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.