Columns

Art and politics – two things that don’t mix. The geniuses at OUSA scheduled Art Week and the elections in the same week. We wanted to cover both so we’ve bought you a magazine that tries to pay both service. Indeed, we are your one stop shop for all your OUSA election needs (sorry, we’ll return to normal next week). Our news team (and special guest pundits!) cover every angle imaginable at the front of the magazine (it starts on p8) – then hear from the candidates themselves at the back from p56. Wedged in between it all is some awesome art. Check it out. Plaster your walls with it.

It is Art Week so I, your Critic Art Editor, have been enlisted to discus that. I spent my holidays in Sydney visiting the Biennale festival. I was blown away by the whole package - the stunning galleries, the everything... Half of the people on the free ferry over to the exhibition island were regular Sydney residents and tourists doing something out of the norm.
 
Dunedin Public Art Gallery is good. My beef is with the lack of public events dedicated to contemporary art and lack of contemporary public sculpture. While the Fringe festival does bring a small extra yearly dose of contemporary art to the city, there are few works that occupy the public space. 
 
Auckland just had the triennial - a major international event. Wellington, ‘the cultural capital’, has a much larger visual arts division in their fringe festival and hosts the NZ international festival of the arts. Coming up in Christchurch is the Scape Biennial of Art in Public space. These events throw art in your face whether you like it or not. 
 
Now it’s not as easy as demanding more public sculptures around the city, art in public spaces comes with its own moving truck full of baggage. And sure, it’s easy to put up a giant sprig of wheat made from lampposts and a tyre in Christchurch’s centre city, its ugly already. Some would argue such contemporary public sculpture would essentially clash with Dunedin architectural heritage. But surely here the answer is temporary public art, like the sculptures dotted around Sydney’s Hyde Park every second year, Wellington’s ongoing The 4 Plinths Sculpture Project by Te Papa, or the seven new public works to be unveiled in September at the Scape Biennial. 
 
It’s great that OUSA seem to get it. Placing temporary installations around campus. It’s also encouraging to see a Mayoral candidate, Aaron Hawkins, making the need for more art in Dunedin a feature of his campaign.