The Happiest place on earth, 3D print, by Brit Bunkley

18Nov

The Happiest place on earth, PLA, paint and artifical flowers, 55 x 45 x 10 cm, by Brit Bunkley

<img src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/1022_1137f_tv-bb-mz.jpg" alt="Left to Right: Photograph by Thom Vink
The Speed of Dark, 3 objects on a shelf by Thom Vink + The Happiest place on earth, 3D print by Brit Bunkley” width=”300″ height=”463″ class=”size-full wp-image-1581″ /> Left to Right: Photograph by Thom Vink
The Speed of Dark, 3 objects on a shelf by Thom Vink + The Happiest place on earth, 3D print by Brit Bunkley
  
This is one of three 3D printed architectural and cultural models from scans of actual structures combined with a bunch of artifical flowers by Brit Bunkley in this exhibition.

“The Happiest place on earth” is based the Sleeping Beauty Castle at the centre of Disneyland in California, which in turn is based on the late-19th century Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, Germany.

Left to Right: Photograph + The Speed of Dark,
3 objects on a shelf by Thom Vink;
Warm Memories by Martje Zandboer;
The Happiest place on earth, PLA, paint and artifical flowers, 55 x 45 x 10 cm, by Brit Bunkley

Cast in a dark grey plastic as a facade with ragged edges and stuffed with a bunch of black flowers it comes across as an errie romantic ruin in miniature.

Bunkley’s series of abject sculptures are works about nature vs culture, nature out of culture and reminders of the darker side of the transcience of culture. More >>

“Peaceable Kingdom” made with Andrea Gardner is a 2017 suite of sculptures on show in the
Auckland Botanical Gardens until February 2018.

13 New Zealand and Hague Based artists in The Poetic Condition show until 10 Dec 2017 at the BackWal Gallery, 99 Atkinson Ave, Otaki.  12 Nov blog | Exhibition info | BritBunkley.com

Cameraless photography by Martje Zandboer + colonial tea-baggage

13Nov

Left to Right: works by Sanne Maes (video + drawing) + Thom Vink (photographs + model on shelf), Martje Zandboer (emulsion on teabags), Brit Bunkley (PLA plastic and Fiberglas reinforced resin and artificial flowers)

Left to Right: Detail of Thom Vink’s model on shelf, Martje Zandboer (emulsion on teabags), “The Happiest Place on Earth” by Brit Bunkley (PLA plastic and fiberglas reinforced resin and artificial flowers).

Martje Zandboer’s series 2008 “Warm Memories,” are photographic impressions from negatives that belonged to her grandmother who was born and raised in Indonesia while it was a Dutch Colony (the Dutch East Indies).

This Dutch colony was formed by the 17th century Dutch East India trading Company, which came under the administration of the Dutch government in 1800. This colony was one of the most valuable European colonies and contributed to Dutch global prominence in spice and cash crop trade in the 19th to early 20th century. The colonial social order was based on rigid racial and social structures with a Dutch elite living separate from but linked to their native subjects.

Warm Memories by Martje Zandboer


These images depict her grandmother and her husband in Indonesia from the 1920s until 1949 when she then moved to the Netherlands as did many Dutch and Indonesians when Indonesian sovereignty was finally accepted after a struggle for independence after the end of World War Two. Like many she was held in a POW camp by the Japanese.

Warm Memories, 2008, photographic emulsion on teabags held by magnets, by Martje Zandboer, The Hague , The Netherlands


The stains and irregularities lend a nostalgic warmth to a story mixed with suffering and change. Martje grew up hearing these bittersweet stories of her grandmother’s time in prison, followed by being forced to leave the land she was raised in.

Each teabag is suspended in space, held by a magnet. A reminder of the affects of the chances and changes of culture and times we are born into.

