Art in Auckland

Wellingtonians dismiss Auckland as brash, rushed and uncultured. So whilst James was in the capital visiting his uncles, I thought I'd take the opportunity to reacquaint myself with the Auckland art scene.

First on the list was the Real Art Roadshow, a truck parked in an uninspiring car park surrounded by municipal buildings. The truck travels around the country introducing school pupils to the works of local artists.

I thought that the teenagers visiting the gallery would be quite taken by Martin Basher's bitterly entitled I'm the only hell my mother ever raised, depicting a disco ball strung across a clearing in a pine forest. My firm favourite though was Neil Frazer's Deep Freeze, a vivid oil painting of a glacier. Luckily, the works weren't for sale.

Next up was a trip to the Auckland Art Gallery where I went to see In Shifting Light, an exhibition of local landscapes.

Landscape painting in New Zealand started as a way of mapping the new colony but has diversified significantly over the last 150 years. The curator hadn't limited himself to physical landscapes either, with some works representing the spiritual and political landscape. Another room explored landscapes captured in low light including a Victorian painting of the Waitemata Harbour at night - reportedly an unusual piece in colonial art.

There's also plenty of art out on the streets in Auckland. Nearly all the junction boxes are painted with a range of designs and a much loved mural protesting against French nuclear testing in the Pacific has recently been revamped in Karangahape Road.

Here's a mural from the side of a downtown flyover featuring a Maori biker and his family (click on the image to see the whole picture):