Doll

This year's V48Hours Furious Filmmaking effort. We ran a considerably tighter team than last year (only 4 people in total), which meant a whole lot more V per person. We made it through to the Taranaki regional finals, picking up overall Runner Up, best emerging team, best actress, and best score (music, not twin sex).

All shot on a Canon 5DII and a 7D, proving that still cameras have really come a long way. Cheers to Mark for having such cool toys to play with!

(To clarify: by two I mean second birthday party)

Developing a larger body

For years I've been toying with the idea of doing an online Daily Show for the NZ art world. After reading the following, that appeared in my inbox this morning, you'll see why:

"This exhibition brings together work by four Wellington-based artists, work which is forward looking, part of a larger body that is still developing. These are all new works; predominantly unexhibited, they have been created for this exhibition or within the last year."


Now I'm no Jon Stewart by any stretch, but to clarify:

• An "exhibition" that "brings together" art works.
• Forward looking and still developing.
• New works created in the last year.  If a week is a long time in politics, how long is a year in the art world? 

Still, at least it didn't begin with Oftentimes, and on one level, it actually makes me want to go see the show, if only to compare it to the press release.  Which I guess means it's effective PR, dammit.

Image: Curious George spinning top, recalled by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission

Life is short, but filled with stuff

In memory of TC. Not a stunning video, but there is surprisingly little Cramps online, and in a way I think he would have liked it.

Dear Santa

Buying a house and having a baby have mercifully conspired to deter me from whipping out my credit card whenever I get madly inspired by things online. In the last 18 months there have been no Amazon, international bicycle store (or even domestic for that matter), obscure toy shop, gallery or other online trader packages brighten our door while simultaneously darkening the Visa bill.

But all that came very very close to crashing down today when I stumbled across this via Coolhunting.

It's artists. On bicycles.

A new one every month for a WHOLE YEAR!

As you can imagine it ticks a couple of pretty big boxes at OneMomentCaller. I'm thinking of sending a copy to everyone I know who recently broke themselves on their new bikes (would seem to be the season), but they already have new bikes to console them, and a calendar with artists riding bikes would seem rather crap in comparison.

You can pick up a copy at the Swiss Institute of Contempoary Art New York here.

Pic: Lukas Wassmann shoots Cindy Sherman and David Byrne in December.

Art by bicycle

Four favourite things collide: art, Portland Oregon, bicycles, doing stuff.

Papergirl Portland from abraham ingle on Vimeo. Via f-letter,

Take that, public art!

Len Lye's Wind Wand. Off for some 'spit and polish' as the local council put it.

Hi, I'm Zach

I've been mulling over a post investigating the art collection habits of the in-house toddler for a few months now, but just haven't quite got round to it.

The aim was to counter the endless mass-media articles about 3-year-olds painting expressionist works (ah, but can they do realism?) that invariably get taken to art dealers who are nervous to dispel the work in case the media are trickign them into dissing a long-lost Monet.

Surely we need to look into where the next generation are vesting their interest from a collector and not just artist perspective if we're to keep the art industry afloat.

Observations based on the domestic subject over the last few weeks since we shifted house would indicate that current hot buttons are:

• Anything with an animal in it, unless it's a fish.
  Current favourite is Matt Couper's Healthy Specimen, but that might be prompted by its location near the dining table.


• Small bright abstracts.
  Showing his Taranaki roots it's not uncommon to find him standing under Peter Peryer's Mandala, pointing and chanting "uuh, uuh, uuh." I know exactly how he feels.


• Eyes.
  Peter Stitchbury for the win, though how could you not fall deeply into those big eyes, with their infinite stories. On that, I was browsing through Vimeo co-founder and general cool-guy Zach Klein's Flickr channel, as you do, and came across this compelling tale of stardom, portraiture, small town connections and big-town art fairs.

Pic: Peter Stitchbury, Zach Klein