Art exper­i­ences often don’t require wordy explan­a­tions, but whatever these exper­i­ences could be classed as, they def­in­itely moved us.

Bri­an Brake: Lens on the World (Te Papa)
A gobsmack­ingly great ret­ro­spect­ive of NZ’s most well known pho­to­graph­er.
Bri­an Brake “moved in artist­ic circles in Wel­ling­ton in the late 1940s and early 1950s” pho­to­graph­ing dan­cers and musi­cians before mov­ing to Europe and scor­ing an incred­ibly glam­our­ous job at Par­is-based Mag­num back in the heady hey­day of pho­to­journ­al­ism. In the time before Google image search, open­ing a magazine and see­ing an illus­trated story on the Middle East or an image of gobsmack­ing beauty like this one would have been quite an exper­i­ence, stand­ing in front of the images today is not too bad either.

Fest­iv­al Sea­son (City Gal­lery)
After wow­ing us last year with the dot-tast­ic Yayoi Kusama exhib­i­tion, the City Gal­lery did good again with their Fest­iv­al Sea­son exhib­i­tion. The three key artists were Janet Cardiff, whose install­a­tion work The Forty-Part Motet had 40 speak­ers each play­ing a dif­fer­ent sing­er of a 40-part motet; a major col­lec­tion of recent works by New Zea­l­and artist Ser­aph­ine Pick; and Trans-Form: The Abstract Art of Mil­an Mrkusich. For both loc­als and vis­it­ors for the fest­iv­al, it was a fine selec­tion of con­tem­por­ary art.

Free Store – Part of the Let­ting Space series

Let­ting Space (Wel­ling­ton Inde­pend­ent Arts Trust)
The Let­ting Space series of install­a­tion pro­jects using vacant com­mer­cial space made an impact, cre­at­ing feel­ings ran­ging from warm, fuzzy nice­ness to out­rage and hor­ror. The series star­ted with sound artist Dugal McKinnon’s work with old tape record­ers, then Kim Paton’s Free Store gave away unwanted food and goods, and Tao Wells caused an almighty ruck­us with his Beneficiary’s Office pro­vok­ing power­ful pub­lic debate on the nature of employ­ment. The series con­tin­ues with three more artists bring­ing life to empty parts of the city.

Mon­sters (Run Amuck Col­lect­ive at MyGalaxi)
MyGalaxi is a base­ment art and event space that is home to Art Mar­kets and oth­er col­lect­ive hap­pen­ings that bring the busi­ness without the back­ing from the usu­al sources.  Well done you inde­pend­ent bat­tle­rs you.  Mon­sters was the fol­low up to the wildly suc­cess­ful Robots exhib­i­tion that was vis­ited by over 2000 people in five days back in 2009. Appar­ently mon­sters are pop­u­lar too espe­cially when you mix in steam­punk, tikis, creepy-cute jew­ellery and retro robots.  Fun, fun, fun.

NZ At The Venice Bien­nale 2009 (Te Papa)
Judy Millar’s giant slabs of art in Gir­affe-Bottle-Gun and Fran­cis Upritchard’s detailed fig­ur­ines in Save Your­self brought home NZ’s con­tri­bu­tion to the inter­na­tion­al show­case of con­tem­por­ary art.