Blue Oyster Art Project Space | New Writing

From Blue Oyster Art Project Space: Writers of the Archives, a series of texts revisiting Blue Oyster’s archive by Reuben Scott.

In a way, Nick Knox lived two lives. Not simultaneously, as the saying connotes, but one after another. In 2014, we learned that there was a moment that ‘everything changed’, marking the beginning of a new life. This is the delicate question that Nick is asked in front of the camera barely a minute into The Characteristics of C-Minor, a short film produced by J. Ollie Lucks and Miranda Bellamy, and shown at Blue Oyster. Nick sits there quietly, searching for an answer that is not splayed out in front of him. Not simply.

The office was cold when I found The Characteristics of C-Minor in Blue Oyster’s archives. I was supposed to take notes as I watched, but for every moment tense and beautiful, it felt wrong to turn away. Afterwards, I found an audio file of the artist talk that occurred after the screening, the audience asking questions, diving further into the vulnerability that the film had already created.

“Can I ask a question?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Was there something else that grounded you besides music, when you were going through all those periods?”

“That’s the whole thing,” Nick said. “I wasn’t. Your understanding of what’s real is radically different from everyone elses.”

Isolation is a word that Nick used in the film, in describing the ‘before’. Social isolation. Physical isolation. Though isolation implies that one is stationary, Nick points out that it does not imply that one is grounded. Nick makes this distinction clear, and says that it was his new, deep faith in music that allowed him to keep his feet planted on Moray Place, where Nadia Reid, since his passing, said he was an icon.

The Characteristics of C-Minor has a sense of necessity about it. It does not shy away from portraying music as spiritual, showing its healing nature and its ability to move. Towards the end of the film, Nick talks about a performance he’d done where a woman sat close to him, and he could see that she was profoundly moved by what was happening before her. “To see in real time that what you are doing is having an emotional impact on someone,” Nick said, “is unbelievably validating.” He fumbles his words for a moment, choking on a follow-up that does not come, eventually saying “Thank you.”

It is a remarkably moving moment.

I recently got in touch with Ollie Lucks and Miranda Bellamy to let them know that I was working on this piece, and to see if they would like to add anything. Ollie, very kindly, wrote, “through working with Nick I learned the importance of vulnerability. It is the message of the film, and Nick puts it so well when he says that in order to grow one needs to let down armour. He was a gentle teacher.”

Miranda wanted to point out that The Characteristics of C-Minor, Nick’s gentle and powerful teachings, reached farther than Blue Oyster, and Dunedin. She wrote that it brought her great joy to think about all of the international film festivals that C-Minor was shown at. In her email she tried to remember, “20 I think?” From Byron Bay to Switzerland to Indonesia to Estonia, where Nick skyped in to answer audience questions, his big grin on the big screen.

There are pieces in Blue Oyster’s archive that are not unlike treasure. Rarities with values that might not be understood by everyone, but to others, might conjure up a great sense of wonder, or even grief. Past and present directors, administrators, interns and volunteers of Blue Oyster are immensely grateful to have had Nick Knox share his music and his stories in their familiar, creative space.

As Nick answers the question, “Was there something else that kept you grounded?” he assures his audience that it wasn’t always dark, and he wasn’t always tormented. There were ecstatic moments too.

“Extreme highs, extreme lows,” the asker adds.

