CATHERINE DAVID - CHANCRE ON ART'S BODY - NAMED WALTER'S PRIZE JUDGE

Beautiful!

Scold Warning:

Does no one have anything to say about this Gallic abomination?

Is it the weather?

Are you hoping to be some day nominated for the Walters and any taint ('taint' - a euphemism for the small stretch of human anatomy between one's primary sex and anus) would eliminate the slimmest of possibilities?

You are so horrified that you've been rendered speechless?

You are so traumatized by this - the last straw in multiple decades of last-straw disregard by art-bureaucrats - that you are catatonic and unable to form sentences or unbend your limb to type?

I'm full of shit - Catherine David doesn't look and smell like F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu?

Generations of mutton consumption has had cross species consequences?

la robinet..

well. probably the shitty weather to blame- cold sluggish blood, wet feet and lowering brow, latent misanthropic tendencies stirring in the murk like 100 year old mud eels.

Recreational revolution is always best in softer weather... send me a rousing pamphlet and some sound-bite slogans and I'll put them in the cupboard for later, next to my rose petal pink spectacles.

aside from that:

bellowing "down with the fucking gatekeepers" or "kill all frenchie female art boffins that know how to read and look older than 30" -in however heartfelt a manner- hardly likely to effect  the Walters selection, now or in the future.

activity best described as completely pointless posturing.

no change predicted either way: were I to storm the ramparts (assuming I could find the ramparts in question with both hands and a map) or merely to watch the incoming spleen-venting show from the cheap seats...aided by a spliff and healthy lack of gravitas.

besides, on reflection, succesful international curator rummaging around in NZ art scene looking for good bits doesnt sound that awful an idea. (even if she is elderly and bookish with a tad too much lipstick...or -as auguststoned suggests- some kind of necrotic S&M Theory Dungeon mistress).

some will benefit from increased exposure- and it may even include someone/s our home grown gatekeepers wouldn't have supported -here's hoping the dungeon woman from Paris has independent taste and tough mind.


I'll smoke to that.

Maybe it' s the devil you know and I don't know anything about her except what you have listed, but it sounds to me like she is being at least transparent and kind of honest around the authority that institutions have to practice and determine culture. The point is made that it IS art versus Academia and it's producing a kind of luke warm blood bath (where blood is to uncool to even notice, it's just cosy, "and where did you say it came from?") where we all get to sink numb in collective triumph, safe in the cultural, artificially stimulated mainstreaming present.

I've never understood those that feel the need to defend "visual art" against what ever is the latest affliction. I look around and I see no shortages. For %99 of people I meet when I say I have something to do with art stuff, it's the role of the painter that they ask do I fill. I say yes of course. Just i don't use paint. Conversation and interest ends. oh well. I don't think it is the end of what I do or reason to moan the death of standards... etc..

Mind you, what you call the "reanimated cadavers of the 60's" to me are still relevant and impt to steal from, the fact that institutions have can and continue to do so only highlight the fundamental crisis for me and art at this moment that of Moneyism and the disappearance of integrity from the scene. That a university art school backed by corporate dollars will teach an let's say avant-garde model of art making, to embarrassingly say what it really is, but on PRINCIPAL not defend or support work that is made that is "critical of the system" is a bridge bombed by decisions well made long ago. Bums on seats was a popular phrase, we all liked it. We used it even knowing we wanted something else, but there was no other model put forward. The academic community world wide as far as my research has told me, was sucked in with identity politics and argument around academic integrity and money were sold out before they were made.

If you remember there's a war going on, art's a good weapon.

Nos
Well, at least you had something to say.
For that you have my thanks.

I like your coinage - "recreational revolution."
Let me coin one - recreational apathy...which one's sexier?

I think making noise does make a difference. Acting up in print and in person creates useful discomfort. Folks always say it doesn't make a bit of difference - but I've seen the contrary prove true more than once in my lifetime. Public scrutiny and noise making tends to temper egregious professional behavior - silence is often equated with assent.

