Call for Applications: Art Writing and Criticism Workshop at Enjoy

I’m really excited to be part of the first workshop in an ongoing series on art writing and criticism that will be hosted by Enjoy Gallery in June. See below for further information and don’t hesitate to get in touch with any questions!

Enjoy’s Art Writing and Criticism Workshop encourages emerging art critics in Wellington and explores the relationship that quality criticism has to the quality of art being developed. The workshop will consist of a group of selected applicants who will be mentored by established art critics and writers. The mentors and tutors will give a one hour talk about art writing and feedback to two participants each about their writing. Emerging writers will have the opportunity to strengthen their work through one-on-one email consultations with leading art critics.

Appropriate candidates for this workshop are those who wish to improve their art writing skills, develop complex ideas clearly and situate art works within their broader contexts. The applicants who are most likely to benefit from participation in the workshop will be chosen. Participants will attend all sessions with mentors and workshop sessions are in the evenings.

Please send a short cover letter stating your goals for the workshop experience and two sample texts of no more than 500 words each. Texts can be (but are not limited to,): short reviews, essays or experimental responses to an art work or exhibition, or excerpts from a larger body of work.

Workshop Dates:

June 19th – July 10th Tuesday June 19th Jon Bywater and Louise Menzies

Tuesday June 26th Rachel O’Neill

Tuesday July 3rd Mark Amery

Tuesday July 10th Megan Dunn

Another workshop will be organised with other writers from around NZ and new participants in October 2012.

More details here.

Clouds

All the Cunning Stunts’ publication SO GAY! is now available for purchase online from Clouds Publishing.

SO GAY! is a fresh, magazine-style art publication by All the Cunning Stunts (artists Liz Allan, Rachel O’Neill, Clare Noonan, and Marnie Slater) that documents their recent self-titled public light box exhibition. All the Cunning Stunts launched the cultural wing of the 2nd AsiaPacific Outgames and audiences viewed the eye catching, street savvy and laugh-out-loud works in Wellington’s Courtenay Place Park from December 2010 – April 2011. SO GAY! critically extends the conversation around the themes of the work and features documentation of the project’s development and its in-situ public presentation.

With sympathy

Lately I’ve been working on a YouTube-based art project called ‘With sympathy’, a series of web episodes that follow the trials and tribulations of an heiress to a greeting card empire. You can follow its development on the project website ‘It’s Rachel O’Neill Calling:

https://sites.google.com/site/itsracheloneillcalling/

Here are descriptions of the first five episodes:

Episode one: Q&A
An interview takes place between a woman who is a recent heir to a greeting card empire and an ambitious up-and-coming writer. The loss of her legal guardians makes the interviewee a bit discombobulated and she discusses spying, disguises, and the perversity of compassionate truth. The interviewer uses the word ‘like’ a lot.

Episode two: Mustache
The woman slash greeting card heiress has a dream about a limber mustache.

Episode three
Soon after the mustache dream the greeting card heiress signs up for a kind of hydrotherapy that takes place in heated baths installed in tent-like structures. ‘Tent’ therapy aims to push spiritual boundaries and the participants jokingly call the enclosures the ‘tents of non-denial’. She has another dream, this time it has a sinister watery feel, with Dadaists and surrealist accents. Perhaps because she had just finished reading Surrealist Photography with Introduction by Christian Bouqueret (Thames & Hudson 2008).

Episode four
A therapy session reveals the greeting card heiresses real business agenda, as well as her troubled state of mind as she faces change in her personal life.

Episode five
New initiatives in the area of greeting card audio are explored (in private).