Artbank with Theo

A packed Artbank this week. Graham Reid was in the studio talking about the effort that went into creating the Volume exhibition at the Auckland Museum. It is an immense sonic, visual and interactive display covering the history of music in Aotearoa. Theo talked with Olivia Blyth, about her show Communityity - the fifth show put on by Auckland based collective Hapori. Participants were asked to draw their sonic surroundings and Blyth has collated the collective renderings of aural happenings at Corbyn Estate Arts Centre. Finally we talked to Malcolm McAllister, an art teacher at Otahuhu College, who has been studying how art is taught in Cuba, and recently spent time in the country, meeting with teachers and practitioners there. 

Ayesha Green's solo show "The Spirit of the Thing Given (Māori)" is on now at RM Gallery. She also has a show at Papakura Art Gallery opening on Saturday, and work in Artspace. We had a hearty chat about the context from which her paintings and ceramics spring - a Māori history of tourism in New Zealand, the relationship between the earth and the crown, the likes of Sherpa Tenzing's role in our national consciousness. 
We also recognise the significant role the Vito Acconci (January 24, 1940 – April 27, 2017)
played in the world of performance and installation art, and architecture. Theo gives us a bit of a run down and we hear some clips from his work.

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.