Martje Zandboer, a graduate of the Hague Royal Academy of Fine Arts (2005), with a Master’s in photography from Falmouth University, Cornwall, U.K. (2008), lives in The Hague, The Netherlands. Since 2006 she has taught art courses for adults and children for the city public art museum (Gemeente Museum) and the Mesdag Museum in the Hague as well as sandstone and ice sculpting for other Hague museums. Recent exhibitions are “Drawing a family around Me” at Galerie It Frysk Skildershûs in Leeuwarden (2010), The Netherlands; Eigenwijs weimar in Atelier Paul v/d Donk (2012), The Hague, and the International competition for young photographers Sotiri 2011 with her series “Intimate Propaganda: Family photographs” in Galleria ‘Guri Madhi’, Albania. Her art practice varies from the pedagogical to painting and drawing, to experimental photographic work.

Watch this space for blogs on the works by 13 New Zealand and Hague Based artists in The Poetic Condition show until 10 Dec 2017 at the BackWal Gallery, 99 Atkinson Ave, Otaki.  12 Nov blog | Exhibition info

Otaki show of diverse media: 3 of the Hague based artists

12Nov

Left to Right: works by Sonja van Kerkhoff (print on aluminium), Sanne Maes (video + drawing) + Thom Vink (photographs + model on shelf)

Josephine’s Mother, print on aluminium and oil paint by Sonja van Kerkhoff.
The pose and composition of Josephine’s Mother is similar to the 1871 painting Whistler’s Mother where in this case, Josephine is the child the young woman is carrying. The mother looks alert and details such as a watch and the wall plug indicate that hers is a contemporary world, although she wears clothing typical of a bygone age. More >>

Still from Bird of Prey by Sanne Maes

Bird of Prey, drawing on tracing paper + video, loop 0’25”, 21″ LCD tv in custom made frame by Sanne Maes
Her work consists mainly of video installations; video images (either on a monitor or projected in space) which are projected onto a drawing, a painting or an object. She uses short looped clips to create the sense of repetition in motion. In some works this creates a sense of the picturesque where images move and come to life and in other works this creates a sense of the body being locked or trapped within the drawing.
In her other works the dissonance between the still and moving images often alludes to mortality. This theme of transience and transformation is a reference to our humanity in relation to our environment – everything is linked, from micro to macro. We are all parts of the natural world. More >>

The Speed of Dark by Thom Vink


Dark Entries, black and white photograph by Thom Vink. Edition of 5.
Untitled, black and white photograph by Thom Vink. Edition of 5.
The Speed of Dark, 3 cardboard models + shelf by Thom Vink.

Thom is a graduate of the Royal Academy of the Hague School of Art (1990). In 1992 he co-founded the artist-run gallery, Quartair (www.quartair.nl). His works are poetic references to our lived-in space. Often he builds house-like models as a counterpart to his atmosperic black and white photographs. These ‘wall-based installations’ are also a play on the theme of display and objectivity. Just as in the site-specific work of Sol LeWitt, Vink has given instructions for the poetics of how his work is to be arranged, rather than specifying a particular composition. They appear as one work and yet are several works in which the boundaries are blurred. Recent exhibitions are his 2009-10 solo exhibition, MOTH HOUSE in the Hague Centre for Visual Arts and Architecture, The Netherlands, and the group exhibitions Patterns of the Mind, Turku Biennial 2011, and Limbus, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, also in Finland. More >>

Watch this space for a daily blog on the works by 13 New Zealand and Hague Based artists in The Poetic Condition show until 10 Dec 2017 at the BackWal Gallery, 99 Atkinson Ave, Otaki.  13 Nov blog | Exhibition info

“The Poetic Condition” Backwal Gallery, Otaki

20Aug

Still from Cleaning the Air by Pietertje van Splunter

The Poetic Condition
De Dichterlijke Aard

28 Oct – 10 Dec 2017
13 artists from
The Hague and
Aotearoa | New Zealand

A Red Lemon (Een Rode Citroen), 2015, 9′ 53” Sound: Anne Wellmer. Drawings: Geerten Ten Bosch. Animation: Harriët van Reek. Text: Helene Cixous. Voice: Stephie Büttrich-Kolman


