Compiler

Len Lye, Universe, 1963, reconstruction, steel on wood and laminated wood base, magnets, cork ball. In Len Lye: Individual happiness now! at The Suter Te Aratoi o Whakatu, 208 Bridge Street, Nelson, until 30 July. Visit www.thesuter.org.nz. Courtesy of The Len Lye Foundation.

Family life in Oamaru

At the Forrester Gallery in Oamaru is a photographic exhibition by John Pascoe entitled Songs of innocence. The show is a view into the family life in New Zealand in the 1940s and 1950s and the transitory experience of childhood. This selection of black and white photographs will warm the cockles of your heart and provide a much needed elixir in the dead of winter. In addition to his talents as a photographer, John Pascoe was well known as a mountaineer and traversed much of the Southern Alps. .Until 23 July. Visit www.forrestergallery.com.

http://www.forrestergallery.com

Go girl

Fiona Clark's major project Go girl continues its tour. Recently hosted by Southland Museum and Art Gallery, it is now on show at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery (DPAG) until 6 August. Comparing and contrasting New Zealand of the 1970s with the New Zealand of today, the exhibition tells a story of gender and identity over a thirty-year period. It documents the coming out of the homosexual, lesbian and transgender community within mainstream culture. The story also provides rare insights into the birth of performance art in New Zealand and the emergence of photography as a serious art form in this country. Visit www.dundedin.art.museum. [Also at DPAG is Canberra artist Jude Rae’s exhibition, Victoria Chambers, from her stint as their visiting artist. Until 3 September. Ed]

http://www.dundedin.art.museum

Dispensing with art theory in Dunedin

After the close of a recent residential project at Blue Oyster (Return by John Borley) lampooned by locals as being so far up its own theoretical fundament as to be farcical, a new project in July may mollify some of Dunedin's irritated arts aficionados, or then again maybe not. Pauline Rhodes’s Gathering intensities sees this veteran environmental sculptor explore the ideas of entropy and experience, and for this exhibition, she specifically wanted to dispense with the long-term contaminants of art theory and return to the freshness and innocence with the rawness of materials and process. Interestingly, these ideas have a relationship to some post-object ideas that have been long-term contaminants since the 1970s. From 11 to 29 July. Visit www.blueoyster.org.nz.

http://www.blueoyster.org.nz

Art and social activism

Following on from an interesting series of exhibitions exploring site relationships, Physics Room is currently showing some examples of practice emerging from artist-run initiatives and project spaces that deal in restorative, interactive and socially connective practices. On the heels of the openly harmonious and restorative intentions of Bekah Carran’s, My beautiful optimist, (mentioned in last month’s Artnotes NZ South Island) is a more actively political Upping the anti, by Melbourne-based artists Rob McKenzie and Kain Picken, and New York/Paris-based artist duo Claire Fontaine and Food Not Bombs, until 8 July. Upping the anti is about believing in the possibility of change and ‘standing up for people who get shafted’. During July, the new series continues with Wellington-based artist Louise Menzies’s newest project that will meld ideas of duration and action, with touches of sentimentality. From 19 July to 12 August. Visit www.physicsroom.org.nz.

http://www.physicsroom.org.nz

Joanna Paul drawing survey

Joanna Paul (1945–2003) was an prolific New Zealand artist working across mediums as painter, film-maker and poet in a broad-ranging and inquisitive practice. At a time when the term 'regionalism' was considered something of a slur, Paul’s creative practice was intricately entwined with her life; and as an artist, she responded strongly to her immediate surroundings. Since the subjects of her work includes the daily mundane experiences of domestic life, such as sick children, discarded toys and the views from buses. Although Paul was an extremely dedicated and focused artist, and her work is held by all major public New Zealand art collections, she was not a careerist, and avoided the limelight. She was familiar and loved figure in the Wanganui art community in the years before her unexpected death in 2003 at the age of fifty-seven. There have been several commemorative shows by public institutions with the usual belated flurry of interest when any serious artist is lost. Opening last month at the Suter Te Aratoi o Whakatu in Nelson is the most recent of these, Subjects to hand: Joanna Margaret Paul drawing, focussing specifically on Paul's drawings that were both central to her entire artistic practice and a part of her daily life. This exhibition consists of a selection of some fifty works from the thousands of drawings in the artist's estate, most of which have never been exhibited. Until 23 July. Visit www.thesuter.org.nz.

http://www.thesuter.org.nz