He Oriori Uku

Ko tēnei te tīmatanga. Mā te kore, mā te whenua. Ko tēnei te tīmatanga, mā te whenua ki ōu ringa. Kia mau i te whenua nei ki ōu ringa, kia takahuri, kia takahuri. Kia mau i te whenua nei ki ōu ringa, kia takahuri, kia rongo koe ko tēnei te tīmatanga. Kia tau hā, kia mau i te whenua nei ki ōu ringa, whakatau hā, kia rongo koe ko tēnei te tīmatanga. Whakatau hā i te taumaha o te ao, o te pō, ā, kia mau i te whenua nei ki ōu ringa, kia rongo koe ko tēnei te tīmatanga. Kia mau, kia mau i te tīmatanga nei, kia whakanekehia te tīmatanga, kia rongo i te mātao, i tana hā mātao, kia whakanekehia ki waenganui i ō matimati me tō kōnui, kia piri ai. Kia rongo i te piringa, kia whakanekehia te tīmatanga, kia rongo i te mātao, i tana hā mātao, kia whakatau hā, ki te whakarongo ki te oriori, ki te oriori pōrori o te whenua nei. Ā, kia rongo i te mātao me te oriori pōrori o te whenua nei, me tana pupuri mātao, ki tana tatari, ki tana ori, kia rongo i tana manawaroa ki ngā ringa, ki ngā ringa kia mau, kia takahuri, kia mau ngā rongo ki ngā tīmatanga. Kia rongo i te piringa, kia whakanekehia te tīmatanga, kia rongo i te mātao, i tana hā mātao, kia whakatau hā, ki te whakarongo ki te oriori, ki te oriori pōrori o te whenua nei. Kia mau, kia mau i te tīmatanga nei, kia whakanekehia te tīmatanga, kia rongo i te mātao, i tana hā mātao, kia whakanekehia ki waenganui i ō matimati me tō kōnui, kia piri ai. Whakatau hā i te taumaha o te ao, o te pō, ā, kia mau i te whenua nei ki ōu ringa, kia rongo koe ko tēnei te tīmatanga. Kia tau hā, kia mau i te whenua nei ki ōu ringa, whakatau hā, kia rongo koe ko tēnei te tīmatanga. Kia mau i te whenua nei ki ōu ringa, kia takahuri, kia rongo koe ko tēnei te tīmatanga. Kia mau i te whenua nei ki ōu ringa, kia takahuri, kia takahuri. Ko tēnei te tīmatanga, mā te whenua ki ōu ringa. Mā te kore, mā te whenua. Ko tēnei te tīmatanga.

Clay Song

This is how it begins.

With a space, with a piece of the earth.

This is how it begins, with a piece of the earth in your hands.

To hold this piece of the earth in your hands and to turn it around and around.

To hold this piece of the earth in your hands and to turn it around and to feel that this is how it begins.

To breathe and to hold this piece of the earth in your hands and to breathe, to feel that this is how it begins.

To breathe in the weight of the light and the dark and to hold this piece of the earth in your hands and to feel that this is how it begins.

To hold this, this piece of beginning and to move the piece of beginning and to feel its cold, its cold breath and to move it around between your fingers and thumb and to feel it stick.

To feel the way it sticks, and to move the piece of beginning to feel its cold, to feel its cold breath, and to breathe, and to listen to the song, to the slow song of this piece of the earth.

And to hear the cold and the slow song of this piece of the earth, the way it holds the cold, the way it waits and sways, to feel its infinite patience for hands, the hands that pick it up and turn it, hold it, listen to its beginnings.

To feel the way it sticks, and to move the piece of the beginning to feel its cold, to feel its cold breath, and to breathe, and to listen to the song, the slow song of this piece of the earth.

To hold this, this piece of beginning and to move the piece of beginning and to feel its cold, its cold breath and to move it around between your fingers and thumb and to feel it stick.

To breathe in the weight of the light and the dark and to hold this piece of the earth in your hands and to feel that this is how it begins.

To breathe and to hold this piece of the earth in your hands and to breathe, to feel that this is how it begins.

To hold this piece of the earth in your hands and to turn it around and to feel that this is how it begins.

To hold this piece of the earth in your hands and to turn it around and around.

This is how it begins, with a piece of the earth in your hands.

With a space, with a piece of the earth.

This is how it begins.

Mōteatea 

Iona Winter

The mōteatea enclosed in my chest

aches to be released


tangi te mapu


I must draw breath

Silently I witness


people’s meaningless words 

render mine unspoken


‘I’m sorry for your loss’


What the fuck does that mean? 

I wish they would stop 

New lava etches


across my heart


joining solidified tracks


of those before you


did you know that my teardrops 

contain all of the oceans? 

