NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Herald NOW
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
  • Herald NOW
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Politics
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Herald NOW
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / Entertainment

T.J. McNamara: Food for thought

NZ Herald
25 May, 2013 03:02 AM5 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

Janet Lilo's artwork Right of Way at Artspace. Photo / Richard Robinson

Janet Lilo's artwork Right of Way at Artspace. Photo / Richard Robinson

People and places receive down-to-earth treatment in some thought-provoking videos and photos in the Auckland Triennial.

One way to link with the Triennial and its theme of If You Were to Live Here is to visit Artspace, which has been reconfigured to accommodate videos, installations and photographs. All the artists concentrate on contemporary places and people.

The most notable work is an hour-long feature documentary by Allan Sekula and Noel Burch, about transporting heavy freight and its influence on the environment. It includes an interesting interview with a Dutch captain of a barge who believes heavy freight should travel by water.

This leads to footage of a freight-only railway line in Holland that slashes across the countryside. Houses and orchards had to be sacrificed. The liveliest scenes are of Polish women picking apples in one of the remaining orchards. The visual quality of this documentary, where the shots of fruit-picking contrast with images of the mighty engines of container ships that consume the crudest oil, makes an important statement.

The other video works are shorter. Angelica Mesiti emphasises how relocated people retain the inescapable essence of their origin in her studies of four exiled people. One shows a woman from the Cameroons beating the water of an indoor swimming pool in a dynamic drum rhythm from her home.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

A third video, by Cynthia Marcelle, a Brazilian film-maker, finds intriguing patterns of traffic as she shoots from high above a section of motorway. Bizarrely, at one stage everybody has to get out and push their car. There is no explanation for this activity but it is truly strange.

An installation by local artist Janet Lilo depicts a multicultural Auckland neighbourhood. Big colour photographs recreate the fence that surrounds a property, with garden furniture and glimpses of activity on video. Add to this a project by Bruno Serralongue, who has been documenting life in Kosovo for 10 years since the fighting in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and a similar project by Yto Barrada about Tangier. These complete an international show full of documentary interest about people and places which allows some poignant issues to emerge by avoiding any note of high drama.

Visitors to this Triennial show should duck across the road to see, on the last day of the exhibition at Ivan Anthony Gallery, Liz Maw's astonishing and delightful painting called Pandora Rides the Noon Day Demon, an arresting nude in a bright red roadster, circa 1910. More in keeping with the Triennial, but not officially part of it, is Bazinga! at Starkwhite, curated by former Aucklander Robert Leonard. The exclamation "bazinga" is special to Dr Sheldon Cooper from the popular TV show The Big Bang Theory. Most of the works have a strong, geeky electronic component. Dominating the gallery is a big wall work by Rebecca Baumann, full of fluttering unpredictable changes. The changes are on an array of 96 mechanisms loaded with thousands of cards in different shades of blue. They continually flip so the whole work makes unpredictable patterns, which inescapably suggest both falling leaves and airport signs. Another machine, Human Needs Meter, by Antoinette J. Citizen, suggests a way of plugging into human needs such as energy, hygiene and fun like a computer game. It is a slack demonstration lacking energy.

The way a human can convert herself into a machine is intriguingly demonstrated in videos of Danielle Freakley, who calls herself The Quote Generator. For periods of time she communicated only in quotations, adding their source. It is an intriguing document humorously sublimating what some English teachers are irritatingly prone to do.

Two stalwarts of the New Zealand scene contribute to a vivid show called Abstract Reunion at Artis Gallery. Forty-five years ago two friends from art school, Roy Good and J.S. Parker, had their first exhibitions at the Vulcan Gallery in Auckland. Their recent work is gathered here and shows both painters have consistently worked in minimal abstraction at a high level of achievement.

Their differences lie in texture. The surfaces of Good's paintings are immaculate fields of colour linked and balanced, chiming and rhyming. A feature is the use of shaped canvases rather than rectangles. His work has a lyrical quality seen notably in a painting called Plain Song, part of a series, Hymns to Light. Paintings like this have a classical poise and stillness.

Discover more

Lifestyle

Asian artists draw on heritage

22 May 02:30 AM
Opinion

Janet McAllister: Festival a tale of diverse interests

25 May 02:56 AM
Entertainment

Making art in Vivaldi's corridor

29 May 05:35 PM
Opinion

Janet McAllister: Triennial centre tricky to find but worth it when you do

31 May 09:30 PM

What both artists do well is allow underpainting to show through and enliven the surface. Parker does this energetically. His sweeps of paint are rhythmically laid on with a palette knife. The areas are divided by strong horizontals so each painting becomes a created landscape of rippling colour, referencing the plains and horizons.

At the galleries

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

What: 5th Auckland Triennial
Where and when: Artspace, 300 K Rd, to July 13
TJ says: A show of photographs and videos from international sources plus a New Zealander investigates people and places.

What: Pandora Rides the Noon Day Demon by Liz Maw
Where and when: Ivan Anthony Gallery, 301 K Rd, to May 25
TJ says: Liz Maw has one of her startling large paintings mixed with smaller less memorable ones.

What: Bazinga: various Australian artists
Where and when: Starkwhite, 510 Karangahape Rd, to June 8
TJ says: A lively collection of videos, mechanisms and performances, all with a special geeky quality, curated by Robert Leonard.

What: Abstract Reunion: paintings by Roy Good and J.S. Parker
Where and when: Artis Gallery, 280 Parnell Rd, to June 2
TJ says: Two veteran, highly esteemed painters working in abstraction, one with classical poise and colour, the other with agitated, rhythmically worked surface texture.

Save

    Share this article

Latest from Entertainment

World

Ozzy Osbourne's final Black Sabbath gig draws thousands in Birmingham

06 Jul 02:09 AM
New Zealand

NZ actress accuses Australian policeman of using CCTV to spy on her

06 Jul 12:48 AM
Premium
Entertainment

Lights! Camera! But not enough action in a fading, worried Hollywood

06 Jul 12:00 AM

Sponsored: Get your kids involved in your reno

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from Entertainment

Ozzy Osbourne's final Black Sabbath gig draws thousands in Birmingham

Ozzy Osbourne's final Black Sabbath gig draws thousands in Birmingham

06 Jul 02:09 AM

He performed with his original bandmates for the first time in 20 years.

NZ actress accuses Australian policeman of using CCTV to spy on her

NZ actress accuses Australian policeman of using CCTV to spy on her

06 Jul 12:48 AM
Premium
Lights! Camera! But not enough action in a fading, worried Hollywood

Lights! Camera! But not enough action in a fading, worried Hollywood

06 Jul 12:00 AM
Noel Edmonds to marry again: British TV star proposes in hot tub in NZ

Noel Edmonds to marry again: British TV star proposes in hot tub in NZ

05 Jul 09:00 PM
Sponsored: Why heat pumps make winter cheaper
sponsored

Sponsored: Why heat pumps make winter cheaper

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP