The year that was 2009

By Mark Amery

2009 was the year we got to see what Wellington looks like without City Gallery, with our major contemporary art institution closed for most of the year for a major extension.

City Gallery’s absence emphasised the impressive array of visual arts activity happening beyond it. With the closure of veteran dealer Janne Land’s gallery last December, 2009 kicked off with muttering about what effect the recession might have. Yet, other than Bowen Galleries’ downsizing to a smaller space, all the other signs among the dealer galleries was of growth.

Bartley and Company and Solander opened galleries with programmes that have constantly excited (they have also thickened up a walkable inner city gallery circuit). Meanwhile new noughties dealers like Suite in Newtown, Page Blackie, Mark Hutchins and Mary Newton have continued to grow in the quality of work represented.

This month the Andrea du Chatenier exhibition at Mary Newton looks like a knockout, and Christmas group shows at Suite and Hutchins present a wonderful spread. Bowen and Hamish McKay galleries have beautiful shows by Hariata Ropata Tangahoe and Jason Greig respectively. As per usual it’s a case of where to start, rather than where to go.

I’ve commented previously on how a number of private dealer galleries have been acting increasingly like public galleries, with their tightly curated theme shows, glossy catalogues and essays. Even artist space Enjoy and the Film Archive have been increasingly getting in on the act.

While all this is welcome to the extent that it’s become rarer in larger and better resourced publicly funded spaces, it’s coming at the expense of artists having control of their own presentation on first exhibition. Good art doesn’t need thematic framing, essays, or fancy invites to make itself stand out – as the more established dealers McKay, Peter McLeavey and Bowen continue to show.

What is missing – strangely, given Massey University’s School of Fine Arts is now ten years old - are the artist run spaces showing new graduates’ work that are not an automatic fit in dealer’s stables. Indeed, the Wellington new artist scene seems quieter than a few years back. Are they all leaving town or just getting less opportunities? Does having a ring of tertiary institutions around the CBD have the effect of dulling these students’ sense of freedom? We’re the city of institutions rather than new cultural activity.

A rare recent exception was the use by Massey students of a large factory space off Adelaide Road for Place in Space, an interesting installation of work in progress. Also welcome is Jim and Mary Barr’s new On the Table space recently opened for occasional exhibition of work “not usually seen in Wellington”.

Massey’s 2009 marketing triumph, through its Litmus Research Initiative, was the national One Day Sculpture Programme. With artworks sited in varied locations for only 24 hours, while it began in 2008 it gathered a real sense of momentum in the first half of this year. Some of the most interesting works, like Bekah Carran’s attachment of her own temporary archive to the side of the National Library, did a great job of opening up appreciation of our city.

Other works, notably often the international work, disappointed for their lack of richer interaction with their contexts, or had little attention to the time based nature of the project, leaving you wondering whether apart from the snappy ‘guess where next’ marketing what the great strength of the work being limited to 24 hours (and struggling to get an audience) was.

One Day Sculpture concluded in Wellington in May with one of the year’s highlights: Michael Parekowhai’s 4.6 metre high neon sign that spelt out the word ‘open’ with an arrow that pointed towards all manner of vistas as it was parked in various locations over a day – opening up the city to reinterpretation wherever it went.

It’s hard to believe that, like Massey, this year Adam Art Gallery was only celebrating its first ten years. It remains our most exciting art space. The exhibition of 2009 I’m most sad to have missed (having seen its excellent documentation in Art New Zealand) was a series of wall drawings commissioned for the gallery’s birthday, the artists and spaces they were given thoughtfully selected. This and The Future is Unwritten exhibition saw the Adam exploring how a public gallery as a physical and community space might best serve the current concerns of contemporary artists. Likewise the Dowse (under new director Cam McCracken) and Pataka demonstrated renewed energy for the presentation of visual art.

This was in contrast to the reign of the touring blockbuster at Te Papa and City Gallery. While in the year after the departure of Jonathan Mane Wheoki Te Papa seemed to be treading water in terms of its visual arts programme, City Gallery has reopened with the justifiably popular Yayoi Kusama exhibition. Upstairs the current Ngaahina Hohaia and Gerda Leenards exhibitions are gorgeous recent New Zealand projects, but we’ll have to wait well into the new year for City Gallery initiated exhibitions of contemporary New Zealand work from their experienced team in the main spaces.