Road trip

So we're braving our first 4.5 hour car trip with the little fella to head to Wellington this weekend, deftly avoiding Peter Robinson's opening at the Govett-Brewster (from what I've seen it looks amazing), a BBC film crew, a chopper flight into Whangamomona with an Australian flim crew, an Arts Foundation event, the screening of Hollow Men as part of the film festival here, and Team Wanda Harland who, in a bizarre twist of timing, is heading to Taranaki.

Short of a 22 hour conference and dinner and 4-minute dash through Rita Angus at Te Papa (the 4-minute exhibition - thoroughly recommended), it'll be my first trip back in 6 months.

On the hit list are Floriditas, Miyabi, Superfino, Page Blackie, Hamish McKay, Peter McLeavey, Parliament, and a million people. Still not sure how we're going to get a baby stroller up the McLeavey staircase, but life without challenges would be dead boring.

Any other recommendations of things to do or see greatly received, as it's been a while.

Exciting times!

Mandatory Cultural Inclusion

Given that it was Taranaki's first ever hosting of a test match, and work was loosely a sponsor, it would have been downright rude not to head along to the All Blacks game (read: exhibition match/training run) on Wednesday.

Was fun to watch, and made doubly special in that Dad was able to be there as well.

You're it

A little while back I got informally tagged by Art and My Life (as did all readers) to post an artwork that was rocking my world at the moment. So here it is.

The work:
Julian Dashper, Love, 1993, found objects, dimensions variable.
Courtesy of Hamish McKay.
(corrected)

The story:
We bought this (kind of an early birthday present) a couple of days before we found out we were parents, but it wasn't until a month or so later when the exhibition finished and we picked it up that Hamish revealed that the artist uses concentric circles as a metaphor for his pregnant wife.

Physically, it's 5 different sized metal key rings, interlinked small to big. Idealogically it's an incredibly exciting (and nervous) stage in our lives, both in terms of creating a family, but also in having the guts to move away from buying paint on a canvas or light-sensitive chemicals on a piece of paper and investing in an idea.

It's a great one in that it makes people look at us funny, but I never get tired of explaining it.

Moving into the new place in the provinces, it was the first piece to go up, and it's probably the first thing I'd go for if the house was burning down (just in case the Herald ever asks).

Your turn.

Foam party

Anyone wanting a sneak peek at Peter Robinson's upcoming and wonderfully ambitious installation at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery should head to the gallery neighbourhood today, where thousands of little polystyrene foam spheres offer some slight indication of what's in store.

We were trying to recall what the only other full-gallery exhibition at the GBAG was, and decided on Leon Narby's opening installation back in 1970, though in an apple against apple world et al.'s abnormal mass delusions occupied the same original gallery space.

I also have a sneaking suspicion that the epic directorial swansong Mediarena covered both the entire old and new gallery spaces.

Either way, exciting times.

Scale models the secret to becoming a great curator

"How Exhibitions Work

This course will give students a behind-the-scenes insight into the background and setting up of exhibitions and displays. Topics covered will include research and development of an exhibition proposal, building a small scale model project, setting up an exhibition – techniques, problems/challenges – and putting an exhibition together. Students will build a small scale model or a small scale display component or other models appropriate for their display area.

(Approx course material costs: $50 depending on project)

Wed 6pm-8pm

20 Aug – 5 Nov (10wks)
$80 Y2020.025/3

For further information: http://www.witt.ac.nz/"

Drive time

Tips for gaining maximum enjoyment from a 4 hour drive through torrential rain, most of it in the dark, and in a 1.6l car, on the way to see someone unwell:

• Sport mode is a waste of time. All it does is lose 6th gear on the auto box
• Don't disengage traction control when going through Awakino gorge. It's fun, but only for a second or two.
• Six speed auto is an oxymoron.
• Don't think about why you're going where you're going. Think about why they need the car you're delivering to get home.
• Sometimes the horrendous price of petrol can be considered an investment.
• There are no public toilets open after dark between New Plymouth and Ngaruawahia.
  

Teenage kicks

Fun with iMovie and a digicam 1...

Judging a book by its cover

I've always been a complete sucker for album cover art. So much so that I once bought an album by the Faith Healers solely because it had a great photo of a Renault Dauphine on the cover, and at the time we had one decomposing in the back garden. Turned out the album wasn't so bad either.

The album cover obsession, spurred on by what the 4AD label were doing with Vaughan Oliver (think Pixies, Cocteau Twins, and the Throwing Muses) and the stunningly generic covers the Smiths were putting out in the mid to late 80s, kicked off a penchant for stockpiling retro photographic clip art that still haunts me, and which I really should do something with.

So you can imagine my excitement when I found a smart new site chronicling the entire Smiths cover-art collection in my feeds from Notcot this morning.

Vulgarpicture.com. - the illustrated history of the Smiths and Morrisey. It's good (and I didn't even resort to dropping Smiths song titles into this post).