Surface details.





























Kilmartin House Museum, 2013, Bronze Thirteen pieces, overall size 3 m diameter / The Perpetual Plannist, 2012, Artist’s pages for Un Magazine 6.2, December 2012 / Floor Work, 2012, Acrylic, Dimensions of the floor, less 30cm at each edge

 All works by Ash Kilmartin.

I love these three details of works by my clearly talented good friend Ash Kilmartin, which I have blatantly thieved from her website with only the best intentions.  The separate works were made over a  period of two years, but the repeated use of specific colours, shapes and scale create a sense of a continuation or investigation of a larger theme or project; ongoing research which manifests itself in different but familiar ways as her practice evolves.
The considered interferences on floorboards, the oval shape of the front pad of a shoe sole is mirrored in the stripped back paint surfaces which surround the embedded key. All surrounded by a particular shade of orangey pink, which sooner or later could be known as 'Ash Kilmartin Salmon' (which doesn't really sound like a colour at all but hey) in a similar vein to Yves Klein Blue.

Possible colour names for that particular shade welcome.

patterns within everyday life


Patterns are present in every facet of our daily life, tangible ones and abstract. Patterns can be chaotic or reassuring - a hectic psychedelic kaftan or the simple routine of repeated motions.  I have always held an interest in patterns - how can one not when the are the very building blocks of our lives so to speak. Patterns are like clues - to a life/style, in a detective story. One is always looking out for patterns in a hope of building up the larger picture.

I have long thought about creating patterns myself, patterns that can be multiplied and replicated and printed on material, a thought that has wandered in and out of my consciousness intermittently throughout my teenage and adult years, and something I have tried to integrate into my art practice both conceptually and in more literal forms.
Above is a sculpture I made as part of my graduating installation at Elam. Apart from the sculpture papier machéd in fake marbled Formica, on the floor lies a piece of paper - a pattern I made stamping a letter W across the page, first right way up, then the wrong, creating a sort of diamond/chicken wire pattern, though one that was shaky, riddled with errors, obviously executed by hand. The result (virtually indistinguishable in the poor photo above) was a little similar to Latvian artist Viktor Timofeev's 'WWW', which I stumbled upon by chance on the website PATTERNITY.

It was from seeing the designs of Sonia Delaunay as part of an exhibition at Louisiana about Avant-gard in the early Twentieth Century. The designs we simple and intriguing, her involvement with the Orphism movement clearly influencing her use of colour and circular motifs, as well as using rectangles, forming patterns like parquet floors. And while seeing these patterns manifest themselves as clothing and fabric was beautiful, I was drawn to her original drawing and sketches, watercolour and gauche on paper, the illustration of the first hint of the idea. It all seemed so casually executed, yet with great finesse.

"I have done fifty designs, relationships of colour using pure geometrical forms with rhythm. They were, and remain, colour scales - really a purified version of our concept of painting. (...) The rhythm is based on numbers, for colour can be measured by the number of vibrations. This is a completely new concept, one which opens infinite horizons for painting and may be used by everyone who can feel and understand it."
- Sonia Delaunay

In a time where I feel I am surrounded by art that is grandiose and powerful, large-scaled, minimalist and monochromatic and technical, it is a wonderful feeling when such small, old, basic illustrations of ideas can capture so much of my imagination. And with the hectic pace of the fashion world, and the types of prints fabric and textile designers are creating: digital, luridly coloured, computer generated, to look back on the prints of Delaunay is not such a bad idea.

And maybe this will be something I will continue with, interesting fabric patterns for and from everyday life. My first one (apart from the W netting) is a pattern of boots and noses.

Colour field



Multi-coloured: home-made chorizo pizza on handmade oven towels, and a wooden puzzle of the British Royal family - King George V and Queen Mary of Teck. The puzzle was deceptively hard, as none of the pieces were cut in the same manner - just a series of bizarre splotches of colour. Wonderfully, the maker had deemed it inappropriate that a member of the Royal Family should be subjected to half a face on a puzzle piece, therefore all heads are given their own complete piece, and the rest of the pieces sort of congregate around them. It makes one think that the design for these pieces was most likely done by hand.

Pizza devoured and puzzle completed while staying at my Granny's apartment (note the Focus de Luxe cutlery).
It feels as though my summer holiday pursuits nearly solely consisted of eating delicious food, drinking New Zealand beers, swimming, rowing, reading and puzzling.

Village










































Wandering around the Helgummanen fishing village on Fårö. Small wooden cabins filled with wooden bunks and wool blankets, miscellaneous tin objects, small rocks and pieces of glass, sea shells. I liked the use of driftwood as makeshift wall brackets, and the stones weighing down the lids on the dinghies, which tourists had used to spell out their initials, like I used to do with the rocks in the crater of Mt Eden.

I loved the juxtaposition of natural materials in the grain heavy timber, the different rich shades of varnish each cabin had, and the walls created by layering flat slate rocks on top of each other. The small cluster of sparely but sturdily built shacks reflected the village's sparse rocky surrounds and muted colour palette - greys, browns, greens and blues.

Notes on a Scandal

 Crowd scenes from Malmö Stadion, where the game was held and eventually called off due to hooliganism.

Yesterday's 'derby' was the show-down between the two rival footballing cities of Skåne, Helsingborg and Malmö, whose teams (HIF and MFF) are also sitting first and second  respectively, on the Allsvenskan points table. Every time these rivals rendezvous the police are out in force on horseback on the streets, cautiously eyeing up raucous revellers. Chartered buses roll in from out of town, and patrol cars cordon off roads around the train stations to direct the flow of human traffic alighting from them, mingling with the sky-blue clad Malmö supporters wandering around the streets drinking cheap beer, letting off flares and chanting incomprehensibly.

The match was aborted after thirty minutes of play; after HIF scored a goal, enraged Malmö supporters pelted the Helsingborg goalie with firecrackers and one crazed fan brazenly burst onto the pitch to attack the goal keeper head-on. The man was carried by police, pall-bearer style, off the pitch and play abandoned.

The match is being referred to in Swedish press as 'The Scandal Match' and the HIF goalie keeps stating he is 'very shocked'.


Photographs via Sydsvenskan

Matinee Idol




[clck photos to enlage]

IL GATTOPARDO 1963
Luchino Visconti


Known for its lush colours and and decadent costumes and scenery, Il Gattopardo (The Leopard) is a true epic of Italian cinema, a production of a grand scale with exacting attention to detail. I first saw this film in a small cinema on Auckland's North Shore called the Bridgeway, on a quiet saturday afternoon in 2004 in a near empty theatre with the attendees comprising of my friend and I and a smattering of elderly who probably saw it when it was first released in '63, or just used to harbour unrequited feelings for Burt Lancaster.

The first film which started my fascination and love of Italian cinema.


"Where so many widescreen epics merely use the image to bludgeon the audience with production value, Visconti maintains a constant dialogue between the grandeur of the prince's surroundings and the minute gestures that define him in the midst of historical upheaval."

-Sam Adams, Los Angeles Times