Andreas Reiter Raabe at Hamish McKay Gallery

I went to an opening at the Hamish McKay Gallery last night: paintings by Andreas Reiter Raabe and sculptures by Julia Gorman. One of the things that I like about this gallery is that he'll take a punt on things that you would not normally see in a commercial dealer gallery (such as the wall painting pictured above).

I had a very pleasant evening, and some very good conversations. It's always good talking with people who have a different outlook on things to you.

My favourite works were a group of small paintings on the left wall as you walk in. They may be small, but there's a lot going on. Well worth a look.

Something in Wanganui to go to

My will

I've just done my will. Some lucky person is down to get my boiled and tattooed skull.

Very weird

I am at my friend Paul Faris's. The first time I came to visit him here I had to recite 'Once in every in every life time...'. It's that kind of flat.

We were listening to the Fall when a strange electronic alarm like beeping sound started emanating from the kitchen. We investigated and determined it was coming from a shelf above the fridge. The weird thing was, though, that above the fridge was only only ancient jars and tins of stuff complete with cobwebs attached.

I got up and moved the most likely looking large tin, and the beeping stopped. However, the tin only contained tacky plastic cutlery. There had obviously been nothing even vaguely electronic there ever. Where did the beeping come from? Very, very weird.

Systems

I went along to a Gordon Crook opening at the Mary Newton Gallery yesterday. I wanted to see it because I'm really into symbol systems at the moment. It was also not your run of the mill opening. Wandering around the work with a cup of tea rather than a glass of wine was very pleasantly novel.

The way people seem compelled to come up with systems is really fascinating. It has to do with way our brains work. We take this continuous world, break it up into discrete chunks, and categorise those chunks. This has an obvious evolutionary advantage, not to mention such side benefits as enabling language. The problem comes when we assume that the way we construct the world is the only way the world could be. Looking at everything only in terms of a particular system also means you ignore some things and distort others.

There was a superbly ironic prime example of this in today's paper. The spokesperson for the NZ catholic church, commenting on the recent claimed find of the remains of Jesus, his wife Mary, and son Judah, said: 'To suggest they've found the remains defies belief.'

Prospect review

I've written a review of Prospect for Artbash.

Addendum: Peter Peryer has posted another nice thing on Prospect on his blog.

A couple of silly pics

This is a friend of mine's cat:

I came across this in a book a while ago. I thought it had all the makings of lyrics for a Can't Play Won't Play song:

Time

I haven't really done any work since Rose and I split up. I haven't been too worried about this, but I think I need to start getting back into it. I think just mucking around and drawing on a regular basis is the go, rather than trying to do finished works straight away. I've gone off the stuff I was doing at the end of last year (apart from Riot) and need to rethink some of the specifics of my approach.

Newtown

Something else in Wellington to go to

It's very annoying when things slip your mind. My friend Scott McFarlane has a show on at Janne Land's. It finishes on Saturday.