Toi o Tāmaki 4/8/2020
I took a trip! A trip to the big city! I saw magical things. After the last few weeks of living in a storm of pine pollen it was a real change of scenery.
City trees look so techno compared to rural trees.
If you’re going to the city, or to Newmarket, and it’s justifiably lunchtime, then you have to go to & sushi!!
Sometimes the city really can put on a show. Sunshine, blue sky, Skytower, choice.
This was my second trip to see the Civilisation, Photography, Now exhibition. I was excited to see the show when first read about it. After it’s delayed opening I wasted no time in getting over to see the show, the largest that Toi o Tāmaki have ever hosted! The exhibition winds through sixteen rooms of the gallery featuring artists from all over the world. Their photographs were a commentary on contemporary life in the 21st century, now an odd look back at a world that seems like almost a dream now.
(I haven’t heard a commercial plane fly over in months!)
The following are a few drawings taken from my sketchbook, drawn while I was at the gallery. I was playing with some Prismacolour Premier pencils and an ink brush pen.
Harata Rewiri Tarapata, (1906), Goldie.
War Damaged Musical Instruments (Susan Philipsz).
The Violet Hour. John Reynolds.
The gallery attendant told me the exhibition is laid out “kind of like a large intestine”.
One of my favourites in the exhibition. CEAGESP Sao Paulo Analog Digitial Diptych, Massimo Vitali, (2012).
The framed image on a gallery wall doesn’t look like a photo on a wall to me. It takes me back to a busy fish market in Buenos Aires where we sat in a terraced restaurant eating fish and chips above the indoor market and watched a not dissimilar scene from a not dissimilar angle.
Drawings from the exhibition Civilisation, Photography, Now. Specifically a set of four portraits by Katy Grannan. From left to right they are: ‘Anonymous, Modesto CA, 2013’, ‘Anonymous, LA, 2008’, ‘Anonymous, San Francisco, 2008’, and ‘Anonymous, Fresno CA, 2012’.
I love these two photos next to each other. (They aren’t next to each other in the book). The left is by Paulo Woods, the right by Gabriele Galmberti.
On the North Terrace of the gallery is Sorawit Songsataya’s The Interior. Which features this massive great big kikorangi moa dead on the floor.
By the time I got to the big dead moa I was feeling a little off from being inside for too long.
I decided that after a cheery goodbye to the moa I headed for home. Lost my parking ticket after paying for parking, panicked for ten minutes in the Aotea Center carpark, found the ticket under the car where it had fallen out of my pocket when I got the keys out. It was an unnecessarily dramatic end to the trip, and I’m considering next time just taking the train in.