A poem for Mount Wellington

MAUNGAREIPE  - WATCHFUL ONE

    SENTINEL

    FORTRESS

   WARRIORS

              HEART

    EMBRACE

              WITHIN

               SAFETY

             FREEDOM

   RETURN


Maungareipe - Watchful One
sentinel
fortress
warriors
heart
embrace
within
safety
freedom 
return

Pecha Kucha at the Auckland Art Gallery

Among the artists and designers who to took the opportunity to present their 20 slides and speak to them for no more than 20 seconds an image, was Paolo Cuccaagna, visiting Italian motorcycle designer from Honda.

Paolo dwells on his admiration for designer Mistuyoshi Kohama, master of the now disappearing cult of futurist motorcycle design. Paolo suggested that today's bikes are  not in search of futurist fantasy but are turning back to the throbbing visibly mechanical machines of the 1950s.

Gallery curator Ron Brownson shares his secret obsession - secret no longer, Ron! - as a collector of Rugby memorabilia - particularly Rugby photographs from three centuries. Group portraits spoke volumes of evolution from once gentlemanly sport to galdiatorial combat. One antique solo portrait of a reclining Maori player hinted at the influences of Titian and Manet.

Art Expedition - 20 October

On Thursday evening from 5pm to 7pm David led a score of art buffs and one old buffer            (behind the camera) on a pilgrimage from one Auckland city gallery to another. Curiously the helmeted building in the background is Prabhash's college.

Jan Sanders welcomed us to her gallery on the first floor of a noble 1870s building and in keeping with the building a show by a revered Auckland artist - 91 year old Jan Nigro. Her subject matter the equally aged Lady Chatterley's Lover was daringly presented with fresh and youthful vigour.

Anna Miles Gallery stunningly lit gallery in a curiously narrow building displayed architectural photos by Allan McDonald " Six Petrol Stations". Spotlit Anna in the far corner spoke simply and with passion.

Our next stop was the black and white show "Driven to Abstraction" at Gow Langsford Gallery in Lorne Street. The stark brightly lit space was a perfect canvas for the stark monochrome works. The Simon Ingrams on the back wall were rendered by an art machine he devised for the occasion.

The smallest and subtlest of the show at the Langsford Gallery was this Colin McCahon drastically entitled "Jump".

Making our way from one gallery to the next we paused in Khartoum Place with its feminist tile murals, to listen to the melodies of a solitary harpist.

The entrance to our next gallery Orexart is suspended precariously over Khartoum Place.

Rex Armstrong positively glowed among the stencil art rugby stars at Orexart Gallery. The show "Personal Heroes" is by New Zealand born artist Regan Tamanui, best known in his adopted city of Melbourne by his aka Ha Ha.

Refining his stencil and spray technique developed for guerrilla street art, Regan treats this personal hero with subtle affection.

The final stop before entering the Auckland art Gallery for a festive late night programme that was to include Pecha Kucha, was the clean cut beautiful FHE Gallery. Its slightly rarefied atmosphere displayed art pieces by a revered stable of artists.  Gallery director Kathlene Fogarty spoke about each piece and the artists with real devotion and her presence led me to coin a new term for her urbane poise - artistocratic. 

The tour ended at the doors of the impressive extension to the Auckland Art Gallery and alerted by Frank McBride to the existence of an art installation that can best be described as a deification machine, I hurried into the mysterious room to enjoy a moment of reflection and a glimpse of the perpetually eternal.

An Exhibition on Auckland's Waterfront

As part of the Rugby World Cup celebrations, an assortment of displays and pavilions have mushroomed on the waterfront at the bottom of Queen Street. Some are only kept aloft with hot air, but the largest structure referred to as the Cloud is expected to survive for several years, providing a useful central city display space.

Mushrooming pavilions

The Cloud

How are you finding Auckland, Prabhash?

The Green City's transport

Who wood have thought what you wood do with wood?

So that's what all the fuss is about?

Tongan Night in K Road

Last night was a special Tongan night in K Road. In the stunningly Art Deco St. Kevin's Arcade and on the corner of our East Street, Tongans music made music in the public spaces. Football fans making their way to the Wales v France match were serenaded by song and brass band. Thank you Tonga for sharing with the world.

Serenading the football crowd - St Kevin's Arcade

Tongan Brass Band - corner K Road and East Street

A Tongan Wales Supporter

The Brass Band beats a Tattoo

Street Alive

I am sure there are many quiet streets in the suburbs, but here in central Auckland, there is never a dull moment on our carriageways. Football crowds heading to the matches, glamourous cars, fan flagged vehicles and cycle posses.

Determined Football Fans

French Flair

Hot Rod Delight

Organised Cycle Gallery Tour - Art Week

Art on the Footpath

Art encounters come thick and fast in our part of town. A short walk along the footpath presents art on traffic signal boxes, windowsills and in shop windows. Some of the finer works of art on public exhibition are the ladies of K Road - fashionably dressed Fa'afafines and drag queens and almost dressed working girls.

Mysterious activity in the woods  grafittied "adopted by Greens"

"How much is that doggie in the window?" - window sill at Art Station

"Ladies of K Road" - framers shop window

Art Week

Art Week in Auckland has begun. Yesterday I went for a short walk, visiting five galleries in K Road and Ponsonby. The impression that Art is important to New Zealanders is growing stronger. At the nearby Art Station ( reminiscent of Brisbane Institute of Art ) a bizarre workshop involving young artists in a reduced sensory environment was underway. The products of the experiment will be the first exhibition in a new street window gallery. Very impressed by the space and the exhibition standard at Object Space just across the road from Art Space. More excitement during the week will include a Pecha Kucha at Auckland Art Gallery. I hope to attend.

The Edge

“Always to be pushing out like this, beyond what I know cannot be the limits – what else should a man's life be ? Especially an old man who has, by a clear stroke of fortune, been violently freed of the comfortable securities that make old men happy to sink into blindness, deafness, the paralysis of all desire, feeling, will. What else should our lives be but a continual series of beginnings, of painful settings out into the unknown, pushing off from the edges of consciousness into the mystery of what we have not yet become.” 

from An Imaginary Life by David Malouf 

Surprises

Some of the charms of this city of Auckland are the sudden and contrary glimpses....

the  confrontations....

the musical moments

the surprises presented to us every day. Never a dull moment!

A Tour with Ron Brownson

                                              

                                              Polynesia by Jim Allen - limestone

Yesterday I joined Ron Brownson's talk at the Auckland Art Gallery. Having met him briefly on our footpath during the Chalk History project last week, I was keen to hear more from him. He is the Senior Curator of New Zealand and Pacific Art at the Gallery and his gentle retiring style did nothing to hide his erudite and lifelong knowledge of his field. His contribution to the accumulation and exhibition of the gallery's collection has been invaluable.
                                                                                     

                                                                                            Maori Boy by Rita Angus 1942

                                                             Nor' Wester in the Cemetery by William Sutton 1950

                                                                       On Building Bridges by Colin McCahon 1952