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love of L’art pour l’art! (Art for art’s sake) Money for god’s sake?
Hey, if you’re not doing it for the love of it, what on earth are you doing it for? La Gloire? (The glory) Or perhaps it’s the fame, the adulation: a Lear jet and a personal chef for your pet Pekingese? Well, hold the phone and don’t hold your breath. If it’s not done for the sake of doing, then it’s not worth doing. It’s the journey not the destination, the process not the result; didn’t anyone tell you that at the school of hard knocks? Do it for the love of it. Do it because you really can’t imagine doing anything else. That’s right: dance like there’s nobody watching and work like you don’t need the money. The rewards will come in time but perhaps in unexpected forms. There are easier ways to pay the rent, after all. And all the artists represented in this bumper edition of Threaded know about paying their dues, and not begrudging the cost – well, not too much anyway. Whether they are designers, fashionistas, photographers or filmmakers, they are all, as far as we can judge, doing it for the love of it… “If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs. And maybe your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery, isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance. Of how much you really want to do it. And you’ll do it, despite rejection in the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods. And the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.” CHARLES BUKOWSKI
02. THREADED
CONTENTS
AUTHOR’S NAME
contents
four
six
editorial and recipes
pigeon-hole
twenty-eight exhibition alley
CONTENTS
THREADED 03.
ten
sixteen
twenty-two
crazy crazy love
no love lost
necessary collection
thirty-nine
forty
forty-six
call for submissions - edition 6
proved wrong
beautifully complex
04. THREADED
EDITORIAL
FIONA GRIEVE
FIONA GRIEVE
CONTENTS EDITORIAL
THREADED 05. 03.
EDITOR Fiona Grieve DESIGN Kyra Bradcock PRODUCTION Threaded Media Limited ART DIRECTION Kyra Bradcock Fiona Grieve Kim Meek – Cover & Gatefold GUEST DESIGNERS Kim Meek Serena Simpkin Emma Hayes Alan Deare Arch MacDonnell Timothy Kelleher Stephen McCarthy Robert Jamieson PRINTER Alliance Printers Limited PAPER SUPPLIER Spicers Paper Limited PRACTITIONER SHOWCASE CYBÈLE Q Brand Agency Inhouse Design Lisa Benson Scott Alexander Young Kim Meek James Kirkwood STUDENT SHOWCASE Jean Stewart Jessica Hill Michelle Kennard Joseph Hunter Julia Chung Ellis Tan Jacqui Chan Agnes Ang Dale Sattler Judy Court SPONSORSHIP Unitec New Zealand Spicers Paper Limited Trunk Media
06. THREADED
PIGEON-HOLE
wonderful swonderful
Virginia McMullen
LEFT: SWONDERFUL INTERIOR 54 Cleveland Street, Brooklyn, Wellington
New shop Swonderful is an emporium of sorts... in a good way! The store is cute and crafty with a do-it-yourself attitude and a philosophy that is anti all things mass-produced, overpriced and over-hyped. Swonderful is bridging the gap between fashion and objects, stocking clothes, toys, bags, jewellery and stationery. Included in the line-up are its own labels: Papercup, Secret Squirrel, Lady Luck Rules OK, Milk and Cookies, Lily Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts, Geek Freeks, Nut and Bee stationery, Rachel Carley Ceramics and Magic Jelly from Australia. Swonderful aims to support local and emerging talent, and believes that there are enough shops out there already stocking the same old labels. Owners Frances and Virginia McMullen’s growing frustration at not being able to devote enough time to their creative pursuits was the catalyst for starting the shop: they decided to combine their creative practices and create a Swonderful treasure trove of unique, well-designed and fancy stuff! The shop’s own label Papercup has been going for a few years now and has been stocked in shops around Wellington but is now exclusive to Swonderful. The mother-daughter collaboration started with just T-shirts and bags but the launch of the shop has seen the label branch out with cute dresses, summer tops, hoodies, toys and purses. Papercup appeals to someone youthful in mindset, who likes cute things and doesn’t like to be dictated to – a Papercup girl doesn’t need to read it in a magazine to know an item's worth. Frances is a qualified optometrist bursting with creativity and Virginia is a painting graduate from AUT, who became interested in illustration at art school as it seemed to sit somewhere between painting and design. Her work has been published in Frankie, Pulp & Vice magazines. Swonderful is located just up the hill from Wellington City at 54 Cleveland Street, Brooklyn, Ph: 04 8033955, helloswonderful@gmail.com or visit them on www.myspace.com/swonderfulshop
giveaways at snowplanet Simply download our blank snowboard template – splash your best ‘urban-snowboarding’ theme graphic all over it and send it to us at info@threaded.co.nz with the header SNOW PASS PLEASE, or alternatively you can send it on disc to us at THREADED, PO BOX 79382, ROYAL HEIGHTS, WAITAKERE CITY 0656, AUCKLAND.
