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Pink and White Terrace pieces sell for $64,000

March 31, 2012
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Rare pieces spark interest around the globe

Two pieces of the Pink and White Terraces that were collected by a teenager whose family died a year later when Mt Tarawera erupted have been sold at auction.

The specimens were bought for $64,000 by a private buyer at an art auction in Auckland.

The buyer has confirmed the pieces will stay in New Zealand but did not want his identity revealed.

International Art Centre director Richard Thomson said the specimens were collected by 15-year-old Ina Haszard, who lost most of her family when Mt Tarawera erupted in 1886 burying the terraces forever…..

Auckland Now

New Zealand Art prints and posters by NZ Artists - NZ Fine Prints

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The Auckland Writers and Readers Festival

March 23, 2012
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May 9 – May 13

The Auckland Writers & Readers Festival was born of a desire to celebrate and promote literacy, reading, writing and ideas in Auckland. A community of writers, booksellers, publishers and avid readers invested grass roots enthusiasm into what has become an eagerly anticipated annual event.

Three annual festivals in 1999, 2000 and 2001 ran largely on volunteer horsepower before The Auckland Writers and Readers Festival Charitable Trust was formed in 2001, and an endowment fund initiated with the support of Foundation Patrons. The festival went biennial as it built resources: the 2003 and 2005 festivals grew in scope and audience numbers before the event returned to its annual roots in 2006.

Over eleven years, more than 151,000 people have attended the festival, from an audience of around 5,000 at the first festival in 1999 to over 31,000 in 2011. A consistently growing audience has taken the festival to heart, as have over  1,100 writers, including over two hundred international writers who have visited Auckland specifically for the event.

The festival’s success is the result of a deep respect and admiration for writers and their craft, a genuine belief in the power of reading and writing, alongside impeccable planning and meticulous care of guests and the ability to respond to feedback from an ever-growing audience and each year’s writers.

Auckland Writers and Readaers Festival

 

The Auckland Writers and Readers Festival, New Zealand’s biggest festival of literature and ideas has announced its line‐up of more than 100 leading international and New Zealand writers and thinkers, including prizewinners Jeffrey Eugenides and Roddy Doyle.

Other major writers include cosmologist and public intellectual Lawrence Krauss, prizewinning Rolling Stone journalist Michael Hastings, spy fiction author Dame Stella Rimington, crime writer Peter James and New Zealand icon Maurice Gee.

The festival will be mainly presented at the Aotea Centre combining a dedicated two‐day schools’ programme with three days and nights of public sessions.

The Festival’s new Artistic Director Anne O’Brien says “This is a programme designed to reach out across the country, providing stimulation, insight and pleasure to all New Zealanders, no matter what their reading interests. With a stellar line‐up in and around the Festival’s Aotea Centre home, delivered with the flair and polish for which we have become known, there is something for everyone.”

Among the twenty‐three international writers so far confirmed are fiction authors Sebastian Barry (Ire), Jesmyn Ward (US), Charlotte Wood (UK) and A.D. Miller (UK) and Australian diva Kathy Lette.

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The New Zealand Ballet and New York

March 14, 2012
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NZ Ballet takes three bites of the Big Apple

John Daly-Peoples | Thursday March 01, 2012

The Royal NZ Ballet’s latest show NYC continues the great tradition of triple bills highlighting the superb talent of the company.

The three works all have connections with New York and the new artistic Director Ethan Stiefel. There also some of his colleagues from the city and his fiancé, the guest dancer Gillian Murphy. They appear to have given the company a tune up, injecting a new vigour and big city aspirations.

The opening work “28 Variations on a Theme by Paganini” based on the work by Brahms was set on a plain black stage with one crystal chandelier. Each of the short movement was like the clear beautiful jewels of the chandelier, each with different facets and dimensions.

National Business Review

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Where is the digital revolution taking us?

March 4, 2012
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The internet is creating new and exciting ways of doing things while changing many things we hold dear.

It’s the kind of moment that makes you wonder about the massive technology-driven changes the world is going through. Youths wait in line all night in the freezing cold outside an Apple store in Beijing’s upmarket Sanlitun area for the new iPhone 4S smartphone to go on sale. Just before dawn, the orderly queue fractures apart as anticipation gets the better of Apple fans willing to pay upwards of US$800 for a gadget that may be designed in California but is actually made in China…..

