Artbank

Kia ora. This week we talked to two Australia-based painters. The artist Hamishi Farrah, has been in town for Artspace's latest show: Biographies of Transition: Too Busy To Think. Artbanker Theo caught up for a chat. We also heard from the New Zealand born, Sydney-based painter Euan Macleod, and talked the landscape, memory and body. Plus, sweet tunes, interesting sonic work and a list of upcoming workshops and openings. 

Marx, Money and Heavy Metal... Cushla Donaldson's solo exhibition, curated by Ioana Gordon Smith, is on now at Te Uru Waitakere. Titled from a local tourist spot but referencing trickle-down theory, "The Fairy Falls" is a nuanced and visually arresting investigation which seeks to expose the functioning of today’s financial markets.

She suggests for working class politics, environmentalism, feminism and struggles for indigenous self-determination to work together on the Left, an element of romanticism which doesn't elicit nostalgia is needed to exceed the grid-like rigours of the rational/markets. In light of this context, we talk to works such as “Affections,” a portrait of Cliff Curtis barefoot on the red carpet, and “The Great Ngaruawahia Music Festival” a documentary of the time Black Sabbath came to Aotearoa and, of course, the omnipresent grid suspended from the ceiling of the galley.

Janine Eisenaecher has been in town. The Berlin based sound artist presented “Eat Your Enemy #4 I don’t want to want” at Audio Foundation on Saturday. The monologue she presented was delivered to the beat and sounds of dripping coke bottles. It channeled John Cage’s lecture “Composition as Process“ (1958), discussing the invisible work of artists and the need for solidarity and care within a highly competitive field. She discussed her ongoing practice with Theo, and told us how Berlin has come to (re)embrace performance art.

We sound out the line between poetry and music with Rachel, as she plays some tunes PJ Harvey’s “The Wind” and a more recent Laura Marling number.

Indira Neville and Chris Cudby, two of the curators of the new Sonic Comic project, talked to Theo in studio. Sonic Comic is a collection of works that are both comics and sounds; a publication, playlist and exhibition; a celebration of musicians who make comics and comic artists who make music.

Then we did an on-air, tag-team swap and Thomas Newman Pound and Artbank Tom proceeded to talk about Without Words; A Year Out Walking - Pounds new installation at Gus Fisher Gallery. Pounds has been wandering the building sites, old railway lines, and streets of Auckland, collecting and concocting sculptural pieces from them.

Rachel whips in at the last, with a tune from Ages Powerflip, an experimental musician playing a bFM breakfast club this week.

Anne Shelton's show Dark Matter is currently on at the Auckland Art Gallery. The show includes a diverse selection of works, in which the artist and the viewer enter into a space for revisiting, and reconsidering. Subject matter includes the dynamic characters of K Rd in the 90's, the abandoned Lake Alice Hospital and the grown trees once given as saplings to medal winners it the 1936 Berlin Olympics. But before this far reaching artistic career, Ann Shelton began working as a photojournalist. We talked to her about the transition into art photography, and her subsequent work.
Charlotte Graham (Ngati Mahuta, Ngati Tamaoho, Ngati Whanaunga, Ngati Paoa) presents her show Waikawa at Corbyn Estate Arts Centre. Included is a film of a fish, made of gelatine and full of rubbish, slowly disintegrating in a pool of sea water. It provides a visual and sonic commentary to the environmental breakdown in the waters of Tikapa/the Firth of Thames. 
Also on the show is a rundown of shows opening in AKL, and plenty of good grooves.