Winter is just around the corner – but nestled in the North of Auckland you’ll find Snowplanet – real snow 365 days a year!! Thanks to our good friends at Snowplanet we have five day passes (each of which entitles the bearer to a full day of boarding/skiing ANYTIME + rental equipment) to give away... now don’t get ahead of yourselves thinking it's going to be as easy as emailing us bribes to get your little mitts on these – we want to make you work a little!!! Visit www.snowplanet.co.nz for some inspiration and to get the latest and greatest deals on snow passes. Competition closes 20 June and passes expire in August 2008.
THREADED 07.
THURSDAY MAY 29TH 2008 BRUCE MASON CENTRE, TAKAPUNA, AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND
green
08
building summit
PIGEON-HOLE
never too crowded for another fashion label below: crowded elevator tee
Miranda Likeman/ COCOpr
You know that you’re pressing all the right fashion buttons when your label’s first collection immediately sells out and a second is stocked by established New Zealand designer WORLD. Such is the case for new Kiwi clothing label Crowded Elevator which, despite being only six months old, is a huge hit in the land of the long white cloud and about to break into the Australian market. “Such rapid growth shows that we are filling a gap in the market for high-quality, locally made product with international flair,” says Company Director Carl Thompson. Launched in June 2007, the label’s sold-out inaugural summer collection featured 11 eclectic internationally styled tees for men with catchy slogans in retro fonts and kitsch animal graphics in neon bright colours. “We did a lot of research internationally and focused on emerging trends from Sydney, New York and London to come up with a range of cutting-edge nu-rave streetwear,” says Thompson. “A lot of people do prints on tees, but I like to think Crowded Elevator clothing is more than just printed tees – it’s artwork that is designed to be worn.” September '07 saw the release of the limited edition Creative Collection Vol.1, Kiwi-influenced prints designed by some of New Zealand’s hottest artists and sold through the country’s leading fashion stores, WORLD and WORLDman. “The Creative Collection allowed us to showcase some of the country’s hidden talent,” says Thompson. “We can’t wait to make it an annual event, and that’s likely with the invaluable support WORLD provided right from the start.” For winter ’08, the label is expanding into hoodies and a selection of women’s tees – but with the rate the label is growing, dedicated followers of fashion should get on this ride at the ground floor. www.crowdedelevator.co.nz
08. THREADED
PIGEON-HOLE
contemporary artifacts
Sandy Rodgers
LEFT: the battle of the birds Sandy Rodgers
Artist Sandy Rodgers of Ngati Raukawa descent tours and researches New Zealand and her delvings into history are captured in her works. Each work comprises a combination of elements from collaged images by the earliest artists to arrive in New Zealand to thick layers of smoky shellac. Her research is undertaken at various libraries including Alexander Turnbull and Te Papa. She has travelled extensively taking her inspiration from the many museums and historical sites she has visited. Each piece Rodgers creates includes a unique wax-sealed envelope filled with the notes and detailed information which are represented on the painting. The envelopes are an insurance that all the hard work put into creating each work is never forgotten: they are filled with her inspirations, personal research notes and references for all the original images and material she compiled in order to create the aptly named ‘Contemporary artifacts’. “I was immensely inspired by the artifacts in museums and at ancient historical sites throughout Europe, Asia and in particular the Americas. I spent six years travelling the world and learning about other cultures' rich and vibrant histories. Whilst in South America, I had a driving need to begin researching my homeland. I would go to a local internet kiosk every day and spend an hour or so searching the net for anything I could find about pre-European Aotearoa and the early explorers to arrive here. I wanted to know about my ancestors and their daily lives, what happened when Cook arrived and how that affected the country in terms of the Maori way of thought.”