The mōteatea enclosed in my chest 

aches to be released


tangi te mapu


I must draw breath 

I want to call you back


from wherever you have gone 

we’re not done yet


you didn’t give me time


but I see Papatūānuku


now greets your bones 

You are in me


our hands


all of our mothers’ hands


are kākano-womb-seed reminders 

that scratch at my belly


like a ngāngara tail 

The mōteatea enclosed in my chest 

aches to be released


tangi te mapu


I must draw breath 

Mōteatea, by Ōtepoti-based writer and poet, Iona Winter, responds to the 2018 exhibition, What should I do now, with my hands? by Melbourne-based practitioner, Beth Caird featuring work by Faith Wilson. This exhibition bought together Caird's continuation of a focus on grief processes and life-after-death experiences, self-made myths and the truth buried under fabrications. 

For more information and to view documentation of the exhibition, click here.

To watch, with your mind’s eye, the world floating quiet Becky Richards 5 - 29 April 2017

The World Floating Quiet in Shining Mudballs

Red earthed fingers

leave their print

on round words.

Words vanish into tactile desire.

Desire seeps through porous palm skin.

Skin of mud absorbs the tap of Morse lullabies.

Lullabies sink into ages of earth.

Earth colours and settles in time.

Time is an incubation.

Incubation cements mudstone boulders.

Boulders crack apart

forming open wounds.

Their dust is read.

Jenny Powell

Pastoral Scheme Amy Unkovich 13 September – 1 October 2017

Pastoral Scheme is an exhibition comprising of 4 works resting, hanging, standing, and leaning. It is a comment on modern architects and the change it has undergone to being square like and made of materials such as steel rather than the softer materials. Her works aim to upend conservative and neutral aspects of architecture, which I really appreciate, as some modern architecture has become so bland and this work has such a satisfying feel, and also has a touch of the 90s.

My first thought on the exhibition was how tactile everything was. It is work that you would want to touch and run your hands over as it draws you in. Some of the works have a textured surface whilst some are sanded smooth which creates a subtle contrast. Unkovich combines painting and sculpture together where they complement each other and work nicely all together.  There is a theorist Clement Greenberg who thinks that they should stay in their separate categorise, that sculpture should be sculpture and painting should stay in painting, Unkovich has commented on this combing the two different genres.

The way Unkovich has composed her works in this interior space works really well. The contrast between her smooth and textured works goes well in the space, and each work is different yet they match. My favourite work was Field Arch Quartet, which was made out of fiberglass and plaster. It is really delicate but I would have loved to have seen it free standing in a room so it would be something that you would want to walk through like you were in a garden. But it’s also interesting to see works in a gallery leaning against a wall rather than hanging as it is so common for works to be hanging and it gives it a different feel. This also works well as part of her idea of it also being part of a workshop space so it would be fitting for things to be leaning up.

In the second space of the exhibition she has made little puzzle pieces out of gib board and arranged them very thoughtfully in the room. She has thought about even the picture rail line and in the corner she has designed a piece that sits there but has a curve so the corner of the wall is still there.  Instead of hanging each little piece Unkovich has attached each piece so it is part of the wall an example of how she has combined painting and sculpture again. The work suits the space as it is quite enclosed. You feel like you are in a surreal room yet it feels really calming standing there.

Overall I felt the best thing about this exhibition was how it interacted with the space and how Unkovich incorporated a lot of techniques and ideas into one well executed piece of work.

Amy Unkovich is an emerging artist with a MFA from Elam School of fine Arts (2013), a postgraduate diploma from Elam School of Fine Arts (2005). She is based in Auckland and has been exhibiting regularly since 2012. Her work involves the interior space and she works collaboratively with artists in joint exhibitions.

Her recent exhibitions include: A revolution has to start somewhere, releasing stuff (2016), Hey cutie, Three’s company, future home of Stucco Monstrocity, A Modest addiction (2015), Façade Charm, New beginnings ave in the offing, a retail show case 2nds edition (FUZZYVIBES), Terrace Setting, Irrational interior (2014), and Primitive tints (2012).

