Double fantasy

With a full moon on both Dec 2 and Dec 31, the first decade of this millennium will end with a blue moon. But before this year is out, weather permitting, we'd like to spend some time at our favourite swimming spot - Bethells Beach on Auckland's iconic West Coast. Heading north, it follows Campion and Caro's Karekare, popular Piha and McCahon's Muriwai.

Of course, Te Henga (Bethells Beach) is a landscape with its own lovers. Most notably, Don Binney frequently returned to this location, often drawing in situ to capture it both vacant and as a backdrop for his bird studies. Interesting to note that Google Maps has it as Te Henga at THIS altitude, but zoom CLOSER and it becomes Bethells. Curious.

Reuben Paterson now joins the list of artists inspired by this coastal treasure, with a work commissioned for the New Artland TV series. Titled There Goes The Moon, Paterson's ephemeral earth work pays tribute to his ancestral home of MATATA, which was devastated by flooding and landslides in 2005. It also recalls his 2004 outdoor installation for Scape, which similarly paid homage to the sacred energies of a local landscape - PUTARINGAMOTU (Riccarton).

Built and destroyed in a day, Paterson's Te Henga piece, like Riccarton before it, is another Narcissus reflection. This time it is an image of the moon, utilising the shimmering sand and surf to reflect the moon above while the installation is washed away. You can watch the entire process here.

Image: Reuben Paterson, There Goes The Moon, 2009, photo: FAT Productions/TVNZ 7.

Hopping mad

A facebook tip-off (thanks LV) has led us to a sweet new theory on crop circles. Turns out it's all the work of looney livestock, or at least that's what the men in black would have you believe... But does that explain the proliferation of field formations in particular pockets of the UK? Agrarian substance abuse could certainly explain THIS manifestation. But what of these, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE? Or this complex example, which hasn't been captured by google yet but is apparently located HERE. THIS one in Oregon was clearly made for web browsers, and THIS is just showing off.

Twin Towers

Much earlier this year, a time I distantly recall as being summer, google maps was more likely to be used for scoping out holiday road trips than workplace escapism. That may not have been the purpose of the reader who, knowing our predilection for the strange parallel worlds created by time-displaced maps when they are stitched together, forwarded THIS map link. (Thanks LM)

Whilst further exploring the adjacent area, we came across THIS striking view of the iconic Ratana Church, a now class form which has inspired artists including Don Binney (scroll down), Ans Westra, Robert Ellis, Derek Henderson, Natalie Robertson, and many others. One now features on the cover of Deidre Brown's new book Maori Architecture, already reviewed here and here, which seems a perfectly good opportunity to circulate a digital view.

Tremors

"Theo Schoon, the Dutch artist, introduced me to the geothermal areas of the central North Island - areas to which I have returned many times to record on film the detail and drama of these fascinating places. Here at your feet and in the air you breathe are the feverish exhalations of volcanic activity. These sites are the art galleries of nature's creations, thrust to the surface from subterranean crucibles by steam, boiling water and gases."

Len Castle quoted by Peter Simpson in the Mountain to the Sea exhibition catalogue.

Last week, amidst some of the steamiest weather Auckland has experienced in recent times, Hawkes Bay Museum and Art Gallery curator Tanya Wilkinson opened a touring exhibition of Len Castle's geologically inspired ceramics, combined with photographs by the artist and a selection of commissioned poetry, all of which makes for a nice publication.

Amongst those places favoured by Castle and simmering with primeval forces is the volcanic heart of the North Island around Tongariro, which includes the CRATER LAKE of Mount Ruapehu, the UPPER and LOWER TAMA lakes with their wind-swept, bottle-glass surfaces, and the seemingly kiln-fired, peak of NGAURUHOE, adorned with jewel-like lake glazes HERE, HERE and HERE.

Heading north from the super-sized crater lake of Taupo are the geothermal facilities at WAIRAKEI, the many small lakes through the region, including ROTOKAWA, TIKITAPU with its strange digital surface patterning, the pale blue and strikingly titled Echo Lake (WHANGIOTERANGI) alongside the emerald green Ngakoro, and of course the bubbling mud of WAIOTAPU and WHAKAREWAREWA in ROTORUA. And then, out to sea, it is hard to miss the miles-long plume of White Island (WHAKAARI).

Speaking of smoking peaks, here's MOUNT SAINT HELENS, VESUVIUS, KRAKATOA and ETNA. Not to forget the regularly erupting island of STROMBOLI, site of a movie starring Ingrid Bergman as a frustrated new bride. This in turn inspired Woody Guthrie to write a great piece of bawdy verse in which he longed for the perty actress to make his mountain quiver, a song that went unrecorded until Billy Bragg and Wilco were allowed through the late folkster's notebooks.

Image: Len Castle, Tongariro Emerald Lake

Circular vibrations

Last year we briefly got curious about whether crop circles exist on google maps but only found those big irrigation machines that are particularly common in places like OKLAHOMA - fields and fields of Mondrian and Mrkusich grids. Now we find there's another kind of earth art, the ominous concentric circles of bombing ranges such as those of Nellis Airforce Base, HERE, HERE and HERE. And of course there are also more mysterious configurations, variously thought to be the work of pranksters, aliens, sound waves, or the Mowing-Devil; two near Sheffield HERE and HERE, and near Parma, Italy HERE (locations sourced from this map).

For an art theoretical consideration of this phenomenon, Emil McAvoy will be presenting a discussion of "the interconnections between crop formations and our current understandings of complex, integrated and nonlinear systems" at this weekend's SCANZ symposium at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery.

Around, About Expanded Field

The April/May Art World (Aus/NZ) magazine is out and includes a feature on New York artist Peter Coffin. In discussing his Around, About Expanded Field (Sculpture Silhouette Props) (2007) works, which are MDF silhouettes of famous pieces, from Brancusi to Koons to the Easter Island heads presented with a projection of landscapes taken from a helicopter, he says:

"I was interested in re-contextualising the works I represented with the silhouettes as a way to give them a new life. Because these iconic works exist in our memory and are almost weighed down by their history and their iconic status, I decided to represent them as floating shadows..."

Images can be found on his Saatchi Gallery page.