Bull whip around

The great American art collector Eli Broad once said "philanthropy is activism" and there is certainly a big push to make it more active in New Zealand at the moment. But it's tough out there. Old school corporate sponsors are hard to entice, the public dollar is being spread thinner and thinner and the tertiary education sector restricts its funding to its own community.

The Government's call for arts organizations to eat the rich has come in synch with crowd sourced funding. Now more modest earners can get involved with supporting arts projects. We've already posted on the Arts Foundation's Boosted but yesterday there was a new twist as the Christchurch Art Gallery Trust launched its appeal Back the Bull. The goal - to buy Michael Parekowhai’s bull on a piano Chapman’s Homer for Christchurch.

It's interesting to see that the Trust has chosen the funding platform PledgeMe rather than Boosted for its latest $200,000 stump-up. And this despite the Christchurch Art Gallery having successfully funded its $25,000 project Populate on Boosted earlier this year. Maybe they felt that Boosted's assumption that tax credits would be a killer draw card for donors hasn't quite proved to have quite the clout expected. In general the amounts now requested on Boosted are more modest that at the outset. The average now stands at around $6,500 with $76,000 currently being requested across 12 projects. Around 24 percent of this has been donated so far.

Now because of the way the funding platform PledgeMe has been set up, donors can be offered all sorts of specific rewards (they can also offer tax deductions if the project has tax deductible status). When you see the packages offered by Christchurch's Back the Bull campaign, you can feel the attraction. They range from a thank-you in the Christchurch Press to party time with the Parekowhai himself. These giftettes are fun and appealing enticements whereas tax credits, not so much. OK, it's probably not very rational, and Boosted has brought in some valuable funding, but looking across the range of successful crowd sourcing sites emotional experience is the key driver rather than rational accounting advantages.

Back the Bull is only one day into its 48-day campaign with $15,350 pledged already and, thanks to the gifts and its feisty approach, it feels like fun. Hopefully it is also going to be a winner.

You can pledge for Back the Bull here and explore Boosted projects to donate to here.
 
Images: Top left Chapman's Homer in Auckland, right in Venice and below Christchurch

Roll call

Over the weekend we visited our friend Simon Manchester. We've known Simon for a while now and have also come to know his remarkable collection of ceramics. Simon is one of those people for whom the word collector was invented. He is utterly incapable withholding a bid at auction or keeping his hands off his wallet if he finds a pot or a vase or a jug if he thinks is important to New Zealand’s ceramic history or hits him in the heart when he sees it. And his collection of ceramics, one of a number of things he collects in depth, is thousands of objects strong. Well it was. Unfortunately Simon’s apartment tops a tall, thin heritage building in downtown Wellington and, as the earth moved a few weeks ago, so did many of his prized pieces.

As we have seen in earthquakes before in Wellington, and as was shown many times in Christchurch, shaking and rolling has the strangest effects. And that’s how it was with Simon’s collection. A tall vase stayed put while a flat dish was thrown across the room. Things attached to the wall remained where they were supposed to be as pots, jugs and sculptures on the floor toppled, some shelves spilled everything while some nothing at all. The result is a huge clean up job and boxes of shards.

One thing Simon told us which is worth passing on is the fact that Quake Wax takes a few weeks to harden into its stay-right-where-you-are form. His experience was that a couple of vases that had been carefully quake waxed a few days before the shake obeyed gravity leaving a sticky wax ring behind them. The loss has certainly taken a toll on the Manchester collection and a toll on Simon himself and so this pic of them both in happier times.

Saturday at the movies

This music video featuring a crumbling ‘sculpture’ of US singer Annie Erin Clark will probably give the Christchurch Art Gallery people pause. It's obviously based on the sculpture of Ron Mueck whose exhibition drew huge crowds to the Gallery between the two destructive quakes. You can watch the video here.

Friends and neighbours

Since earthquakes obliterated Christchurch Art Gallery’s ability to operate normally, it has been very busy taking itself in new ways to the city and the country via outreach and the web. It’s been an impressive effort but it must have been depressing for them not to be able to continue with the large scale, big production value shows they were becoming known by. Given that, how did the large exhibition of Shane Cotton’s work curated by Christchurch’s indefatigable Justin Paton avoid becoming another casualty of the disaster and instead open this weekend? Through collegial cooperation, that’s how.

Brisbane’s IMA gallery has always been a strong supporter of New Zealand artists thanks to its director Robert Leonard. He got to Brisbane via head curating jobs at the Auckland Art Gallery and the Dunedin Public Art Gallery and has never lost his commitment to the art of his own country. Since he took over in 2005 Brisbane has had a pretty good taste of what’s on offer from NZ.

By agreeing to partner up with the Christchurch Art Gallery on Shane Cotton’s The hanging sky and launch it from the IMA, Leonard has not only made it available to Brisbane but has also ensured that with the grunt work done it will be shown in NZ too. Perhaps this Australian gesture will serve as a prompt to some of our own art museums. A partnership with Christchurch would be pretty helpful given their continuing lack of a building and a few exhibition posters with the line ‘in association with the Christchurch Art Gallery’ would be good for all of us.

You can see a sample of Shane Cotton’s paintings for the Christchurch Art Gallery/IMA exhibition here and some beautiful shots taken during the installation here.

Image: Australians loving Shane Cotton at the IMA opening in Brisbane