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.

Dealing with the hereafter

The news that the estate of neon artist Dan Flavin has lifted its “ban on the posthumous production of unrealised fluorescent light sculptures” probably gave the Len Lye Foundation a flutter. As the producers of Len Lye sculptures sometimes controversially based on a few notes and sketches by the artist, the thought that a major Foundation had declared for life after death must have seemed like a lifeline. 

No such luck. The Flavin Estate is not about to make its own versions of Flavin’s work or create new works from info in its archives. It's simply going to fill out editions of existing sculptures. Even this project is still the cause of consternation. Flavin's guardians have shown a serious commitment to the integrity of the body of work in their care and they certainly face special challenges. The bulbs used in some works are no longer in commercial production and substitutes may have to be found. To try and avoid even this variance from the artist’s original concept for as long as possible the Foundation stockpiles tubes as originally used by Flavin.

The good oil

It’s Saturday afternoon, it’s a nice day in Philadelphia, why not get out of the conservation lab at the Museum of Art and onto the Ellsworth Kelly? Time to give it one of its three-monthly coatings of oil to prevent ongoing rusting. They do it with diluted linseed oil apparently and it's something “that Kelly likes done.” This all made sense until we read the label. It described the work as being constructed from “weathering steel”. Not any more.

Still life

The Wellington Sculpture Trust has just announced the completion of its 27th public sculpture, a set of pale blue-green Kina by Michel Tuffery that lean against a bank (sea-shore variety not commercial) partly submerged in water in the downtown wharf area. This commission has no moving parts which is doubtless a relief to the Trust. 

Mobile sculpture is a major maintenance problem and one that won’t ever go away. In fact, it just gets worse over time. Still, no one ever said it would be easy having sculptures that moved in public spaces, particularly in a salt-laden city like Wellington, and it isn’t. 

Over the years practically all Wellington's moving sculptures have had to be overhauled. Leon van den Eijkel's Urban forest has rarely spun on all 15 cylinders and there are always few of the boxes frozen in place. There are also signs that the spinning cones of Phil Dadson’s Akau tangi are going to suffer ongoing seizures with at least one not spinning this weekend. Same with Phil Price's downtown work Protoplasm whose movements are becoming increasingly arthritic. 

Back at the harbour Len Lye’s Water Whirler has the indignity of a semi-permanent ‘not working sign’ that itself is starting to rust and chip. And as if all this were not enough, one of the latest public sculptures (Shane McGrath’s Everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds 2012) is not even a year old and is already needing a makeover with large patches of varnish gone and nail rust bleeding through as weathering takes its toll. This work came to the city courtesy of the Wellington City Council, City Gallery and Massey but the fragility of its unpainted wooden structure was always going to test any Civic idea of permanence.

The need for maintenance on kinetic sculpture is not trivial real and it must be a concern that the City Council already stretched financially will downgrade their regular maintenance. The result of that would be a slam dunk. Salt 1 - sculpture 0.
Images: Top to bottom left to right, Price's Protoplasm, McGrath’s Everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds, Len Lye’s Water Whirler, Leon van den Eijkel's Urban forest and Phil Dadson’s Akau tangi. (click on image to enlarge)

Iconic

Unless you’ve been off the grid for the last six months you'll have caught up on 80+ year old Cecilia Giménez’s ‘conservation’ of a painted icon in her local church in Borja, Spain. The original in Santuario de Misericordia was painted by Elias Garcia Martinez in the nineteenth century but the mutant results of Giménez’s efforts have become internationally famous as Beast Jesus. As her church has won fame and income from her work, Giménez is now demanding some sort of royalty arrangement. Good luck with that Cecilia. 

But however things work out for the artist, the meme isn't about to disappear very soon, if this Halloween costume spotted on metapicture is anything to go by.