2014 highlights

It has been another awesome year and I just want to let you know what I have been up to and wish you all the best for 2015 .

Going to the Photo forum 40^th anniversary book launch, Auckland Photography festival coinciding with my solo show unruly memoirs: nature bites back at Sanderson Gallery in Herne Bay – in October I was lucky to be invited  by Dr Kay Flavell to join her in Berlin with New Pacific Studio Vallejo on location and then do a residency in Vallejo.

It was an action packed time with some of the highlights being :

 

London – Malevich at the Tate Modern – Ansel Kiefer at the Royal Academy – the Mayflower pub with Richard and Gareth – Francesca Woodman’s photography at Miro Gallery – Soviet photography at the Photographers Gallery – Jersey Boys – Wiltons Music Hall with sister Susan and niece Becky – Dennis Severs’ time capsule House at 18 Folgate Street, Spitalfields

 

Berlin – drinking wine with Kay in Haberlandstrasse – the Bode Musuem – Perganom Museum – the Brunnenstrasse Berlin wall memorial walk – favourite exhibition: Meschac Gaba’s Museum of Contemporary African Art – meeting Janet Verplank / Gouldner and Marina Prufer – playing my DVD on the Christchurch earthquakes of 2010-2011 in Bernhardt’s space at the Kunstforum at Beizigerstr – Kay projecting a Powerpoint show on Gisele Freund and Edith Hillinger with   theme: Women as Culture Makers – going with Kay,Janet and Marina the John Heartfield House at Waldsieversdorf – then the Brecht and Helene Weigel House in Buckow –  meeting Dr. Iris Berndt at  Käthe-Kollwitz-Museum Berlin- Warning and Temptation – The pictorial worlds of war of Käthe Kollwitz and Kata Legrady – NPS Vallejo on location checking out of Berlin Mitte base with 3 glasses of prosecco at Berlin Tegel airport – reunion with Susan and Becky

wandering to Hamburg

Instead of the Jewish Musuem

walking 5 hours

needing a pee and some kai

eating sausage in the Bode Museum

under the horse in the foyer

finding Janet and Kay

 

autumn slipping into winter

crows where Giselle Freund

waved to Einstein

ermordet in Auschwitz

dead in Auschwitz

flucht inder tod

flight to death

the murdered Jews

of Haberlandstrasse

there in a bar

Kay and me drinking wine

 

back at the Bode Museum

four times to the café

I’ve lost count of the times

I have been to the wharepaku

 

my neice Becky holds a blue bottle

to her eye

on the bridge outside

a small boy

drops a string line

with a boat

to the water

 

Kay translates

no moon

no stars

In the night

when we fled to the distance

with nothing in our hand

from Bertolt Brecht’s garden

Kay took a mushroom

I took an apple

we can all eat some

we can all die together

says Kay

2014

 

NPS Vallejo / San Francisco – checking earthquake damage at Napa – meeting Alexandria Brown, the Archivist of the Napa Historical society and discussing the impact the August 25.6 earthquake -photographing Mare Island twice – visiting the Coal Shed Studios – biking with Susan to Kaiser Hospital farmers market – visiting St Vinnie’s Community Garden – the dedication of Eliseo Art Silva’s mural at Filipino Community Centre in Vallejo – Susan, Kay and I helping paint that mural – Susan and I presenting our collaborative project for love of the Mackenzie Country to the class of professor John Dotta at Napa Valley College – attending The Addams Family theater performance in Martinez – the Day of the Dead concert the Vallejo High School- starting with a sacred Navaho song, comprising hip-hop and traditional Mexican and Filipino items and the crowd cheering when a brother and sister read their gay poems – me giving  unruly memoirs; nature bites back to Denise Hunter and Judit Sawangwan for their fine arts students – the students doing work with collage, as glue and magazines are easy to come by in a poor neighborhood – visiting Janet’s ranch and seeing her horses – going to Alcatraz known to Native Americans as Diamond Island, Aliste tinanmiji –  checking out  dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei s installations celebrating freedom  and universalizing the abuse of human rights – an installation that he has never seen as he is not allowed to leave China and using materials that could be shipped innocuously through suspicious Chinese customs services –  sending a postcard to Chelsea Manning – posing for a homeless street artist –

Navaho blankets and pottery at the De Young Musuem – celebrating Haul-o Ween at the Obtainium Works with dinner and performance of a murder mystery in their haunted house- on- wheels – planting seeds and pulling Kay’s weeds – buying  a new compost bin for the back garden – Vallejo Farmers’ Market and a performance with Native American dance and song at the Dia de los Muertos /Day of Remembering/Day of the Dead organized by the Solano Aids Coalition in Georgia Street – lunching  at Zio Fraedo’s on the waterfront – goodbyes at the Marriott, punctuated by screams from the fun fair riders across the road…

Back home in Christchurch to the Opening preview  5 November of Mike Coker’s  and my exhibition Suburban Gutter. Mikes’s work  featured a 6.2 metre high work titled ‘if the earth moves’ which was created specifically for the ArtBox L-Pavilion Gallery.

In the ecological entanglement  informing  my reassembled realities I am  exploring  loss and alienation from nature. I ‘m continuing  exploring deep ecologies with a goal of illuminating humankind’s ongoing impact on the environment. My recent wrecked, relocated, collaged rooms testify to the events of the Christchurch Earthquakes, and the politics of destruction  of my old neighbourhood namely the destruction of Holy Trinity Church Avonside which was a Benjamin Mountfort hertitage listed Church knocked down in a rip, shit and bust $20,000 demo which bulldozed intact stained glass windows. 

Suburban Gutter at Artbox was a family affair too for both Mike Coker and me. My three great nephews Nico, Joshua and Luca took the photographs that were the “gutter ” while Mathew and Thomas helped their dad Mike with his painting. See the photographs below and special thanks to Martin Trusttum and Grant Bambury who helped us hang the show.

Watch this space for the work to come from my recent travels…..