No Not Now gets creepyDarryl Chandler & Chanelle Kennedy LEFT: wOLFY 3, SKULL WITH NOSEBLEED and anubis gun (PICTURED IN EGYPT) No Not Now T-shirt Range 2008
Things are going great for the No Not Now duo of Darryl and Chanelle, yes another boyfriend/girlfriend team, which apparently argues like brother and sister. No Not Now has directed their obvious talents at making crude horror stencils and plastering them on things (mostly T-shirts). You will be impressed that the T-shirts are purely handmade but in reality NNN is just not very technologically advanced. The whole process takes ages especially the cutting out stencils part and stopping for smoko. Hence they are unable to mass-produce, so have decided it's far easier to just claim that they are an exclusive label. From NNN’s perspective, paint rollers and craft knives are a bitch and rolling too much gives you RSI. One of their T-shirt designs sports a skull with a nosebleed: it’s a replication of a real nosebleed and the idea came about at a nautical-themed university ball from the misuse of a plastic cutlass. After one too many nosebleeds, NNN decided to hustle some blood money for the New Zealand Blood Service to offset their wastage; the NZBS were like 'bloody good'! Their first fashion line is called 'gets creepy'. Doesn’t make a lot of sense we know, but when you chuck it after the name: No Not Now gets creepy, or after stockists: world gets creepy, or a combo: No Not Now gets creepy at World, or World gets creepy(er) with No Not Now... several options emerge. NNN is stocked at world by the way.
PIGEON-HOLE
THREADED 09.
WORLDBeauty stores: 35 Vulcan Lane, Auckland CBD. Ph: 09 377 0647 175 Ponsonby Rd, Ponsonby, Auckland. Ph: 09 360 4544 85 Victoria St, Wellington CBD. Ph: 04 470 7792
WORLDBeauty
Benny Castles
WORLDBeauty, which is the offshoot retail concept of the premier New Zealand fashion label WORLD, is now in its second year of operation and has three locations. The original Vulcan Lane, Auckland CBD, site which has continued to offer the most elite in luxury beauty goods now has two new siblings: A secondary store on Victoria St in Wellington and a third store in Auckland’s shopping neighbourhood of Ponsonby. Both new stores carry the same stamp of sophistication and excitement when it comes to the undernourished beauty market in New Zealand. The evolution of WORLD into the beauty sector is not a recent move. Beauty products have been stocked in WORLD stores for well over a decade, and the time has now come for these gorgeous and luxurious products to be given their own characters and space in which to flourish. WORLDBeauty is an experience for all of the body’s five senses – Seeing, Smelling, Touching, Tasting and Hearing. It is the first and only true oasis of opulent beauty brands for both men and women in New Zealand. It’s luxury first hand, with only the finest products being sourced both nationally and internationally, and brought together in sublime surroundings. WORLDBeauty does not sell make-up, but products to enhance your skin, hair, hands, eyes, lips, nails, feet and senses, with each product offering our customers only the very best, highest-quality products that are available in the world. The Aesop skincare range, whose often-copied, but never-equalled, botanical skincare collection has a product to ensure every part of your body is treated with the utmost care. Aesop is based in Melbourne, with stores worldwide including Asia and Europe. Darphin from Paris also continues with its successful beauty
regime for all ages, and is one of the world’s most original and continuously leading skincare companies. There is always a desire to stay up to date with the latest developments in skin-care technology, including new cosmeceutical products like Strivectin-SD, which is renowned for its anti-wrinkle properties: just the smallest dot each day is needed under the delicate eye area. WORLD has created, within its WORLDBeauty stores, a sumptuous environment for exquisite fragrances in creams, scents and candles. It has doggedly sought out the most iconic perfumes the world has ever experienced, including Van Cleef & Arpels ‘First’, Nina Ricci, Madame Rochas, Acqua di Parma, Guerlain, Carthusia, Lanvin’s ‘Arpege’, and Chloé to name a few who heralded a new age in beautiful scent. WORLD believes these classic fragrances which started it all, are just too relevant and extraordinary today not to be given a second glance. To contrast these classic scents, WORLD has hand-picked a number of modern and contemporary delights such as Marc Jacobs, Agent Provocateur and Demeter Fragrance Library, which they feel are innovative and are new scent icons. To make the WORLDBeauty store the absolutely essential address for treating oneself or finding the perfect gift, we have added another element to this opulent environment by surrounding these products with a magnificent collection of antiquities and objects, hand-picked by WORLD’s expert in Europe, and shipped in. These are only genuine items and not reproductions, which makes for the most unique opportunity to indulge and luxuriate.