Thom Vink
Sanne Maes
Channa Boon
Anne Wellmer
Martje Zandboer
Sonja van Kerkhoff
Pietertje van Splunter
Michelle Backhouse
Adrienne Spratt
Edward Walton
Brenda Tuuta
Brit Bunkley
Hopeha

99 Atkinson Ave, Otaki

Still from Bird of Prey by Sanne Maes

Open
Saturdays + Sundays
10-4 p.m.
or by appointment.
021 260 5723

Exhibition events
28 Oct: 11 a.m. – 12 noon “Impressions of the Venice Biennale, Documenta + Munster Skulptuur” by Sonja van Kerkhoff

Meet the artists
in the gallery
28 Oct: 10-3 pm Michelle Backhouse, Edward Walton, Sonja van Kerkhoff

“Lake Alice” – from the abject history series by Brit Bunkley.

These artists explore, respond or extend the theme of our human nature and the relevance of the aesthetic of poetic intervention to the self, socio-political or society with a wide range of media and approaches to ‘big questions’ (who are we, how do we live, how do we think/feel), so that the exhibition as a whole is like an installation encompassing diversities of vision.

Netting by Michelle Backhouse.


Some artworks are poetic selections with direct reference to contemporary political worlds, such as Channa Boon’s video, Brit Bunkley’s objects referencing abject histories of place or Sonja van Kerkhoff’s nature vs nurture flower transparencies. Others use materials or metaphors associated with cultural expression and relate them to the personal, such as Brenda Tuuta’s woven ‘speaking’ pieces, Adrienne Spratt’s giant sized basket and Anne Wellmer’s videos. Martje Zandboer’s suspended miniatures, which contain family photographs from the Dutch East Indies, mix Dutch colonial history with the theme of the personal and intergenerational. Thom Vink’s works take a more material versus human spirit perspective, where architectural models and photographs create a composite humane aesthetic, while Sanne Maes’ self-portrait video/drawing connects the self with the natural world. Pietertje van Splunter’s videos are like a poetics on the mundane: housework. Her brooms seem animated by an unearthly force and the constant stacking of the differing tribes of kitchen utensils suggests a game with secret rules. In using humour with the overkill her videos are reminders that the everyday domestic, is also a microcosm of the amusing, perhaps necessary banality of habit while Michelle Backhouse’s sculptures use seemingly banal materials, building paper, netting or house paint to create ethereal protusions.

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Inter-sensory correspondences

13Jan

Detail of “The Poetic Condition” in the Shutter Room, Whangarei.
Left to Right: Triptych by Inge Reisberman, Photos and model by Thom Vink, Video-drawing by Sannes Maes and the grid of photo-drawing combinations by Christiaan van Tol.

Tomorrow is the final day of the show and this ends with a spectacular presentation beginning at 12 noon by Auckland artist, Raewyn Turner, who will show and demonstrate inter-sensory correspondences in her own art projects as well as leading a discussion on ‘the poetic condition’ when it comes to the artistic practice. Links to a 7 min film about her scent work and where and when, and the Facebook event page.

Left to Right: Photograph + mixed media by Marg Morrow, Photogram by Megan Dickinson, Videos by Pietertje van Splunter, detail of a photo-model installation by Thom Vink

Left to Right: Detail of photos and model by Thom Vink, Two photo-grams by Lisa Clunie, Photograph by Elektra Bakhshov.

Left to Right: Photograph by Ellie Smith, Print by Sonja van Kerkhoff, Video by Anne Wellme (in collaboration with Geerten Ten Bosch, Harriët van Reek + Stephie Büttrich-Kolman), Photograph + mixed media by Marg Morrow, Photogram by Megan Dickinson, Videos by Pietertje van Splunter, detail of a photo-model installation by Thom Vink, Video by Channa Boon.

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