Artists get room to experiment
The Physics Room’s Jamie Hanton tells Warren Feeney about the gallery’s plans to make contemporary art more accessible.
The Physics Room’s opening exhibition for 2017 sees its library and gallery spaces, Home-and-Garden domesticated for the remainder of the year by Auckland-based artist Charlotte Drayton.
What on earth is going on in one of the country’s best-known contemporary experiential art spaces?
Recently appointed director, Jamie Hanton says that Drayton’s Like stepping from concrete to carpet, consists of interior alterations that make visiting, less like a ‘‘white-cube’’ gallery experience – ‘‘more accessible and capable of encouraging and involving audiences less familiar with contemporary art in The Physics Room’’.
In outlining his programme for 2017, Hanton says accessibility and audience development are among his priorities. He details a programme in which two visiting artists to the city are both scheduled for two different exhibitions at two alternative dates in the year. Reuben Moss, a New Zealand multi-media artist currently working in Portugal, and Nova Paul, an established moving-image artist and senior lecturer in the visual arts department at AUT University in Auckland have research elements in their projects that will contribute to forming relationships with local audiences.
Hanton says that Moss modifies video games, as well as other digital media, to create artworks ‘‘that are visually interesting and politically astute. In Deathmatch: War of attrition between two artificial intelligences, Moss has created a simulation between terrorists and counter-terrorists, who continually learn from one another and so one side can never truly win. This work will be at The Physics Room in March, and Moss will be here in Christchurch for his second exhibition in December. We are also developing a complementary public programme with workshops and lectures to accompany the exhibition.
‘‘Nova Paul is creating work based on research she started during her residency last year. Her second project will take place towards the end of 2017, or early 2018. Both of Nova’s projects will be based on collaboration with practitioners within Christchurch and nationally.’’
Hanton is specific about his ambitions for The Physics Room, but then, this is to be expected. He was director of its equivalent in Dunedin, the Blue Oyster Art Project Space (also funded by Creative New Zealand), from 2011 to 2014. This was followed by almost two years as Curator of Arts Collections at the University of Canterbury. He recalls that the Blue Oyster’s programme was quite different from The Physics Room’s. ’’There was less soliciting of exhibitions or artists at the Blue Oyster. Programming was largely done via a large open call each year.’’
What else to expect from The Physics Room in 2017? ’’It is an experimental place, stimulating to the senses and a safe place for artists to experiment and be ambitious and we will continue to do that,’’ says Hanton. ‘‘That’s what we do admirably, I think. Supporting Christchurch artists in the development of their practice is also important. In 2017, we are curating three solo shows from Christchurch-based artists. Historically, there are artists like Ronnie van Hout and Zina Swanson who had the opportunity to begin their careers with The Physics Room. We can give artists a level of staffing support around their projects, often perceived to be unavailable to them.’’
This supportive relationship with its artists has often been reciprocated. By 2007, Van Hout was a prominent Australasian artist, admired for a distinct body of work developed over the previous decade. In response to The Physics Room’s request that year to support its annual fundraiser, he created a limited edition of 12 van Hout dolls for purchase.
Hanton also says that The Physics Room’s plans to reach out to the wider arts community will also encompass a new and regular publication.
‘‘We are launching Hamster ,a magazine that will feature lively writing, discussion and debate, focusing on arts and culture in Christchurch.
’’We are also holding off-site projects around Christchurch and again, this is, in part, about accessibility to our programme and talking to those people who don’t usually come to The Physics Room, or know what we’re about. In the meanwhile, of course, we are taking immediate steps to make the Tuam Street gallery spaces a more welcoming environment.’’
This is refreshing news and well overdue. For this reviewer, since The Physics Room’s move out of the Arts Centre in 1999 into what is now the C1 building on Lichfield and High streets, it has never been a welcoming space. The gallery is on the third floor, with a relatively steep incline up three sets of stairs. The front desk was, until now, located in front of its library with books that appear not to be available for touching or looking. Its main exhibition space was austere and expansive and always felt like it was watching visitors enter, halting their progress to the smaller gallery in its corner, usually darkened for video and installations.
In Like stepping from concrete to carpet, Drayton comes to The Physics Room as home decorator prophet and archetype, versed and in command of the premise of home improvements as popularised in countless lifestyle magazines, television programmes and blogs. Rationally, her role as interior decorator par-excellence, addressing The Physics Room’s gallery spaces seems like an artworld political act, but as an immediate and first-time experience it is simply, tremendously liberating. It is no exaggeration to say that the gallery spaces not only function better, they also feel like home.
Like stepping from concrete to carpet appears to represent the first in what promises to be further acts of expanding the gallery’s audiences from a director who clearly loves his new position.
‘‘Being director at a gallery I’ve admired for such a long time is amazing, I’m really relishing the opportunity,’’ says Hanton. ‘‘The Physics Room is there to create support structures for artists to create interesting and ambitious work – and to be accessible to the public.’’ ❚ Charlotte Drayton, Like stepping from concrete to carpet, The Physics Room, 209 Tuam Street, until March 18.
Gala of German Opera, Lansdown Festival of Narroperas, Eike Wilm Schulte (baritone), Dorothee Jansen (soprano), Terence Dennis (piano) and Haydn Rawstron (narrator), Lansdown House, February 19
For those unfamiliar with the term, ‘‘narropera’’ is narrated opera, an emerging art form developed by opera impresario Haydn Rawstron and his wife, soprano Dorothee Jansen.
As they gradually work their way through the operatic repertoire, Rawstron and Jansen unpack the operatic masterpieces with fascinating facts, asides and insights for the aficionado and uninitiated alike.
The Gala format deviated slightly from other narropera presentations, focusing on three great works rather than just one – The Magic Flute, Fidelio and The Mastersingers of Nuremberg.
While Jansen’s beautiful voice and natural stage delivery were notable during the first two, the concert was really all about showcasing the remarkable talent of baritone Eike Wilm Schulte.
Schulte has had an impressive career, with an enormous number of performances under his belt. He has made the part of Papageno (the birdcatcher in Mozart’s The Magic Flute) his own and we got plenty of this during the evening. He has an engaging way with his audience, a twinkle in his eye and a truly wonderful voice.
Throughout the evening, he took on several roles from the various operas and, like all great performers, he has that mesmeric presence that keeps you riveted.
I was particularly taken with the Mastersingers set which, while it may not have had the immediate appeal of the Mozart and Beethoven, was powerful and to hear it in recital was both a novelty and a treat.
With Schulte reading from the score, the acting side of things took a backseat, but I didn’t care – this was glorious singing by anyone’s standards, whether railing against the madness of the world (Wahn, Wahn) or Sachs’ tender reflection on Waltther’s unusual offering.
Jansen’s contributions were considerable and she proved that she is equally at home with the comic and the dramatic, from Pamina to Leonora. Wie kalt ist es was particularly strong.
Terence Dennis accompanied superbly on a piano that was not the greatest, but he made it sound its best.
Dennis is a master at preserving the orchestral colours in the piano reductions and his anticipation and support was exceptional throughout. – Patrick Shepherd
❚ The season continues throughout February and March, with further performances of the German Opera Gala, Der Freischu¨ tz and Cosi fan tutte. Visit lansdownsummer.com for details; tickets are available from the Court Theatre box office (03) 963 0870.