Hot Photo Friday – Eikoh Hosoe
Month: May 2011
Alphaville channels Michael Zavros
Go Billy!
Leg of Lamb took great pleasure in wandering along Billy Apple’s Waipero Swamp Walk in Auckland recently. The work was commissioned by Auckland City’s public art program, and consists of a striking black and white concrete slab walkway that leads to Eden Park stadium, one of the venues for this year’s Rugby World Cup. Continue walking past the stadium and you’ll hit The Corner Post, a related component on the corner of Walters and Sandringham Road. Beautifully landscaped and wonderfully elegant in its simplicity, the walk is based upon the golden ratio and the slick lamp-posts that punctuate it are positioned according to ratio calculations. Billy ties in sporting references through his use of colour. Black and white recall rugby and cricket respectively while his vivid green plaza suggests the playing field, enhanced by the inclusion of the functional Corner Post. Thumbs up to Billy for creating such an inspired and accessible public artwork and to Auckland City for backing it.
And now some Jimi…
So long, Ira Cohen
Ira Coen died last month aged 76. A member of the 1960s counterculture, Cohen was a poet, publisher, artist and film-maker best known for his Mylar Chamber photographs. Made in the late 1960s, the series featured the likes of William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Jimi Hendrix photographed by the artist in his New York loft. Cohen created the works’ whirling, surreal effects by covering the walls and ceilings of his apartment with sheets of mylar and photographing the reflections, producing images that Hendrix described as ‘like looking through butterfly wings’.
The mylar chamber also featured in The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda (excerpt above), a 22 minute film made by Cohen in 1968 with an improvised soundtrack care of Angus MacLise, original drummer for the Velvet Underground. In true Cohen style, the film is seriously psychedelic. You can find it in its entirety online here.
Hot Photo Friday – Richard Prince
Plastic bag magic
OK, so Leg of Lamb is pretty slow off the mark here (Joshua Allen Harris was making these works in 2008) but the ephemeral bag sculptures in the clip above are delightful!
Concern for Ai Weiwei on the streets of Auckland
Bill Culbert at Sue Crockford
While in Auckland over the weekend, Leg of Lamb caught Bill Culbert’s latest show at Sue Crockford. The mix of photographs and sculptures could have done with a little more breathing space, but the works themselves are excellent. Culbert presents a series of photographs of old wine crates, scavenged from his local tip in the South of France. One suite is presented in portrait format, the other in landscape. Mounted on dibond, the matt finish of the photographs amplifies the texture of the wooden crates while the uniform, sequential nature of the series promotes their formal properties.
The accompanying Light Level works featuring fluorescent tubes upon modest rectangular frames playfully engage with the tenets of minimalism. But rather than succumbing to high formalism completely, Culbert instead reminds us of the everyday. The tubes sit atop grubby window frames, domestic emblems that disrupt a purely formal reading. The horizontal positioning of the tubes suggest glowing horizon lines, and within the bright gallery space, the panes reflect our world back upon us.
Bill Culbert, Light Levels, Sue Crockford Gallery, 2C Endeans Building, 2 Queen Street, Auckland, until May 21st.
David Lynch Signature Cup Coffee
David Lynch has his own line of organic coffee – David Lynch Signature Cup. To promote it, the film-maker and avid coffee drinker recently released the above advertisement via his Vimeo account.
Leg of Lamb 