 

The New Zealand Listener

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French film festival

February 26, 2012
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This year’s French Film Festival in Wellington will hold special attraction for rugby aficionados.

Le Fils a Jo (Jo’s Boy) is the story of Jo Canavero, the third in a dynasty of sports legends in France’s rugby- mad south-west.

To Jo’s huge disappointment, his son Tom is more interested in mathematics than sport.

A former All Black named Jonah arrives out of left field to save the day……

French Film Festival

The Dominion Post

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Art Deco in Napier

February 26, 2012
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By Karen Leland, Special to the Los Angeles TimesFebruary 26, 2012
Reporting from Napier

At 10:47 a.m. on Feb. 3, 1931, an earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale shook the town of Napier, onNew Zealand’sNorth Island, killing 161 people. The fires that followed consumed all but a few reinforced concrete buildings. In 21/2 minutes, Napier ceased to exist.

In a bold move two years later, the residents of Napier broke with their colonial tradition and rebuilt the town in Art Deco style, made popular in Europe of the ’20s. This transformation made Napier a leading-edge architectural city and one of the most modern of its day.

I had been obsessed with the 1920s since my stint playing Vera in a community theater production of “Mame.” The sartorial style, with its flapper dresses and bobbed hair, and the free-flowing curves and waves of the period’s architecture, has always resonated strongly with me…..

LA Times

 

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Call for Auckland to protect its gifts of significance

February 26, 2012
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People who make significant gifts to the city should be guaranteed they will not be sold off, says Auckland Council member Mike Lee.

He and others have called for the draft Auckland Plan to strengthen and encourage philanthropy as being vital for arts, culture and heritage to flourish.

In 2006, when Mr Lee was chairman of the former Auckland Regional Council, Pierre and Jackie Chatelanat gave the council their $10 million sheep and cattle station at Atiu Creek overlooking the Kaipara Harbour…..

 

NZ Herald

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John Pule

February 26, 2012
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John Pule has long been established as a significant figure in New Zealand art and this exhibition, at the Auckland Art Gallery, is a reflection of his stature. Organised by the City Gallery in Wellington and housed in the Auckland gallery’s spacious top floor, it shows to great advantage.

Pule was a poet before he was a painter, although as a young boy – born in Niue but living in a state house in Auckland – he won an art award. Significantly, his winning drawing was of a clash, a car accident, lots of red blood and an ambulance…..

NZ Herald

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The New Zealand Arts Festival

February 25, 2012
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The New Zealand International Arts Festival

The New Zealand International Arts Festival is New Zealand’s premier cultural event and a leading multi-arts festival in Australasia.  The Festival has an esteemed reputation among artists and audiences for bringing the very best from around the globe to Aotearoa, New Zealand.

Every two years Wellington transforms into one of the world’s great festival cities. For 24 days, its easily accessible theatres, concert halls, museums, galleries and open spaces come alive with theatre, dance and music, literature, film and visual arts.

The Festival attracts 290,000 people to over 300 events across three Festival weeks.  Enlivening New Zealand’s coolest little capital, Wellington, it is a national Festival for all New Zealanders.

While the major focus of the Festival is on international works, it also showcases the best of New Zealand work, fostering creative and professional opportunities for many New Zealand artists. The Festival has commissioned a significant body of new work, producing more than 89 new plays, operas, music, dance and other events that tell our stories and reflect our culture.

New Zealand Arts Festival

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Superstar Ethan Stiefel talks Royal New Zealand Ballet

February 16, 2012
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The new artistic director of New Zealand’s premier ballet company, Ethan Stiefel, tells Rebecca Barry Hill what brought him from New York to guide our stagecraft.

Toys are perched on a shelf in Ethan Stiefel’s Wellington office: a cowboy banana, a headless break-dancer, a tiny Viking. An odd thing to have in your workspace, you might think, if you’re one of the world’s most recognised dancers…..

NZ Herald

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When movies mention New Zealand

February 16, 2012
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Auckland’s Civic Theatre. 1991. Keanu Reeves is playing an action lead for the first time. He has tracked Patrick Swayze’s bank-robbing surfer to Australia’s Bells Beach. Swayze is pleading his case: he wants take one last ride on the once-in-a-lifetime waves crashing in the background.