Also in my lifetime I've seen artists as a group change (along with an influx of publicly funds and salaries) from irascible, bumptious, unmanagable, irreverent, and socially scary to become a shuffling, tame bunch of aesthetic stepinfetchits. Bad behavior may accomplish nothing but it's a hell of a lot more fun than standing around waiting for an ass one can kiss so as to be able to jump the shark.

Being told (or given the high sign) to pipe down in NZ is hardly the rarity.

Thanks for that Falke. Reasoned and well worth reading.

point taken auguststoned.

and Im exhibiting less atavistic rage today. did I seem apathetic (recreationally or otherwise)? misleading if so. the boffins have always maintained that depression is undirected fury.

perhaps its a question of style but Ive always found the disobediant noise strategy is most politically effective when accompanied by an alternate plan.

and Im also not convinced that generative art practices have ever been under threat by one eyed theoretical cant, in any circumstance.

Im sure there are a few nz curators who long for the european fashion of creating Curator art stars to take hold here, but the idea that its possible to get away long term with treating artists as voiceless play-dough in service of the latest conceptual construct is impractical and unnecessarily pessimistic.

Artist curator relationships are build on professional trust (which doesnt preclude mutual loathing), if the curator doesn't deliver no-one will play with them anymore.

put another way: too much shit raining downhill will mean studio doors start slamming in the would be art deity's face, word of wholesale assholery will spread faster than the clap through the church choir and professional credibility will be lost screaming into the flames.

Along the sunny scope of mayhem I sit behind thy untouched soul
And so gracefully and on still waters the reaper hums a merry tune…

“Liberation is the code my friend
and as am I your witness,
floating on a palm tree
down the misty river stix”

He casts a fishing line ...after hooking on his bait
and sings to me...

“it is not I who takes thee to thy fate
I'll leave that honour to this palm tree
the current and the tide
I am but a humble parasite coming for the ride”

One might disagree with Catherine David's style of assembling exhibitions, but let's not get personal and racist. At least she puts her name next to what she believes, and doesn't pathetically hide behind pseudonyms - unlike worms like auguststoned.

John, how's that working out for ya?

Like yr comments above, TW.

David is an inspired choice. Pure brilliance. She is forthright and clear about her view of things. Her visit cannot help but be immensely interesting. Despite the dreadfully sleepy line up of artists (the two repeats make it a bad joke for an event that is meant to be exciting and unpredictable), AAG's provocative selection of judge should make the occasion really memorable.

'How's that working out for me?' - you mean using the name my parents gave me? Very happy about it, thank you T. I've no complaints.

J Hur - "pathetically hide behind pseudonyms - unlike worms like auguststoned."


Flake - "John, how's that working out for ya?"


I would venture to guess that what Flake is alluding to (if I'm wrong on this Flake I'll stand corrected) with his - John, how's that working out for ya? - barb is the fact that your autodidactic 'eyecontact forum' gets very little contributory content.. non-anonymous or otherwise.

"The smallest worm will turn being trodden on,
And doves will peck in safeguard of their brood.

- Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 3

Dove pecking in safeguard of his brood:
J Hur - "David is an inspired choice. Pure brilliance. "

Now there's dog-whistle speech ( meaning its tone is meant to be exclusively heard by lower-life-forms the whistle's designed to gain the attention of ) if ever I heard it.

Hurrell apparently knows which side his bread's buttered on who's doing the buttering for him.
I would hazard his (Hurrell's) broken lurking silence is now just broken because one of his handlers has been pricked and ticked by - what has been described here as - atavistic rage.

To re-join Nos's lucid counterargument - I beg to differ that professional credibility or professional accountability has much to do with Catherine David's career longevity. Her Documenta was roundly panned by a remarkably broad spectrum of critical opinion. Unless her appearance in New Zealand is equivalent to a thespian being forced (by career reversals) to play in the provinces she is very much (witness her Bard award) aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive.

