Off up to Wangas again tomorrow

You can check the show out here. You need your pop-ups enabled but.

5000 website hits

Toi town

I went and checked out Te Papa's show of the national art collection yesterday arvo. My review of it is here.

Painting and the fourth dimension

Whatever exists as a movement, as something happening in a space with a specific number of dimensions (n), can be represented as a form in space which has one additional dimension (n + 1).

- Hermann Minkovski

Something in Wellington to go to

I went to three openings last week. The most interesting show was the one at Hamish McKay's. They're people who haven't shown there before, and about half of them were from Melbourne. It's always good to see what other people are up to, even though I suspect the range of work on show reflected the people choosing it rather than what's out there. A lot of the stuff left me cold, but there was a drawing on a scroll of paper that wasn't too shabby. My favourites, though, were a couple of studies on canvasboard - small and unassuming but punching well above their weight.

Working definition

Art is symbolic thought expressed materially in a self-conscious and highly associative way.

Something in Wanganui to go to

Prologue: The Matthew Couper and Jo Russ Collection, at the Sarjeant Gallery in Wanganui, is open to the public from 14 October.

I'm in the mortality section (but then aren't we all? ho ho). Here's a shot of what I've got in it (next to Nik Kokx skulls, a Simon Ray sheep painting, and a Andrew Ross photo):

Here's a nice shot of another section of the installed show:

Quote of the day

When we want to throw off an intolerable depression, we sometimes take marijuana. Well, in my case the marijuana was painting. Painting is an antidote for everything that bores you; in itself, I must admit, it is a poison.

- Francis Picabia (sort of)

Something in Sydney to go to

My brother Ben has a show at the Ray Hughes Gallery on at the moment.

Sailing

Just been sailing for the first time in a couple of years or so. Went out on my friend James's Sunburst (though his doesn't have a spinnaker). It was very calm this morning, though with 40 knot gales forecast for this evening. As we were launching, the wind started picking up and everybody else was coming back in. We had a bloody good run though; timed it just right. The wind kept on increasing all the time we were out, and heading into the wind the swell tended to knock our bow off the wind but that was no biggie. We tacked halfway up Evan's Bay a couple of times and had a couple of brilliant broad reaches back down, planing on the waves with the boat humming. The gusts got up to 15-20 knots probably. Absolutely brilliant.

Even though it'd been a while, I found I had no problems at the tiller. A gust would come and I'd luff up automatically, without hving to think about it. I feel a bloody good summer coming on.

Film society

Just been to see Fassbinder's The third generation at the film society. I really enjoyed it, especially the soundtrack, which was chaotic to say the least. There were some brilliant visuals as well, such as the bank robbers and the gun-toting carnival clowns. Very nice.

Something in Chch to go to

My friend Scott has got a show on at the Brooke Gifford Gallery in Christchurch at the moment. Well worth checking out if you're down that way.

Doctor Who

I've just had a somewhat self-indulgent Doctor Who frenzy, watching last year's series over a period of 24 hours. I'd forgotten how good some of them were.

The big finale of this year's season is on Thursday. I've missed a whole lot of the episodes, so will have to do something similar when the DVDs come out.