“Hell, I’m not gonna paddle to New Zealand!” he exclaims. A sense of bemused pride fills the theatre while an appropriately small section of the audience applauds.

New Zealand’s presence in the collective culture as expressed by movies has increased considerably since 1991 (when Point Break, the film referenced above, was released), but we still find ourselves squealing with delight every time our country is mentioned in a major film…..

NZ Herald

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Why are NZers so bad at taking criticism?

February 16, 2012
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On my last Friday in Wellington I found myself in Slowboat Records scanning the small crowd of shoppers for expat journalist and author Garth Carthwright. I found him decked out in a pork-pie hat and bursting backpack, flicking through the rare vinyl section.

In October last year Cartwright released Sweet As. It is a mainly engaging ramble of a tale, covering a journey through New Zealand 20 years after his leaving. The book is the equivalent of being in the front seat with the author as he takes a road trip both geographical and nostalgic.

Cartwright is not completely positive about New Zealand in Sweet As, nor is he entirely scathing…..

Stuff

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Poetry in a new light

February 16, 2012
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Take one of New Zealand’s best-known artists and pair him up with one of our iconic poets and the result is a range of unique artworks that celebrate both their talents.

Since splashing Sam Hunt’s poems over canvas, Dick Frizzell is now moved to tears when he reads his new friend’s poems, which is an interesting confession for an expressionist pop artist who admits he’s never been keen on poetry.

“I avoided it at school. I always thought, ‘Poetry, poetry, what the f… is poetry’?,” he laughs.

“But I’ve been converted to Sam’s poetry. It’s funny, when you spend a lot of time working with them, I can now hardly quote them without choking. They are so profound.”…..

Stuff

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Karl Maughan’s language of flowers

February 16, 2012
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For an artist who is renowned for painting splendid rhododendrons and gardens exploding with colour, Karl Maughan knows surprisingly little about flowers and plants.

In fact, the Auckland home he shares with his partner, novelist Emily Perkins, and three children, is almost colourless. Green natives are dotted about, amid a cluster of sunflowers and cornflowers. “But it’s a very green garden,” he says.

Maughan is one of our most prolific artists who hasn’t deviated from the flowers and gardens he has become renowned for, which he has been painting for almost 25 years since he graduated from art school…..

Stuff

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Waikato Society of Arts Annual Exhibition

February 8, 2012
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 A variety of members work in two dimensional and three dimensional media.

The dazzling diversity of subject, media and technique in this exhibition by WSA members highlights the inspiration that springs from its multifaceted membership.

Location/venue: ArtsPost Galleries and Shop, 120 Victoria st, Hamilton
Date: 5 May 2012 - 4 Jun 2012
Cost: Free
Entry details: 10am-4.30pm daily
Contact details: 07 838 6928

 

 

 

 

www.artspost.co.nz

 

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Chamber Music Contest

February 8, 2012
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Entries are now open for the 2012 contest

The New Zealand Community Trust Chamber Music Contest is the longest running youth music competition in New Zealand and is the only nationwide chamber music competition for young secondary school musicians and composers in the country. It is presented annually by Chamber Music New Zealand.

The purpose of the Chamber Music Contest is to encourage young musicians regardless of standard or experience, to perform together and strive towards excellence. It also aims to provide an opportunity for musical activities within schools to have a link with the wider community at both a local and national level.

Visit the 2012 section of the contest to view all of the latest details including rules, how to enter and the contest dates.

Note that changes have been made to the Original Composition section of the Contest for 2012, please click here for details. 

 

Chamber Music New Zealand

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Companion backing Maori literature

January 23, 2012
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Robyn Bargh hopes the next two decades will bring more international recognition for Maori authors.

As managing director of Wellington publishing company Huia, Ms Bargh has spent the past two decades fostering Maori writers of fiction and non-fiction and is proud of the company’s success.

For her efforts, she was made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the New Year honours – something she felt belonged to everyone who had helped her…..

National

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Brian Boyd

January 23, 2012
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“Lolita” author Vladimir Nabokov speaks from the beyond the grave.