The only case I can recall of a curator or director being held to account was the case of Christina Orr-Cahall... whose slow descent can be precisely dated from the day she decided to cancel an exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe's X Portfolio.

On the other hand I have seen multiple Icarus-like falls by artists who had pissed of (for one reason or another) or publicly disagreed with a well-placed art professionals.

Contextual/conceptual art is all the rage because it's easy. Not in the sense that "my kid could do that" (often used to dismiss 'crap' painting), but in the way that any second or third year art student can 'appropriate' (art world term for plagiarism) any 60s or 70s conceptual artists that they find in books. Some people have built and are building their whole art career on this plagiarism. Call it revisionist if you want, but it really is like reading cliff notes on, say, a Shakespeare play, memorising a few lines, then purporting to be an expert. You wouldn't have to scratch very deep to expose the rot...but, of course, people don't scratch that deep (and by people I mean the taste makers, dealers, curators and tutors supporting this stuff). That is because they've all read the same cliff notes and they can all speak the faux-language, and they're all in the club, and they all think they're 'experts' (or genius poets, or something). Gambia Castle is a very good example of this, of the nepotism in the art world...when I got the first email (clever spam-like email) I thought "oh God, here we go, it's High School all over again! Here is the cool kids club!"

Well, do we want in?...not all of us I should think (unless you're an impressionable second or third year art student) and if we were in the club we might actually see how insecure it all is. So this is why you might get the invites to the openings, but the spirit of the place itself is not very inviting...

But, having said all this, I do think there have been great works at Gambia Castle by some good artists (and a lot of them are very easy-going outside the art context), and I do like conceptual art when done well...you see, I've read the books too...

I just don't like the clique nature of this kind of art because it reveals how insecure these artists are and how much they need support. If so much more of it had a genuine sense of self and a sensitivity to the past, rather than out and out plagiarism, the sophistication of the work would feel more assured and less defensive. It could exist on its own and not in the big comfy cradle set up by all the people who are too insecure not to be in that conceptual cool kids club.

It’s a mutual symbiosis. If it weren't for the cool kids club artists couldn’t exist, yet they rarely are a part of it… envious maybe. If artists are prepared to listen, they shouldn't be dismissed for having a voice, no matter if it’s just a burp that comes out.

Maelstrom
I have liked everyone I've met who is involved with Gambia Castle & approve of the basic thing they do (that is, organize themselves into a self-supporting, self-advertising collective) rather than wait for exterior imprimatur. It's just what artists should do. They don't seem exclusive at all or display a lot of cool-kid attitude and disdain...which is refreshing.

Hall of fame doing the same:
Dadaists, Situationists, Letterists, Fluxus, Art and Language, Colab, Group Material, Guerrilla Girls, REPOhistory, Act Up, Gran Fury and General Idea.........and more recently, Temporary Services, Slanguage, Forcefield, Milhaus, Royal Art Lodge, Alfie, Instant Coffee, Beige, Radical Software Group, RTMark, Critical Art Ensemble, Ultra-Red,Reclaim the Streets, Electronic Disturbance Theater (also called Electronic Civil Disobedience), Institute for Applied Autonomy and the Center for Land Use Interpretation.

A lot of the stuff shown at Gambia is provisional by nature, anti-aesthetic and by default quotes senior practitioners of this hoary sort of approach to scandalizing one's uncle.. Uncle Art.

What usually occurs with such groups is attrition. One or two go on to be accomadated ( culture can only accomadate so much 'genius') by existing institutions - both commercial and public. While the rest get real jobs and tell their war stories to wide-eyed grandkids. In the lead, for complicated reasons, at Gambia is Simon Denny...in fact he may already have gone solo (the fault of Yoko no doubt).

As is the case with painting and objects... the great proportion of the production shown at Gambia and art of the gambia brand/style is shite. I think the proportion of bad conceptual and bad standard-issue format art is about equal....with an edge given to painting and objects because so much more of it is made.

The bad conceptual stuff has a shorter shelf life than does bad painting and sculpture simply because its hard to sell much bad conceptual art ....one can usually find at a taker for bad paintings and objects at the right price.