Live at the Slipping Fan Belt Tim Player 3 – 28 November 2015

Situated in between performance and documentation of performance, ‘Live at the Slipping Fan Belt’ is a seemingly minimal presentation by Dunedin artist Tim Player. However, the exhibition documents a larger body of work: multiple live performances realised in mundane yet familiar locations around central Dunedin via traditional exhibition mediums of screened video works and framed photographs.

The video work titled Xam is My Man follows Player on a psychogeographical wandering through the city, which feels not as much a discovery as it does a rediscovery of already known territory. In following main streets and pedestrian pathways of Dunedin City these works, or documentations, seem to act initially as references to individual memories of place.

These journeys do not seem to be taking place in particular moments in time, but they rather encompass multiple experiences over a longer period; each channel of the video work being 45 minutes in duration each. Confidence in ‘knowing your way around’ can not often be achieved in one visit to a place. Watching Xam is My Man it becomes clear over the duration of the work that Player is overtly familiar with the city, as though he could travel the same pathways with his eyes closed. He is not a stranger to this place.

Knowing a place requires a repetition of experience. But viewing the work, I begin to wonder, are these experiences Player’s, or the cameraman/woman’s? This creates a certain tension that can also be felt in the photographic works, part of the ‘Propping and Leaning and waiting series’: 2 becomes 4, 11 becomes 11, 2:35 becomes 2:50, 10 becomes 12. These four dual image works act as mini performances, heightening tensions within the idea of place.

Viewing these works within the framework of the Blue Oyster is significant. As an artist, musician, barman and long term member of Dunedin’s creative fabric, Player seems to be exploring more of a collective consciousness that the Blue Oyster itself is a component of and has been for the past 16 years of creative practice for many in Dunedin. In this way, the exhibition moves from what seems to be an individual experience to a collective one.

Ultimately unobtrusive in presentation within the gallery context, the performative elements within ‘Live at the Slipping Fan Belt’ feel simultaneously present yet concealed. This brings forth the idea that perhaps the experience of place is not so much physical as it is ephemeral.

Grey Goo Tully Arnot 2 – 26 September 2015

Welcome Kinesthetic wander land Solar powered high wired electronic playground Pass through the collection of mundane vibration. Matter made by matter made by. Artificial intellect A secret not so Secret Evolution. Amongst the cords and digit array the slow glass sighs of consumption Shall we go out tonight? Pass through the halls of mass affection Pass thoughts through the walls of anodic communication. No need for words in this sensatory landscape of psychic leaves and prosthetic charm. A melodic machine in a maze of motion and constant glitch Photosynthesis with the flick of a switch.

(via https://soundcloud.com/blue-oyster-dunedin/nick-knox-characteristics-of-change?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=tumblr)

Nick Knox is a composer, pianist, and singer. His sound is at once gruff, delicate, and soulful, laced with baroque sensibilities. After a screening of Nick’s film The Characteristics of C-Minor, a biographical short film produced by J Ollie Lucks and Max Bellamy documenting Nick’s musical journey, Nick (with his keyboard) discusses his practice with Dunedin-based musician and Blue Oyster gallery administrator Emilie Smith. She begins by asking Nick to elaborate on his almost totally self-taught, completely improvised composition process. In between live demonstrations, Nick explains his creative practice, his teaching work as well as the emotional, philosophical and psychological complexities that weave together to create the incredible depth of practice that Nick has today.

Nick’s next project is the release of his upcoming album "Two Tails - Live at the Cafe" , keep an eye out on his website for album release updates www.nicknox.co.nz Follow Nick on Facebook: www.facebook.com/nicknoxmusic

A Tragic Delusion Deanna Dowling, Tomas Richards, Cobi Taylor, Robyn Jordaan

Opening Preview: Tuesday 4 August, 5.30pm Exhibition Runs: Wednesday 5 – Saturday 29 August 2015

Observing the characteristics of a specific moment in time, ‘A Tragic Delusion’ brings together four emergent practitioners working in sculpture, installation and performance to explore artist-run exhibition ideals that existed outside of the gallery system in the 70s, 80s and 90s.