10. THREADED
crazy crazy love
inhouse design
AUTHOR’Sdesign NAME inhouse
crazy crazy love
THREADED 11.
Millions Now Living Will Never Die is the second album by the Chicago-based band Tortoise. Released in 1996 by Thrill Jockey Records.
Arch MacDonnell, founder of Inhouse Design and Alan Deare long-time cohort, ponder the ins and outs of their relationships with graphic design.
One of my early memories when I had just started at Inhouse, was you ripping up a Tortoise digipac in a possessed moment to make a mock up... Millions Now Living Will Never Die... ? Yes, you don’t know how very traumatising I found that. It’s somewhat ironic that the only tape you could find to record this discussion on was an old Tortoise compilation. My favorite compilation, it’s okay though I bought all of the records later as I could afford them after being a student. Who was the digipac design for? I can’t remember, but you know I really ought to patch that package up. What a brainfeeze moment that was...
Still floating around vexing crazy love masochistic, love making good stuff compulsive obsessive crazy, crazy love... What’s that, a poem? No, it's graphic design. It’s like love. You know, how there are all kinds of polarised feelings within it... it’s not always easy, it can be a graft sometimes... I get the distinct impression my partner doesn’t understand the amount of time I put into my work. Sometimes it's like, ‘come on, leave her and come and hang out with me...’ and I go ‘uh... okay’. It does take me a second to think about it as the mouse hovers over ‘shut down’. Is that evil?
12. THREADED
CRAZY CRAZY LOVE
INHOUSE DESIGN
Books really are a process of accretion; you glean something new each time. left: cover for john reynolds' soonto-be-released monograph, certain words drawn designed by inhouse design. below: John reynolds documented graffiting his own street poster.
Love making good stuff You literally seem to have a direct relationship to an idea, whereby you have to make something immediately with your hands. You’ve always printed things out to see how they sit in real space. This always impressed me; I was more inclined to ponder incremental changes on screen... I have to pursue it I guess, like with that Tortoise CD, it was late after-work hours, I was excited about designing a digipac, I ripped up a handy sample to see how it could work... it happened to be your favourite band and ultimately a stupid thing to do, but designers make things. I started in the industry (cue nostalgic violin music here...) when it was very much cut and paste, hands on, making bromides for finished art. It can be a child-like state: unfettered, sitting in your room drawing, cutting out and glueing things together. I love the tactility of design. Yeah, I would spend hours as a kid just purely for my own pleasure, illustrating, typing out, cutting and pasting all manner of stuff into various layouts, posters and booklets. Some of it was homework that I went way over the top with, but mostly self-determined projects with fictional outcomes. Compulsive love It kind of reminds me of that Nano you left in its box shrink-wrapped for over a year... No, that was just a fetishistic obsession of an immaculate object... Don’t forget the plastic film I left on my phone screen and earpiece for a
couple of days and couldn’t work out why I couldn’t hear anyone. I guess they are both extremes of some kind of obsession... Just about any job can have an element of crazy love in it, where it doesn’t add up monetarily. It’s about exploring possibilities, making something new and enjoying the ride... the more you do, the more you strive for new ways to do it. Like John’s [Reynolds] book for example? Yeah, John’s practice is so broad, far-reaching and, I guess, even obsessive at times. With the design of this book we looked at this very quality of his practice, which is also akin to aspects of our own, and different ways of presenting an artist’s monograph. When you think that CLOUD is made from over 7,000 handwritten canvases you get an idea of what sort of artist we’re dealing with here. We designed the book with these rigorous and obsessional qualities in mind. There are 20-odd different chapters/projects each covered in extensive detail and all differently and uniquely handled... And, let me guess, the budget ran out two months ago... Probably three... but what the hell... There certainly were some rods we made for our own backs with some of the ideas in this book but hopefully the depth in which the works are documented will be appreciated by someone out there.