Bad art and the over production of bad art is a self correcting problem.

The real and systemic problem in the artworld is the rise and fattening of the professional class. Art professionals that is. Of which Catherine David is a worst case example.

The Catherine Davids of the world don't scatter to the winds - they rise to the level of their own incompetence (and short of a Christina Orr-Cahall sized ideological misstep) and stay there.

Every year there are more and more of these blood-suckers and every year there are more and more jobs for them. They work well with others - others like themselves. They move fluidly in governmental and private circles full of linear thinking, nest feathering, never-had -an-original-idea-they-didn't hate-and-try-to-kill types. Folks whose professional duties are the antithesis of the creative act and whose policies, choices and designs are wrought from a deep loathing for the ungovernable life force that characterizes good art - both material and conceptual.

Easy to dismiss my stylistically overheated jeremiads....they are meant to be over the top...they seek attention that way. But I've seen (substantively) the things I describe (in purple prose) goose-step down the streets of my town (artville) and chill the mood that had me move there in the first place.

The attitude that Maelstrom ascribes to Gambia Castle and other cool kids is actually the kind of exclusive, excluding, high-handed, proprietary huff that radiates off the Catherine Davids of the world. You might get an audience with her but not by walking in off the street....you'll have to have the right introduction. And what that introduction will cost you, believe me, you don't want to pay.

Fuck 'em all and let dog sort 'em out.

John Hurrell (if that is your real name) you bag the artists up for the Walters prize and laud the judge as the most interesting part of the production. If this is how you feel why are you not calling for a cancellation of the prize? je ne comprend pas....

.... arts administrators are not the avant guarde.

Interesting discussion.

Auguststoned makes a lot of sense when saying that Gambia castle represents an excellent and well tested model for artists who dont want to sit around in sack and ash like Cinderella waiting for the Art Fairy Godmother to arrive.

It's a lasting irony that anyone who actually gets off their arse and makes something happen on their own initiative is so quickly lampooned for being self interested and closed.
Of course they are working for themselves, thats the whole point, so what? They are also making the NZ art scene more interesting place by turning up regularly with new work, whether you like it or think it 'good art' is moot.

Nepotism and clubbishness is the way art 'institution' (in the loosest sense) works. Love it or hate it, we ALL prefer to work with people we like and who share similar goals. Mutual back scratching is an old old way of managing human affairs.

That dynamic is obviously more disturbing when the nepotism and clubbishness involves the passing from hand to hand of large sums of money while simultaneously sending high minded press releases about quality.

Is that the case with the Walters? Anyone in the club care to comment?

I appreciate the comments being made to counter what I think were tautological for my part to begin with. Using the term 'cool-kids-club' appears derisive and is short-hand for a lot of things...there is good art at Gambia but another analogy might be a music industry one: they act as an 'independent' label behind which is the major (corporate) label (or labels: Michael Lett, Starkwhite and Sue Crockford).

I think Peter and John in the Walters Award again does smack of nepotism...hmmmm.

As a Gambian, only 3 of the 10 of us have "other" 'representation. We don't control one another, we are free to pursue relationships where we can. You know maelstrom that's what it is about. We represent each others work, support it, if we're cool I think it's cause we actually respect each other work/workings and want each other to do more good . I'd love to hear in more detail about this weak conceptualism, I keep hearing it as like a poor variation of strong conceptualism. You like strong conceptualism, yes, like strong tea. How do you read change that you don't agree with cause it's different. SO FEW OF YOU HAVE GOTTEN OFF YOUR ARSE AND SAID ANYTHING ABOUT THE WORK YOU LAZY SELF SANCTIFIED FUCKS> HOW BOUT SHIFTING YOU POINT OF VIEW TO SEE WHERE THE ARTIST IS YOU GET IT , WHERE THE ARTIST IS > NOT WHERE YOU WANT THEM TO BE. wait let me do well overseas first. Then