Using an empty loft space in Dunedin’s designated ‘warehouse precinct’, an area that has hosted countless artistic activities in its prolonged derelict state, the exhibition symbolically juxtaposes past experiments with present ideals—de-centralising the Blue Oyster and offering the space up to be absorbed into a broader less conventional exhibition of new work across several sites.

While the premise of ‘A Tragic Delusion’ is positioned in the past, the exhibition is situational; set up to test the nature of emerging sculptural practice in New Zealand today. This can be seen in the way Deanna Dowling’s practice is framed by her commitment to sculpture, whereas Cobi Taylor's works can be read as installations that explore and reject conventional painting narratives, scale and histories. While Tomas Richards quietly and physically unearths material relationships between human-shaped objects and the inanimate, Robyn Jordaan’s energetic practice blasts open common conceptions about sculpture and performance using ad hoc processes, presence and humour.

An active public programme of live performance, archival film and open conversation responds to the premise of the exhibition with a little more experience on the subject of labour, the underground, characteristics and mishaps in past and current Dunedin practice. See programme timetable below.

Exhibition Locations Above Dutybound (57 Crawford St), Blue Oyster and selected sites in between. Click here for recommended viewing route on Google Maps

Accompanying Public Programme Click here to download poster with schedule

Labour Day A Live Work by Adrian Hall Saturday 8 August, 9am – 5pm Dutybound

The underground is dead, long live the underground Screening of Dereliction (1996) and conversation with Kim Pieters Saturday 15 August, 1pm – 2pm Blue Oyster

Characteristics of Change Screening of The Characteristics of C-Minor (2014) and conversation with Nick Knox Saturday 22 August, 1pm – 2pm Blue Oyster

Suspicious Minds Zoe Crook and Aodhan Madden 9–21 March 2015 During their project titled Suspicious Minds, artists Zoe Crook and Aodhan Madden presented a 2-part radio show on Otago Access Radio 105.4FM. Click the links below to download the episodes as podcasts and learn more about the ideas behind their project. 

Episode 1

Episode 2 Thanks to OAR and the Dunedin Fringe Festival for their support of this project.

Piti Montessori | Merge Nodes Sorawit Songsataya | Joe Hamilton 4–28 February 2015

How much does an environment affect us and how do we go about questioning it? It’s these kinds of questions, which came to my mind in viewing the joint showing of artists Joe Hamilton’s Merge Nodes and Sorawit Songsataya’s works created for Piti Motessori. While not a direct collaboration between the two artists, their separate ideas and portrayals of environments, through the use of physical objects and short video pieces, come together to create a series of both unsettling and contemplative works.  Their most obvious meeting point can be seen with their treatment and use of computer generated worlds and objects. Both choose to utilise new possibilities that are available in the digital age and to an extent commentate on its various applications within areas such as education and global exploration. Through this, multi-dimensional sets are created in which these possibilities can begin to play out.

One of the first things to arrest the attention upon entering the space is Songsataya’s audio-visual and main works Mathematics. The two short films, mounted vertically, play out as a series of erratic scenes, consisting of 3D physics models, an array of modelled characters (whom appear throughout his work), and background clips of “cam-boys”, all of which overlay each other in a highly intermittent manner. On this level we are asked to consider the position of object and subject, with the two modes replacing each other on a visual basis, and so in our interpretation. To confuse matters more, at the center of the gallery are found works Southland Carpenters and Clay Class, two vases shaped physical objects, much like those seen in Mathematics. Rather than being or even resembling the characters, they instead feature printed stills of cam-boys, thus reassembling themselves, both in of their supposed objectivity and subjectivity. 