BORDEAUX, France, January 22, 2012 — Millions of Americans have read Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita — usually for the wrong reasons — while ignoring the voluminous trove of literature the Russian-born master left us. He has been called the premier stylist of the English language, but his prose can also be demanding. Many readers turn away.

Brian Boyd, a New Zealand academic and Nabokov’s main biographer, has studied Nabokov’s works, edited some of them posthumously, and placed the entire oeuvre in context as a “natural bridge” between English-language and Russian-language literature.

Nabokov demanding? Yes, says Boyd, but he is also the funniest writer ever…..

 

Washington Times

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New Zealand Maori Art forms being shared with Parisian communities

January 23, 2012
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In celebration of the successful partnership between Maori communities of New Zealand and the peoples of the French Republic – traditional Māori art practises and customs are on show at de musée du quai Branly in late January. A group of renowned Māori traditional arts experts will be sharing the Maori culture through public events designed to bring traditional culture alive for young and old alike. The group is in Paris promoting the work of Toi Maori Aotearoa: Maori Arts New Zealand.

This cultural exchange programme coincides with the conclusion of Maoris, leurs trésors ont une âme at de musée du quai Branly, and the exchange of Maori ancestral remains which are being repatriated to New Zealand…..

Waatea News

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White Fungus to be part of show at Museum of Modern Art, New York

January 19, 2012
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Art magazine White Fungus, which began in Wellington in 2004, will be part of the exhibition Millennium Magazines at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The exhibition, which opens on February 20, is a survey of artists’ magazines published since 2000. It will explore the various ways in which contemporary artists utilize the magazine format as an experimental space for the presentation of works and text.

Throughout the 20th century, the activities of groups and collectives were often codified first in the informal context of a magazine or journal; this exhibition, drawn from the holdings of the MoMA Library, follows the practice into the 21st century……

 

Wellington Scoop

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World premiere of New Zealand opera at arts festival

January 19, 2012
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“Hōhepa’s long journey is a tale most of us are ignorant of. But, curiously, preparing forHōhepa and bringing it to life is making me feel much more connected to being a New Zealander.”
[Sara Brodie, Director]

The NBR New Zealand Opera opens its 2012 season with Jenny McLeod’s ground-breaking new opera, Hōhepa. Premièring at the New Zealand International Arts Festival in Wellington in March, Hōhepa is the true story of the friendship between Maori chief Hōhepa and Pakeha settler Thomas Mason during the New Zealand Wars.

Jenny McLeod, widely respected as one of New Zealand’s foremost composers, took up the task of writing the libretto and music of Hōhepa in the late ’90s, and since then her research has been extensive, based on recorded, personal and oral histories…..

 

Wellington Scoop

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Drug-Related Thefts Growing Concern For Art Galleries

January 19, 2012
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Art has officially become the new sound investment over stocks and bonds, but we recently learned that art is now being used as leverage in a drug deal! It’s all too much. One dealer (of the art variety) is claiming that dealers (of the drug variety) are running a black market for artwork in Auckland, New Zealand….

Huffington Post

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Light, quick-witted work

January 19, 2012
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An artful pick and mix

A good title can only take you so far. Sometimes though that can be quite a way. Particularly when the art backs it up. A great example is Never Mind the Pollocks, a small, smart exhibition at Suite Gallery. Never Mind the Bollocks was the title of the Sex Pistols’ first album, effectively summing up punk’s offhand witty stand against the ponderous and laborious musical statements of prog rock.

Featuring four male artists, with his twist on that title, curator James R Ford also takes a stand against the stereotypical male art as producing the big, weighty and earnest (a la Jackson Pollock)….

Dominion Post

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Gretchen Albrecht and Eve Armstrong

January 19, 2012
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A collaboration between Gretchen Albrecht and Eve Armstrong is a rare moment of art-world bravery, says Anthony Byrt.

When an exhibition fails to engage the public, it’s easy for us in the art world to say, “Hey, it was probably too challenging; maybe it went over their heads.” Lately I’ve been starting to think perhaps we’re not being challenging enough – that instead of pushing ideas to their limits so people walk away agitated, confronted or thrilled, all we’re really doing is leaving them blandly confused.

