Bill Riley, Dion Hutchins and James Ormsby

Although I was late for class, Our class had three visitors, practicing artist and lecturers Dion Hutchins and Bill Riley and Waikato based Maori artist James Ormsby. All these three artist got together for about 6 months and held a collaboration exhibition called SEEK and have exhibited throughout numerous galleries around the country including Melbourne, Australia.

The one thing that got my struck about their collaboration work SEEK was the differences they all had in Art views, ideas, culture and religious backgrounds that make each individual unique but somehow come forth with a conclusion and ideas they all agree and respect. I

really like the way their work reflects their culture and personality background. All three artist works are different in media, form and composition. The ideas behind their collaboration SEEK was engagement, community, interactive and authentic. All these principle are well established in their own unique way through their works. One of their collaborative artwork was through buying groceries. Visitors and the locals got engaged with the artwork by buying and adding more food and grocery and as a result, Hutchins, Riley and Ormsby idea of engagement and community were done.

http://paulnache.tumblr.com/post/6196497690/seek-aratoi

http://paulnache.com/exhibitions/2011/new-drawings.aspx

I did a little research on the word collaboration since I don't know much about the subject. Collaboration means in short terms means "working together to achieve a common goal, a process where two or more people or organization work together to realize shared goals".

I also found out that artist collaboration only started in the 1960's and remember that most artist in history worked individually. Another fact I found out was they're art groups/movement who are renown for their collaboration movement in the late 1950's called Fluxus. An English printer and early Fluxus artist Dick Higgins quoted "Fluxus means among other things. Fluxus moves out form its old center into many directions, and the path are not easy to recognize without lining up new pieces, middle pieces and old pieces." The group movement throughout the years have explore new directions and have dig into areas outside the Art world and still running today but in a more business negotiation between ideas and information. Fluxus in my opinion has changed from a fun collaborate between fellow artist into a more business sharing of ideas and information to gain incomes. In relation to Hutchins, Riley and Ormsby they collaborated to engage and connect with the community while Fluxus did start with an art collaboration movement that throughout time has adapted and changed into a business with a lot of arguments through its history.

http://www.fluxus.org/audiofile.html (Allen Bukoff and George Maciunas)

Going to Auckland Museum after the class seminar was a great experience for myself. The Pacific Masterpieces and Lifeways gallery section grabbed me the most because it was the first time I witnessed the materials, objects and artifacts of my origin background of Samoan and Tongan. The Pacific Island migration of language graph grabbed my interest a lot because I didn't know the origins of each different Pacific Island language was and how some are linked closely through early human history. The Austronesian language family originated from Taiwan was a surprise to me because I thought my language was of African origin. I did a little research on Formosan language and found out that the language still exists through the Indigenous people of Taiwan who holds 2% of the total population of the country.

http://language.psy.auckland.ac.nz/austronesian/research.php (more info)

AUSTRONESIAN LANGUAGE FAMILY TREE AND MIGRATION