For example? Well, for the work I Tell You Solemnly, which is a work comprising 838 individual canvases of an Anne Kennedy poem, we thought it would be nice to reproduce the work so the poem could be back in book form and be able to be reread, rather than just reproducing a single image of the work in situ. To achieve this, we had to photograph each canvas as it was coming off the wall at the Gus Fisher Gallery. We set up a jig and got down to it but, as you can imagine, 800+ shots take some time, factor in the processing of the files and placing them all in the Indesign document and you’ve got a big chunk of time. Fun for a while, then the pain starts to set in... There was another chapter where we produced a one-colour street poster, had it pasted up around town and then systematically tracked them all down and I photographed John graffiting his own work. The result is pretty fruity. CLOUD is a monster of a work that took months to complete. We thought it would be good to get a sense of just how big the undertaking was by producing all of John’s studio shots of the work being made and then hung at the Sydney Biennale. Ninety-six pages of process shots from go to whoa (phew). So you get the idea — a kind of snowballing behemoth! Books really are a process of accretion, you glean something new each time.
INHOUSE DESIGN
CRAZY CRAZY LOVE
THREADED 13.
far Left: a selecton from 356 screen savers that were uploaded daily on a former inhouse website. Left: 2006 short film, Fate Unknown, won a silver for self-promotion in the 2007 best awards. bottom left: end-of-year exhibition Invites overprinted and reused from AUT visual arts department enrolment posters 2005 and 2006.
Don’t forget the perfed tabs that ran down each side of the poster that you could pull off and assemble to make a flip book with, if you happened to be nuts.
What about Howie’s screen savers? Howie [Besançon-Matil] is a great artist/ illustrator and he’d create a new picture (desktop) that we’d upload onto our site daily. And that’s all the site was, a collection of ambiguous abstract images. Don’t think we ever got any work from that site did we? Some of my friends checked it out at the time and quit out of frustration and confusion. But we did get some people that downloaded the illustrations for screen savers. Yeah, and some people loved it. It was an experimental site, indicative of us at the time... operating outside of the realms of commercial viability — which, ultimately, is impossible to sustain. That sounds like other work you have commissioned from friends... Yeah, a little movie that we made with Dylan [Pharazyn] without a commercial objective. It says something about us... what, I am not sure. It did give us an opportunity to utilise Howie’s pictures in another way though... I guess it’s saying something about us in an oblique kind of way. You know, ‘we love to make pointless little movies for our own pleasure, hopefully you like them too...’ It did get an award though, didn’t it? That doesn’t necessarily equate to anything tangible as such. Well, a little certificate and a pat on the back. We did get to use some of those illustrations for the You are Smart enrolment campaign for the Visual Arts department at AUT. That was in 2005 we made that poster. We then reprocessed 500 partially printed ones which had been laid aside for the following year, overprinting those for 2006 with new info. Finally, we guillotined them down for the end-of-year exhibition invites, with new information overprinted yet again. That was kind of smart. Don’t forget the perfed tabs that ran down each side of the poster that you could pull off and assemble to make a flip book with, if you happened to be nuts. Yes, we had to separate out 72 frames from video footage of the construction of their new building.
