Metro Arts — Wednesday 26 March

Mar 26, 2025 Metro Arts

A couple of months before this issue went to print, I met up with the writer Samuel Te Kani to talk about art. He’d gotten in touch asking me what kind of art writing I wanted in the magazine, something that during my past few years at Metro I felt I’d failed to properly articulate when talking to writers. Over coffee in the blazing sun of Bestie Cafe, we took turns ranting at each other about the kind of art writing we liked, the kind of art writing that our readers might like, the kind of art writing that might be ‘useful’, and the kind of art writing that made the best writing.

I can’t remember if it came up in that conversation, but when reading Te Kani’s two pieces in this issue — one on the work of abstract painter Emma McIntyre, the other a review of every exhibition he could get to over the course of a week (give or take) — I was struck by two ideas that I’d also been thinking about. The first is that, to many, engagement with art has become overly narrowed into an experience in which one learns about something or someone and somehow comes away ‘better’ for it. The second, related and perhaps antidotal idea is that art can be viewed in a kind of dreamscape, or, alternatively, be used to access a space where experience and meaning is fluid and, well, abstract.

A couple of weeks before our mutual ranting, Dean Kissick had published an essay in the December issue of Harper’s entitled ‘The Painted Protest’, in which he argued that contemporary art has become so politicised over the past decade, so concerned with identity and representation, with biography and social narrative, that it has lost its beauty, its mystery and its emotional power. Kissick doesn’t want his “awareness raised” by art, he wants art that “tears open my consciousness, that opens portals into the mysterious. I like art the most when it doesn’t mean a thing, or otherwise when its beauty or strangeness transcends its subject.”

The essay is not without its problems — for one, Kissick seems preoccupied with returning to an art (“the purest expression of the human spirit”) and an art world (“open bars, sex, and glamour”), that has been lost, rather than thinking about, or even desiring, something different, something new — but it struck a nerve. It seemed to convey something many people had been thinking but certainly not saying. Several people sent it to me; I saw it shared and referenced on social media more than any other piece of art writing in a long time (perhaps ever); conversations were had; responses were written; podcast episodes were recorded.

What I was struck by was less the critique of identity politics’s perceived takeover of contemporary art — whether or not the necessary platforming and centring of art by and about those who have historically been marginalised has become an over-correction, to the detriment of culture in general, is not a question I am anywhere close to being in a position to answer — but the idea that art is also something that can operate on a purely aesthetic level, or a subconscious level, or even a magical level, is important.

At one point in his long review piece (which you can find on page 212), Te Kani writes offhandedly that “everyone’s such a neoliberal pussy and won’t do anything without a whiff of compensation”. The flipside to this is that all of us today, in whatever time it is we’re living in (‘neoliberalism’, ‘late-stage capitalism’, ‘technofeudalism’, the ‘digital age’, whatever) — even those sceptical of the insideous creep of the market into every aspect of life — have become susceptible to the expectation that art must do something for them. Whether it’s accessing the inner life of someone different from you, expanding your own understanding of the world or increasing your empathy for others, there is a risk that art (whether in the form of a sculpture or a novel or a TV show) becomes solely about edification, self-improvement, optimisation. Anything else is a missed opportunity or a waste of time.

These objectives are all well and good (and I mean that earnestly — we should want to expand our world and improve ourselves), but they should never be the only thing we look for in art. We should be open to experiences that are purely aesthetic, that are dreamy, that are illogical, that are beautiful, that are sublime, that are meaningless or that are meaningful in ways we cannot articulate or even understand. Art can be political, it can be resistance, it can be edifying, it can make you a better person. But it shouldn’t always have to. We must keep room in our lives for something else, for art as art, for art for art’s sake. Because once that space is gone, it’ll be almost impossible to get it back.

— Henry

What’s On

Chelsea Jade
Double Whammy
FRIDAY 28TH MARCH

Airy art-pop returns! A must-attend for fans of unconventional pop dancing. Chelsea Jade says of the plan:

Are you prepared to be moved by the musical movements of movies? Hans Zimmer has staked out a claim as ‘the guy’ when it comes to blockbuster film scoring. A quick list of the hits: Interstellar, The Dark Knight Trilogy, The Lion King, Kung Fu Panda, Pirates of the Caribbean and Gladiator. Now this is no knock on Williams or Elfman — but for most of the past decade (or two) we have been living in the Zimmer Cinematic Universe. Surely it’s a nice opportunity for the skilled practitioners of the Auckland Phil to stretch the proverbials and perform something written after Shortland Street first aired.

The Spinoff: Gone By Lunchtime LIVE
with Toby Manhire, Annabelle Lee-Mather and Ben Thomas
Q Theatre
WEDNESDAY 9TH APRIL

It’s time for the 18-monthly-check-in with the three-headed monster. Join the Spinoff’s political boffins as they take stock of our government at the halfway mark of the term. Given that it’s a live recording of a podcast, you could etch yourself into NZ political history by working on a distinctively boorish laugh and sitting as close to the front as possible. Either way it’s a great opportunity to make your ongoing parasocial relationships feel a little more real.

On Display

Mark Adams: A Survey | He Kohinga Whakaahua
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
SATURDAY 29TH MARCH – THURSDAY 7TH AUGUST

Elsewhere