Far Far Away

A sampling of works from the exhibition:

1. Stephen Brookbanks
2. Josephine Cachemaille
3. Josephine Cachemaille
4. The Crystal Chain Gang
5. Emma Smith
6. Emma Smith
7. Emma Smith
8. Alexis Hunter

It was such a lovely weekend. The exhibition looked fantastic and there was a very moving opening ceremony with beautiful waiata sung by the Omanaia Waiata Wananga Group, speeches by local Kaumatua, the curator Karl Chitham, and Project director Sue Daly, and the whole occasion was seamlessly coordinated by the wonderfully talented Dallas Williams.

We were put up in a beautiful house in Omapere - here's the view from the deck:

Karl and Emma in the garden

In between less healthy activities, Emma and I went for a healthy walk to admire the view.

By the way, I got severely trounced at Monopoly and although the Snakes and Ladders board looked so pretty, it's actually a fairly dull game when you're in your 40s and vices seem to have more appeal than virtues. Never mind - the food and plonk was great and the company even better.

Call me a hopeless romantic, but I love it when people declare their togetherness by scoring their names on park benches like this example at the look-out over Omapere. I know that I've left my mark in plenty of places around Napier where I grew up - maybe I'll track them down one day. Anyway, I hope Jeremy and Lou are still going strong!

PS: If anyone would like a copy of the Far Far Away catalogue, just let me know. I'd be happy to post one out to you.

The three B's

Boardgames, baking and booze - the three essentials for our road trip tomorrow. We're making our way to the mystical Hokianga to attend the opening of the Far Far Away exhibition in Rawene on Saturday. We'll be staying with a bunch of artists in a beautiful beachfront cottage in Omapere, so I'll be baking up a storm this afternoon (sticky lemon slice, monte carlos, and a batch of fruity muesli), and I've borrowed a stack of vintage board-games from Jack's mum, including this wonderful Snakes and Ladders. Don't you love the word 'pugnacity' on square 42. I'll take loads of photos of the exhibition and report back next week.
Have a great weekend everyone!

design rethink

cafe interior, Germany, 1950s

I've been having problems with the flannel board concept for the Rimbaud poem design, mainly to do with the fact that the fabric pieces don't adhere to the background for any length of time, and I can't bear the thought that the work will keep falling apart during the four week exhibition.
I realised that another design concept was needed.

A solution always presents itself eventually, and it arrived yesterday when I missed the bus from Takapuna and went rummaging through a second hand bookstore while I waited for the next bus. There I found a book of 1950s interior design, mainly from Germany, which focuses primarily on decorative wall treatments in houses, shops, schools and office buildings. Have a look at all these lovely murals and painted cabinets...

mural design in a children's theatre

Noah's Ark mural in a primary school

Stairway mural, primary school

Painted toy cabinet in a kindergarten

Mural for an optometrist's office emphasizing the importance of light

The front desk of a fabric shop - the mural composition is made from fabric samples

Millinery shop display

Decorative cupboards in a child's bedroom

It's a pity most of the images are black and white, but I love the free-flow compositions and the amazing use of architectural space. Seeing all this has inspired me to work directly on the wall, making a large fabric composition from Jack's translation of the Rimbaud poem with simple shapes, bold colours and with all the components pinned to the wall, something like a Richard Killeen cut-out, but with a narrative structure and a very 50s design aesthetic. Too exciting!!
More soon...

you can never have too many

notebooks

I made up a swag of lined foolscap notebooks over the weekend covered in different kinds of wallpaper that I've picked up here and there over the years. The idea is to personalise them depending on who I'm giving one to - like the seagull up above for my dad-in-law, who feeds the seagulls every morning without fail, collecting day-old bread and muffins from the local cafe and bakery while the birds gather on the roof, waiting for him to get home. Or the tree below for my mum-in-law, who has enjoyed the view of the forest that is their backyard for over fifty years.

Atomic Bombs, Pigs, and a sleeping Princess

An unlikely trio, I know, but they are the subjects of three picture books I found in a second-hand bookshop in Takapuna recently, which have been added to my collection:

Umberto Eco, The Bomb and the General. Illustrated by Eugenio Carmi,
(London: Secker & Warburg,1989)

A story about a group of harmless, peace-loving atoms who are captured and turned into a bomb by an evil general, and how the atoms rebel by escaping from the bombs, rendering them harmless, thus saving the world from destruction and bringing down the general.
(I love the combination of collage and water-colour for the illustrations and the simplicity of the compositions).

Colin Bell, Why Pigs Have Curly Tales, Illustrated by Gretchen Albrecht.

(Collins: Auckland, 1971)

I couldn't resist this one, mainly because the lino-prints were made by a very young Gretchen Albrecht (long before her foray into painted hemispheres and ovals). I wrote my MA thesis on Gretchen's shaped paintings, and she remains one of the most generous, warm-hearted and dedicated New Zealand artists that I have had the pleasure of writing about.

The Brothers Grimm, The Sleeping Beauty. Illustrated by Felix Hoffmann
(Oxford: Oxford UP, 1959)

I just love Felix Hoffmann's illustrations, especially the way he draws foliage and castles.

And I finally found a place on top of the New Zealand book collection to put some of my pretties (what big ears Baxter had!).

The nude soul

of a seven year old poet might look like this:

Something like a four-legged, winged sperm perhaps...

I figured that the nude soul needed to be fashioned from the imagination of the young boy poet, and therefore it should be made from something he would be likely to have on hand, like balsa-wood model kits, for instance. Pieces from an eagle and a butterfly were used to make this little chap.

Also, the concept that emerged from my reading of the poem is that the boy's imaginary life is much more vivid and real than his actual life, so I'll be making all the scenes and images generated by his imagination as three dimensional as possible, to contrast with the flat and lifeless reality of his day to day existence, which is represented by the 2d images stuck to the flannel backgrounds.