Moving back to the films, which are hard to look away from, various graphically rendered rudimentary math problems appear, in which we can only assume are aimed towards the characters, then through to the viewer. Together, the scenes merge in such a way that becomes reminiscent of childhood movies, designed to make learning into something entertaining, all the while capturing the child’s imagination. Instead however, Songsataya’s films become a disturbing and confusing mix of unrelated and convulsive elements, reminding us of the ease at which education and entertainment can become lost in a nether zone of disconnected media. Fact and fiction are intertwined to the point of redundancy and the lesson learned is ambiguous. The ‘Montessori’ in Songsataya’s title is commenting on a form of education that has been described as having ‘emphasis on independence, freedom within limits, and respect for a child’s natural psychological, physical, and social development’. I felt this could be interpreted in a few ways across his works. The term “freedom within limits” seems especially clear in this context, with the multiple uses of a computer generated fabric mesh, featured several times in the films. Most often they are covering the intermingled segments of cam-boy videos, perhaps letting us consider the innocence of children and its loss through the ever evolving reaches of the digital age we inhabit, while attempting to limit and control the wrong area of the child’s growth.

Directly opposite on the opposing wall are two child-size knitted wood jumpers, entitled Piti School Uniforms. The front of the jumpers  display one of the many characters, who appears to be crying, as the poster child for the fictional school, ironically in opposition to the term ‘Piti’, being Thai for ‘joy’, the choking-like turtle neck again could be a nod towards a misguided attempt at controlled freedom and physical respect of the Montessori school these characters attend.

The final works to be found are a series of framed photographic style images, Parental Concerns, arranged as school photographs and Dad leaked my nudes, supposedly representing the more personal side of photography. Like the previous works, these pictures show the array of characters that Songsataya has created, and presents a narrative of school and home life. These students are presented as vessels, waiting to be taught and filled with knowledge and ideas. They are all different shapes and sizes, some quite misshapen, giving the idea that while these children can be taught, they have already been shaped to an extent, by a different environment, and by those who created them, and thus have already directed their personalities and futures.

At the other end of the room are Joe Hamilton’s sculptural works Diffusion Layer, seemingly more of an ‘offline’ work, in contrast to Merge Nodes that presents itself as very much ‘online’. In the former, five hollow poles stand freely, wrapped around each are varying columns of familiar scenes—stock photo style landscapes, split up by patched textures and layers of metal, felt and red reflective tape. Diffusion Layer considers the viewer’s movement, and encourages the use of one’s line of site as a way of combining and separating the fractured scenes. In this sense the viewer is integrated into the work and its placement in the space. Just round the corner in the second gallery space is Merge Nodes, in the form of a large projection on the wall. Entering the space, you are immediately given a new sense of placement and location, regardless of your own grounded viewpoint. Hamilton utilises fast atmospheric sounds such as crisp liquid drips, breezing winds and indistinguishable hums—that seem generic in location but recognisably natural. Diffusion Layer is a sensory experience; the collapsing of one landscape into the next, with little to no time to make bearings, you are shifted from location to location with a transition of ruptured landscapes shaping and gliding into one another. Man-made ruins and debris merges into the natural rubble of the earth. The untouched and everlasting becomes caught up in the framework and structure of modern scenes, pieced together with digital artefacts or nodes that seem paved into one landscape. The environments are explored through the lens of a camera—a first person view that moves with the world as seamlessly as it rearranges itself, like an eye darting back and forward reading a computer screen. This movement is suggestive of the way in which modern technologies are enabling instantaneous movement, not only of the eye but the mind—across the world and an ease at which we can remove ourselves from the limitations of physical movement. Map-markers in some transitions are drawn from Google Earth and Maps, and it is certainly suggestive of the experience of instant change through these technologies. What Merge Nodes ends up becoming is a single digitised environment, one in which geographical location becomes generic, and through it the viewer is drawn into a sensory experience, ungrounded through an endlessly looping idealised world.

The choice of showing these two artists together in a joint exhibition, while being separate in their execution and subject matter, places a the over-arching subject of environment into the works. In this sense, some thought needs to go into how we, the viewers respond and react—whether passively or actively—in thinking the position we have in relation to the object, subject or idea being viewed. In this way, pehraps the role of the viewer might not just be to respond, but to reconsider.

James Thomson-Bache