Blog Assignment7-Respnd The Auckland War Memorial Museum Visit

In the Auckland War Memorial Museum we saw a wild range of exhibitions about New Zealand culture and history. At the ground level, there are many spaces display the Pacific Island communities and many astonishing beautiful objects they produced like models which can reflect history, toys and tools people played and used in the past. Some galleries tell the story of Pakeha childhood while the Maori court displays many kinds of objects which deeply tell people the magnificent culture of Maori. Other spaces show the international design and decorative arts.

When it comes to the Maori culture, all the objects showed in the Maori Court are outstanding. The majority of Maori's historical objects like sculptures made of wood are show in the glass walls because these treasures are untouchable. One of the most astonishing objects is the Te Toki a Topiri, displayed at the right corner of the Maori Court. This is the last of the great Maori war canoes. With the hull adzed from a singe huge log, the canoe is 25m long and can carry 100 warriors. This show makes me think of the Camakau, sailing canoe. This canoe is produced by Fijian craftsmen, made of wood, too. It is a dugout sailing canoe with outrigger, added wash strakes and decking. This canoe is not that long like Te Toki a Topiri, but in my opinion, I think this one is displayed much better. With the moving blue lights under the canoe, and dark lights as the background, it more looks like a canoe comes from dream.

I was also attracted by the Wild Child space, people can enjoy a story of childhood in New Zealand over the past 150 years. When you step in this place, first you will see a life-size elephant standing in black iron railings, this elephant called Rajah, an icon of Auckland Museum and Auckland's childhoods. And I think that is why Rajsh placed at the head of the Wild Child. Most of the objects displayed here are toys, dolls with strings, many kinds of sweet sugars. Plush toys, cars, photographs, dolls are hanging on the wall or setting on the ground inside glass walls. What special we can see is how those different sugars displayed, each kind of sugars are set in a glass block and when all the blocks get together, it looks very colorful. On the left side of the space, people can see some uniformed children models in the window wall, models are all white, so the colorful uniforms can stand out.

However, in my opinion, the childhood story should be told in a better way. Many objects are represent very simple, people come here just browsing the objects but not totally into the story and after they walk out of the space they may remember nothing. A little bit change is necessary, like when talking about the uniformed children, how about make a series of 3D film for people to watch or put on some historical files, photographs. And if elephant Rajsh graved more special than other elephants, or make some voice to let people pay more attention, that will be a better way to represent that Rajsh don't like viewers riding on it's back in the zoo.

Blog Assignment 6-Respond the Post-colonialism

Colonialism means a country compulsorily oppress and control another country's military, economic and culture. However, post colonialism means not just rob another nation's culture, economic, but also reconstruct economic, culture and politics of injured countries and conform their wealth to suzerain's own construction. With the development of post colonialism, the majority of the indigenous art and culture in the third world has been assimilated and some of them became popular on the global society. So, black, yellow and white people started living together and than another problem came out which is especially always happened in western world- the racialism.

Because of the post colonialism, many things appear on society include art strongly impacted. Some classy or traditional custom affected by some new habit from other countries. And for protecting the tradition or with other purpose, some racists reject black skin color people, letting them do many hard work or even treat those labours just as an animal . For example, in old United States, some public places are not available for black people or even African American and this event actually still appear at present. To expose this unfair social problem, many indigenous artists are using contemporary art present those untold stories.

Adrian Piper, the first generation conceptual artist in New York city who did drew some great art works about her gaze to the race. Like the one, Self-Portrait Exaggerating my Negroid Features, 1981. This is a insinuative self-portrait. In this drawing, the image presented an African American long hair woman. Piper designedly emphasize the big nose, full lips and hair and telling us she views herself as an African American woman. If viewers watch this image, they wouldn't just realise that they are watching a African woman, they will think about the people usually view her as a white woman but in fact she is a black woman, in this race ignore society, will she still have equal treatment or not.

Another work which present problem of racism is the video: Wog Features, directed by Lisa Reihana , in this video, people can see many black person toys, some black people are performing on the stage or strangely laughing each other or playing together, and elements and stuff about minority nationalities keep making up different patterns which transfer racist imagery. the technology Reihana use in the video, just like the American animation film: Chicken Run. This is different way to look at the minority race, letting people consider the racism society we are living and question people's previous attitude about those indigenous people who are having unfair treatment.

Blog Assignment 5-Respond The Triennial

There are lots of contemporary artworks exhibited in the 4th Auckland Triennial exhibits fulfilled it's terms "adventure & risk" in a extraordinary way. The theme of this exhibition: Last Ride In A Hot Air Balloon, tells people that nowadays, we are facing more and more risk and contradiction in our society, like the recent economic recession, higher unemployment rate, gap between wealthy and poor and so on. And now it's the time to change the situation and face the risk bravely. In this Triennial, we can find most of the artists trying to describe their desire of having adventure and break something new. one if those artworks which can totally represents the terms is the short films made by Marine Hugonnier, her films almost completely contain all kinds of risk and adventure, especially the third one has a image of a hot balloon image, this one has the function of emphasis the theme of this exhibition and let me think of the last year American 3D animation UP, the old man attaches thousands of hot balloons to the house and use the flying house to go to the south American waterfall to finish the dream of him and his wife who had die. For a person, a life without adventure and risk isn't a worth life, for our society, environment, and our world, if we don't try to transform or try to explore the world, we will never develop our society. And the artists are try to telling us, it's time to risk. In addition to the idea those artworks represent, I'm also attracted by the wild range of materials they use, you can see color painting or hand-made drawing in this exhibition, all these new materials and art forms seem like telling person this is something new, some new style, not tradition.I think this is also one part of the risk and adventure.

There are two artworks interest me most, first one is the "Singing Cloud", by Shilpa Gupta. I was amazed by the 4000 microphones, and the sound of singing songs, bird, surfing, etc. This one is really close to the adventure than others because this one can give viewer not only visual impact but also the natural sound which lead listener to the adventure, making people feel they are walking in the forest.

Another one is Robert Hood's Making Useful Useless, this one is quite a performance art. I'm really appreciate the tension of this artwork and I was surprised by the scrap from his white car. It's really a wonderful idea to destroy a useful thing useless to represent his idea. Actually, it's not destroy, it's a non-traditional way to give one thing a new life. Through looking at those car materials can you feel Hood's insinuative attitude to the lack of productivity in both economy and art area. He trying to tell us well should create something new, something more contemporary, don't be outmoded.