14. THREADED
CRAZY CRAZY LOVE
INHOUSE DESIGN
Left: inhouse has been designing objectspaces’ publications for four years, each folds in a different way to the house format. below: run-ons from the Just Hold Me catalogue were made into blocks of pads for visitors to make their own publications. right: The making worlds masthead was literally made in the studio for display in the Auckland Art Gallery’s Wellesley St window. Far right: Arch’s birthday invite charted which year he met everyone who was invited to the party.
Strangely, the publication didn’t turn up on time for opening night... Masochistic love It’s not like we don’t get compensated, it’s just that we could do something easier for the same money and it would still be a fair exchange. The Objectspace material is a good example of that. We could just template their material but, no, each time we try and find a new way to reveal the content through different folds, even though they end up in the same format. It has become part of their ‘identity’ now. The Just Hold Me exhibition catalogue possibly pushed the envelope to the max... Are we talking about the printer having to take a two-week leave of absence after that one? Or was it using a range of stockpiled, leftover paper at the printshop, to create different stock change-outs and folio sizes. All of which, contained a perf for a ‘final-sized’ document which had to match up through all of the different-sized folios, whilst being stitched together with exposed binding. I had to design the finished document correctly laid up and paginated as it would be by prepress, i.e. the unfinished document was the finished document. It's all very po mo, layered and self-referencing, like a Gondry film... Wait, there is more: getting the printer to make random colour sections with various plate changeouts to emulate make-readies. Oh, and then we made blocks of pads out of run-ons that you were supposed to make your own publication from. I don’t think anyone ever did... They do make good designer
wrapping-paper now though. It was all about referencing our industry and publishing design: the decisions we make ‘off the page’... ... Don’t forget choosing to write about the process at the same time as making it all up. Yeah, that is a different energy, trying to articulate something in written form, that you are still actually working on! There was a nice twist also that the curator of the exhibition was my former design tutor. I remember walking away from that one late Friday night after Jonty (Valentine) had signed it off and it was collected on disc, thinking, ‘I’m over this and I don’t know (or possibly care) how it is going to turn out. Strangely enough, the publication didn’t turn up on time for opening night... But props to Danny at Source for taking on that project; no one else would or could have... Yeah, it couldn’t have happened without his collaboration. It’s going to be featured in a publications book coming out of New York later this year. So that’s why we just signed over all of the image rights. Making Worlds is also an example of doing more than required... It was definitely an opportunity to do more than what was expected from the brief, particularly in terms of what the client could afford. We had fun; it was literally about making ‘a world’. Two days of manic making, broken scalpel blades, polystyrene, foam board, laser printouts, cut and paste. It was as much about satisfying our
own needs and desires. We could have slapped up some 2D vinyl in the space. There can be something selfish, a perfectionism, not bearing to be responsible for something half-baked, when you know there is something better to be had... oh no, that is starting to sound like integrity. ... No it's masochism, but yes, our own motives are at play... Was there something ironic about the fact that we had to get a freelancer in to help us with the project as we were all too busy to top up the extra time that was required? I think that sums up the dilemma nicely but, in the end, that was serendipitous as the Rainbow Monkey was really great to work with. That kind of punishment reminds me of when you did the design for the Writers and Readers Festival in 2003, where you hand-wrote almost the whole event programme. Don’t forget the several rounds of changes also with imminent press deadlines. That was one of those late-night, last-minute ones where you think, ‘this is crazy shit’. In the end I’m not sure how successful it even was... maybe we could have set it all in a sans serif like the studio who did it the following year. A much wiser move and way easier for the user to navigate. Ah well... And your last birthday invite where you decided to chart everyone you knew and what year you had met them. I liked that a lot.
