Tag: Cinema

Len Lye on the Home Front

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Kill or Be Killed (1942)

This week I’ll be introducing a programme of Len Lye’s films at Stadtkino Basel accompanying the symposium hosted by Museum Tinguely and the University of Basel. Len Lye on the Home Front presents eight of Lye’s films made during the Second World War and a work from his early days in New York, the March of Time newsreel, Night Club Boom.

Many of these films are rarely screened. Musical Poster #1 (1942) and Kill or Be Killed (1942) tend to be represented in summaries of Lye’s filmmaking; however, Newspaper Train (1942), When the Pie was Opened (1941) and Work Party (1942) in particular deserve more attention.

Weekend Reading

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Len Lye, ‘W. H. Auden’, 1947
Len Lye Foundation Collection, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery / Len Lye Centre

This week we celebrate W. H. Auden’s birthday. Here’s Hannah Arendt’s 1975 New Yorker piece on the poet and above is Len Lye’s 1947 photogram portrait of Auden. The portrait includes lines from Auden’s The Fall of Rome (in his own hand). You can find all of Lye’s photogram portraits in this publication, including Georgia O’Keeffe, Joan Miró, Hans Richter, Le Corbusier and Baby Dodds.

The Times Literary Supplement recently published Genevieve Yue’s Secret asphyxiating world: Films and the watery depths, a review of Erika Balsom’s An Oceanic Feeling: Cinema and the Sea. You’ll need to be a subscriber to the TLS to read online. The book can be purchased online via the Govett-Brewster in New Zealand or LUX in the UK.

Artist Shannon Novak has been interviewed about his thoughts on the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery with Home magazine. Shannon will be exhibiting in the next season of exhibitions (April – July 2019) at the Gallery with Sub Rosa.

A few weeks back I was interviewed for a Taranaki Daily News article about the Gallery’s screening of The Room (dir. Tommy Wiaeau), one of the stranger media moments I’ve experienced.

Reading about the downfall of New York art dealer Mary Boone I was directed to this interesting piece about her fellow dealer Leo Castelli.

Two easy pieces

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Credit: Kelly Loney

Here’s a couple of recent pieces from the Pantograph Punch.

First, Alice Tappenden interviews me on my role of Len Lye Curator at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery / Len Lye Centre.

Second,  Doug Dillaman discusses our recent An Oceanic Feeling projects with Erika Balsom alongside our wider film programming at the Govett-Brewster.