Ceramics at Art + Object

An interesting auction coming up at Auckland's Art + Object on June 8: The Martin Hill collection of International and New Zealand ceramics, billed as the most important collection of post-war studio ceramics ever assembled in New Zealand. The works in the image below are by (from left) Shoji Hamada, Hans Coper, Dame Lucie Rie, Tatsuzo Shimaoka and Michael Cardew. You can read more about the auction at the link here, and the works are all on display at the auction rooms now.

Michael Parekowhai in Venice

Artist Michael Parekowhai is representing New Zealand at the Venice Art Biennale, which opens on June 4, and bloggers Jim and Mary Barr are there watching Michael's grand installation be unloaded, a process involving cranes and barges and lots of potential complication (but no actual major hiccups so far). You can follow the action on Jim and Mary's blog at the link here. The image below is from their blog, showing one of the crates containing Michael's work being unloaded.

Some of you might remember that we featured some photographs of Michael's installation, On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer, in our April May 2011 issue.

We were lucky enough to see the works - a heavily carved grand piano, and two bronze replica pianos with giant bulls atop them - at a warehouse in west Auckland before they were packed up to be shipped to Venice. It was an amazing event - the carved piano was being played while the bronze bulls stood guard nearby, and there was something in the air that caused quite a few people to weep. In a nice way.

The photographs of the works below are by Jennifer French, courtesy of Michael Lett. The Venice Biennale is on until October 25, a fantastic excuse to visit that spectacular city (as if an excuse was needed).



Parsonson Architects in Dwell

Gerald and Kate Parsonson's holiday home on the Kapiti Coast, which Gerald designed and which won our Home of the Year award in 2001, is on the latest cover of Dwell, the US architecture magazine. 



You can see a slideshow of Matthew Williams' photographs of the bach at the link here.

If Matthew's name seems familiar, that's because he used to shoot for us until he moved to New York a few years ago. It's great to see good New Zealand architecture represented abroad. Remember you saw it in our mag first!

Another of Gerald's designs features in our upcoming June/July issue (which also contains our annual furniture Design Awards). We send our last pages of that issue to the printers tomorrow (it'll be on sale on June 6), and after that we start tackling the Home of the Year 2011 issue.