Last week

I had quite an art filled week last week.

On Monday I went along to the last ever Chris Moore opening. My brother Ben is in London of course, and we had to email him to let him know his dealer was closing the gallery. A bit piss poor really. My friend Scott had to do a sudden mission up from Dunners to pick up his work from Chris and go round the dealers.

On Tuesday I went along to a Hamish McKay opening, and then to Enjoy's opening at their new place (next to Peter McLeavey's where New Work Studio used to be). They also launched Paper Fountain, and I discovered I'd made the front cover with my (hopefully) inflammatory polemic 'In defence of painting' (an earlier version of which appeared here).

Wednesday and Thursday evenings were spent doing my cards (see previous post). I had Friday off work and went to the Holbein to Hockney show at Te Papa with Matt and Scott. It had a few really good things in it, but quite a lot of padding. Scott had more appointments, so Matt and I went to Janne's to check out a fantastic Jeffrey Harris crucifixion painting she has in stock and then back to his place to have a look at books and do some user testing with the cards. On Friday night Stephen played at the Bridget Riley show. He was really good, but the guy who played after him kind of ruined the mood.

I gessoed up some more canvases on Saturday, and we had people round for dinner (and more user testing) on Saturday night. On Sunday I went to check out Scott's stuff to complete a swap. On reflection I think I did better out of the deal than he did.

I have the day off today as well and am about to go up to the garage and do some underpainting on the gessoed canvases.