Week 6: Dion Hitchens, Bill Riley, James Ormsby and Auckland Museum

Dion Hitchens, Bill Riley and James Ormsby are a collaborative group of artists by the name of SEEK. They have exhibited around New Zealand and Australia with James' drawings, Dion's sculptures and Bill's paintings/installations. There were a couple of things from their lecture that grabbed my attention – I have respect for them after hearing about their achievements with community work and how they managed to bring people together through art. Bill Riley is a professional painter, but the works I saw from him have been unique and experimental, from the painted card stack installation (which was an interactive piece) to the 1200+ origami penguins that were made with the help of several children. The three went on to talk about how important it was to make an effort when getting involved and also collaborating with the community, how you lose authenticity if you aren't engaged with others.

Also, all three artists come from different backgrounds and have different religious beliefs – buddhist, christian and agnostic. They all have their own individual style, but they share ideas also, in order to make their work compliment each other's.

I notice how Dion and James' work share identical qualities. Dion's sculptures may imitate an architectural based drawing that James has created. Guests from their exhibitions have even gone as far to comment on their visual similarities and have thought that James' ideas were based on Dion's work.

"What is This Canoe That Swims My Way /Ko Wai te Waka a Kao Mai Nei" by James Ormsby, 2011 Graphite on Paper 760x560mm

"Dragon King's Kingdom" (Installation) by Dion Hitchens, 2011

These are the two pieces where I see a greater resemblance and presence of collaborative ideas. There seems to be an ongoing theme of constellations and jewel-like properties in both mediums. What makes it even more uncanny is the fact that Orsmby's piece is a representation of the sea and Dion's installation/sculpture piece is made up of three diamonds, with each one representing a particular sea creature: dolphin, humpback whale, and blue whale. His way of doing this was by inserting a recording of the creatures' distinctive sound into each diamond. "Dragon King's Kingdom" refers back to Buddhism, the reason why Dion chose to use diamonds in his work was because of the spiritual traits that they held. Ormsby didn't go into too much detail about the story behind his drawing, but I know that they were both based on their own spiritual beliefs and origins, I think it's quite clever how the two works managed to overlap.

Later on that morning we met with Finn Ferrior, one of the museum display coordinators. The main thing that I noticed throughout the entire visit was his passion and enthusiasm for the displays as well as his general dislike of the way the artifacts in the NZ European exhibit had been displayed. He showed us some metal mounts that are used to keep the them in place, but didn't like how over time, the mounts become unstable and the artifacts shift. After looking up close at these mounts, I don't blame him. They are quite flimsy and look as though they wont last long. If I was to display something of mine in an exhibit I would like to think that it would be safe. We also saw a shelf display where the larger artifacts were on the bottom shelves and the smaller ones were up top, they were way above eye level yet they were tilted so they facing up towards the ceiling. His colleague, Fuli Pareira had said that they wanted to incorporate the displaying techniques of art galleries into the museum, but it still didn't look right to me. Back when artworks were displayed in salon style, the smaller works were below and the larger works were up top. So really, it looked more like a shop window display, everything was squeezed in together and didn't have much space to breathe, it took the whole meaning away from each individual piece. The Maori and Pasifika displays were an improvement, however, and was probably the best part of the visit for me. The mounts were solid and most of the artifacts had their own space. There was also a lot of information written up about each display, I also like how each subject (e.g.different islands, traditional wear, cultural/religious beliefs) had been separated into their own section as it was easy to follow.

Xavier Cortada is an artist of Cuban and American descent, he collaborated with more than 600 people on a project called "Art Bouquet" which was donated to a place called Saint Marie's Health Care in Grand Rapids, USA. Each artist had a limited space of 3x4 inches to work with and were given the choice to use any medium, e.g. marker, paint, ink. What I find interesting is the fact that he collaborated on an art piece with people he didn't know, I'm guessing the end result he received from each person was a surprise but I'm betting from that, they not only did something good for the community, but also created a new found bond within the art community.