Month: August 2013

Logical Coherence at Ferari Space

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Logical Coherence. Mason Vincent, Jessica Driver, Fu-On Chung. 2-17 August 2013. Ferari Space. “It has been said that in order to receive kindness, one must be generous with acts of kindness of their own. Or to treat others in a manner in which they themselves would like to be treated. And thus the idea of friendship came into fruition in this world. The idea of camaraderie is alluring, helping our fellow brothers and sisters in order to move forth in unison. There is comfort in the knowledge of belonging to a fellowship or a pact. Through the act of lending sympathy towards each other, Logical Coherence becomes an amalgamation of disparate aesthetic values.” I don’t really know what that paragraph has to do with the show, but, but the actual paintings that it’s promoting are excellent. I had not been to Ferari before, and being keen to check it out for months, the Ferari boys were kind enough to open up on a Wednesday afternoon while I was up in AKL. The space is much …

A Message for Otis Frizzel at Williamson Ave

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Public Mural. Otis Frizzel. Williamson Ave, Ponsonby. A MESSAGE FOR OTIS FRIZZEL. Since you are one of the few “street artists” that “broke out and made it in the art scene” by being one of the few that isn’t a “lazy bum” (your words), and as you are “educated”, you must know a thing or two about context. The hood you are talking about has an average house price of $1.003m. Before Grey Lynn and Ponsonby were brutally and systematically gentrified under Robert Muldoon at the hands of the police, it used to be the hood. Dawnraids happened. Young kids and whole whānau were raided at the wee hours of the morning and thrown out of their homes. This was a time of revolutionaries. Ngā Tamatoa and the Polynesian Panthers were formed. In response to the continued attacks on Māori and Polynesian youth, the PIG (Police Investigation Group) patrol was formed as an arm of the Panthers. The group’s main objective was to monitor police activity to try and protect young Māori and Pacific islanders …

Hit me with your best shot at The Physics Room

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Hit me with your best shot. Janet Lilo. The Physics Room. 26 July – 25 August. The kids from Hornby High. At home I’m always conscious of how white I am. Strolling down the main road of Otahuhu, I have the farest skin. I am Samoan. Arriving in Christchurch I am very conscious of how Pacific I am. When I shared my story about art and life with the Pacific kids from Hornby High, it almost slipped out. So often in Auckland based youth mentorship programs we talk about how there are few Pacific people in our tertiary institutions or art schools. We go on to say ‘that’s why we’re so important, because people like us are needed to provide these Eurocentric spaces with diversity’. I genuinely believe this. For many years I’ve been involved in organisations like Tautai, programs like Tuakana all about bringing us together to foster tight communities of diversity. Without these programs important things wouldn’t come into fruition for me and many like me. But as I was speaking I realized …

Dakapo’s Photostream at Dog Park Art Project Space

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Dakapo’s Photostream. Joel Cocks and Sorawit Songsataya. Dog Park Art Project Space, Christchurch. 20 July – 11 August 2013. Dakapo has been a member of Flickr since January 2007. Since then, he has amassed 1,214 photos on his Photostream. At first I thought this seemed like a lot, but then I went to see how many photos I have on my Facebook photo album: 960. So I guess Dakapo’s Photostream is quite modest in size and quality, especially considering in the last 6 years he has visited ski fields, car museums, concerts, sports events and social media nights across Europe and America with his Canon EOS 30D. This guy is pretty slick, he goes places, he knows people. Dakapo is the perfect kind of Flickr member. I wonder if I Google him will I find a different kind of Dakapo on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter? Flickr itself has been around since 2004; snapped up by Yahoo! in 2005; and only this year been redesigned to resemble more of a photo blog site, which coincided with …