But very occasionally you hear about a show with genuine train-wreck potential. For example, Michael Lett, in collaboration with Sue Crockford, has just opened a two-person show at his Auckland gallery that at first glance seems like a crazy pairing: one of our most important abstract painters….

The Llistener

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Hamish Keith on museums

January 19, 2012
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A disclosure: I chair a working party of a bunch of museum professionals, with an eminent architect thrown in, who are making a case for exhibition space on the Auckland waterfront for the national collections.

Other than to note that there is ample precedent for that – Britain’s Tate has four branch offices and Russia’s Hermitage five – I won’t repeat the arguments here. What was fascinating was the fallout. Most frequently asked question: “Won’t this compete with the other Auckland museums and take away Auckland visitors to Te Papa?” That might seem an obvious fret, but as far as I am aware, not one museum on this planet has closed down because another opened…..

The Listener

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Variety of rare Oceanic art arrives on the auction block this February in San Francisco

January 13, 2012
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SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- Bonhams looks forward to presenting its inaugural auction solely devoted to Oceanic Art on February 11 in San Francisco, with 150 lots of original, diverse works from the regions of Polynesia, Melanesia, Micronesia, Indonesia and Australia, that will appeal to both seasoned and entry-level collectors. The auction is timed to occur alongside the 26th Annual San Francisco Tribal & Textile Arts Show, non-affiliated with Bonhams, February 10-12 at the Fort Mason Center….

 

Art Daily

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Artists provide their takes on Len Lye

January 13, 2012
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At New Plymouth’s Govett- Brewster Art Gallery at the moment, you will find that sound and language, image and text are strongly connected in the vibrant work of New Zealand-born modernist artist Len Lye (1901 to 1980).

In addition to Lye’s films, poems and sculptures, the exhibition Old Genes: Artists reading Len Lye presents the work of five contemporary artists engaging with Lye’s legacy and the role of language in his work.

Phil Dadson contemplates Lye’s Universe in a new video work in which performers substitute language for sound drawn from the body. Tessa Laird produces “facsimiles” of Lye’s sketchbook pages, hand-copied and illustrated by Lye as he studied in Australasian museums and libraries….

Taranaki Daily News

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Kapiti

January 13, 2012
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Two Kapiti artists have been selected for Shapeshifter, a biennial art exhibition that attracted over 10,000 visitors from around New Zealand and overseas in 2010.

Reikorangi artist Don DeMacedo and Te Horo’s Greg Bloomfield will showcase their work over about three weeks in February and March in the public gardens adjacent to The Dowse Art Museum in Lower Hutt.

For Mr DeMacedo it is the second time he has made his entry Plexus, after the original sculpture melted in a fire in his workshop, a converted barn, in November.

He also lost his tools and other artwork in the fire…..

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Jan Nigro interview

December 22, 2011
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By Sally Blundell

In a new set of works, Jan Nigro again brings the naked body out of the bedroom and into the lounge.

Wild flowers, hand-picked, adorning the bodies of the cloistered lovers are a gentle thread in DH Lawrence’s once scandalous story of Lady Chatterley’s affair with the gamekeeper.

“In using flowers, it is hard not to be senti­mental,” says artist Jan Nigro. “They’re a good way to soften the story and there is quite a lot of tenderness between [the lovers]. I read a small piece where she places forget-me-nots on his red pubic hair and I thought, ‘What a gorgeous combination!’ Attitudes towards their love affair have changed – it’s absolutely acceptable today – but I didn’t want to do the sexual part. I just wanted to wriggle inside and take up the flower bit…..”

The Listener

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Iconic art heads to Auckland Art Gallery

December 21, 2011
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Van Gogh, Dali works set for show

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An art exhibition surveying one of the most revolutionary periods in recent art history will open to the Auckland public next year.

Dali to Degas, which will travel exclusively to the Auckland Art Gallery from Scotland, will include paintings and sculptures from the Modernist period spanning the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries.

The 79-piece collection will open in March and will be the first paid-admission exhibition the gallery has hosted since it opened its renovated premises to the public in September.

The gallery will not say how much the exhibition costs to bring to Auckland or what the entry fee would be.

Paintings by Monet, known for his experimentation with light and colour, will be exhibited next year, alongside works by fellow heavyweight Impressionists Van Gogh and Renoir…..

Stuff.co.nz

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