INHOUSE DESIGN
Once you put a few people on there you have to put everybody on and get them right. Then there were the graphs that processed the guest data, people I love, people I really liked, people I liked but wanted to love, bad touchers etc... That was fun. The Bad affair (the bit on the side) What is it that you say about the self-generated projects? Ah, that they are like a bad affair. How do you mean? Well, she won’t go away, you were really into it and now it has become a drag — not that I’ve had an affair, I just imagine it’s like this — right? Most of our side projects are just simmering away for an embarrassing length of time. Sometimes I think it would have been better not to have had the ideas at all than the partially executed things nagging out of the corner of your psyche filling you with guilt and shame for not completing them! Like? Well, there are always new ideas and variations on older themes: special edition artist’s skateboards, T-shirts, posters, vending machines to dispense assorted miniature projects. These are sitting there in waiting... We have a dedicated screen-printing room which might one day be fully functional... but how the fuck do we get the time to get in there? I don’t know how that happens.
CRAZY CRAZY LOVE
THREADED 15.
Unrequited love / futile love There is a period of a job where it is just a slog... Or when people don’t even get what you do. Years ago, I showed the Richard Killeen book to my father not long after it was published and he flicked through it briefly and said, ‘oh, yeah...’ That reminds me of when I showed my parents the Hillary book and they said, ‘so what did you do on this?’ You’re right, not many people really appreciate exactly what we do! Sometimes it feels like a kind of futile love. Look at the book reviews, throw-away comments such as ‘a handsomely designed package’ if the design is even mentioned at all. In dark moments I wonder if people really notice the finer points of design? I mean I can spend ages angsting over whether to set the footnotes of a book in Helvetica or Akkurat but then wonder if I set them in Hobo would anyone notice or even care? Maybe it’s taken in on a subconscious level, like ‘thanks Mr Mechanic the car drives a lot better now, but I don’t need to know about that flux capacitor...’ Who knows... well, we would I guess. As Jane [Hatfield] says, no one has lost an arm or is going to die. Yeah, let’s just make the logo bigger.
28. THREADED
EXHIBITION ALLEY
jean stewart
exhibition alley
take your time and enjoy a leisurely browse through exhibition alley, which showcases recent work from new zealand’s up-and-coming creatives...
jean stewart
EXHIBITION ALLEY
jean stewart
LEFT: Horses in Backyard, ABOVE: People Live in Other People as the Cars Clog Up Reality Making Pictures Stewart responded to living in Melbourne’s dense urban environment in the heat and drought at the end of the Howard years by embarking on a series of paintings that captured the intensity of life in the city.
These paintings converge on multiple stories: all-moving and butting up against one another, expressing the chaos created by co-habitation and communities. Each painting inhabits its own world and perceptions; literal and abstracted narratives swirl within
each work, speaking of the internal and external worlds we inhabit. – jeanbuzz@gmail.com
THREADED 29.
30. THREADED
the internal inhabit.
EXHIBITION ALLEY
jessica hill
michelle kennard
jessica hill Marching Girls
Using environments in the New Zealand landscape as her stage, Jessica Hill combines aspects of documentary photography with a staged narrative in order to explore links between fantasies and realities. Marching Girls has a strong sense of uniformity: in the way the girls dress in it and also in the way they move. The synchronisation of the movements combined with native New Zealand landscapes creates images that draw on whimsical and slightly surreal elements. This makes reference to the cinematic influences in Hill’s work, playing on ideas of fantasy and makebelieve. Much like movie-makers do, Hill convinces her audience to believe and participate in another reality.
EXHIBITION ALLEY
THREADED 31.
joseph Crowd
The core of practice is c interest in m animation, w from his inte story-telling developmen of graphic d
– jessica_hill@xtra.co.nz
michelle kennard zewnealand
Like many passionate projects that derive their future from uni assignments, streetwear brand, zewnealand by graphic designer Michelle Kennard has derived a brand that takes on the aesthetics, quirkiness and dry sense of humour this country is famous for. UK-born Kennard has converted kiwism and focused on cultivating a brand that is a doorway to a zewnealand lifestyle, revealing the values and visual codes of kiwi culture. With a range of outspoken designs and clothing items, zewnealand becomes an extension of your personality and ambassador for all things New Zealand. See www.zewnealand.co.nz – meechelle.k@gmail.com
judy court
RIGHT FROM
The convers warehouse boutique ho on the site’s position upo Auckland w inspired by A faceted cult of volcanic c excavated a