface ground with an abrasive and then burnished, stressing the idea of the work being an object

The other optical trick the artist uses is the back painting of the work in yellow so that there is a vague halo of colour lifting the work from the wall, reinforcing the notion that it is an object as well as a painting.

The Glaister Ennor Awards are one of the few occasions where art buyers can obtain work by art school students at reasonable prices. The Tracey Porteous photograph is selling for $4700 while the Diane Scott painting is $3500.

Four of the works in the show are photographs ranging from a unique photograph by Joseph Griffen “Oh Robert” for $930 to Cathy Carter’s “Adrift” ($2400)

THEATRE

Black Confetti by Eli Kent
Auckland Theatre Company
June 28 – July 28

Black Confetti is new play from award-winning writer Eli Kent whose previous work includes “The Intricate Art Of Actually Caring and Thinning”.
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The play centres on Siggy, a Generation Y casualty. He maxed out his student loan; university is ejecting him; his sisters are fed up with bailing him out; his loser uncle is behaving strangely; and his father, a famous seismologist, has disappeared off the face of the earth.

But Siggy is clever. Siggy is curious. Together with his best mate, Elvis, Siggy is on a mission to get some adhesive in his life and find out the truth about his dad.
Packed full of big ideas and lots of little surprises, poetry, mysteries and full-on theatricality, Black Confetti is about the death of the party and surviving the earthquakes in our lives.

Colin McColl ATC’s Artistic Director says of the play “Every so often a new playwright comes along who blows your socks off. Eli Kent has been proving his worth and winning awards with highly original, complex, funny and moving plays like The Intricate Art Of Actually Caring and Thinning. We're all very excited about Black Confetti, the new work we've commissioned from Eli. Think Hamlet mixed with "Alice In Wonderland" and Breaking Bad. It's streetwise yet highly literate, very funny yet profoundly moving. Eli Kent is an extraordinary new voice in New Zealand playwriting."

MUSIC

Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra
Auckland Town Hall
June 28th
John Nelson, Conductor
Michael Endres, Soloist
Jack Body, New Work
Mozart, Piano Concerto No.26 in D major, ‘Coronation’
Berlioz, Symphonie Fantastique

Distinguished American conductor John Nelson is highly regarded for his great performances of large Romantic works and his vibrant interpretations of Mozart.

The Symphonie Fantastique is regarded as one of the composer’s revolutionary works in which he combines an intelligent understanding of Beethoven along with his own original approaches to music.

The story on which the symphony is based involves a young artist addicted to opium who has a series of dreams which are explored in each of the movements of the symphony.