Space Jam 1996 - Gambia Castle, Awkland, New Zealand. 2009

The old days, second to last show I did at gambia. The title, including the '1996' had nothing to do with nothing or everything,  I was expressing my contempt for the process in which I could preconceive my work being used. Fodder for other peoples insecurities. Especially as here is the evidence, played out here in this 'review' of the work. The guy (who I have met, and is a nice person, just in my opinion has no manners online) has a teacher complex well invaded in the dictator fashion, insists that pseudonyms are dirty and certainly beneath him, go to hell this list of artists. So he deletes mine and others traceable contributions. A lot like Art NZ would like to continue to treat me. That's ok. I'll let my work speak for me. At the end of the day, I need them not.

I don't blame him for not finding much to write about, or writing about what he did. It was to be accused of some inane technicality,  of not producing any info about my work, when at this show was the launch of a 30,000 word essay on my work, in my book 'the new avant-garde'. That he clearly had an agenda and stuck to it is ok, but I'd rather that I hear that agenda openly debated rather than pretended that it didn't exist or that I was simply a sponge to soak up his negative blame worthy opponent vomit.

I don't usually engage writers to publicise their opinions of my work. I am sensitive to the short cutting that this does in terms of asserting value, the quotes, the name dropping. It's to easy. I enjoy the connections myself, enjoy if others see them and use them to create their own connections, but they are or are not there. Writing can destroy this exciting chance to discover.  All because the artist is a fat head who wants his desert.
 

Tao Wells: Space Jam 1996
A drawing and painting sale selected by Nick Austin
Gambia Castle
14 November - 28 November 2009

November is an interesting part of the art year calendar, with many of the main tertiary art institutions around the country briefly presenting public displays of their students’ work. Most of what is shown is invariably inconsequential, work made cloning their teachers or pages of international art mags, or a hybrid. Those few with any substance will become apparent in 3 - 4 years after their paper chase, when they develop strategies of survival, shake the teachers out of their hair, and find their own voices.

In Gambia Castle Tao Well’s show suggests the opposite process, as if his best work is the very early stuff, even before he went to university. Such a premise might be accurate - might even be obviously so if his practice in general is conspicuously unremarkable to start with.

So how can we be persuaded either way? No meritable quality, in my view, is apparent from just looking at the exhibition and unfortunately Nick Austin, the selector of the exhibited work, has no essay advocating its merits. Although he is not listed as curator (only ‘selector’), he is known as an eloquent verbaliser of ideas, one who is exceptionally articulate. A wasted opportunity.

Instead we have Dick Whyte (of Wayfarer Gallery) writing a little introductory text to the show. It is nicely written and in three sections.

The first starts with: Tao Wells is a terrible artist. But he is a good person. This writer is impressively candid it seems, although perhaps too generous about the artist’s personality. Whyte then distinguishes between moral behaviour (externally imposed codes, as with legal or religious injunctions) and ethical (internal and from reflection).

In the second paragraph he puts forward a second definition of ethics in which “we must become adept at talking with ourselves. We are always two, rather than one.” He wants to lead the discussion to the possibility in the third section that Tao Wells is both a terrible artist and a terrific artist. However I can't get that far. For a start I have problems with his use of the word must.

Amongst his many attacks on the notion of prescriptive moral rightness and attempts to systematically provide criteria for it, the British philosopher Bernard Williams claimed that ethical conviction about what one ought to do is not actually a kind of decision (not from a group or from the individual concerned): Ethical conviction, like any other form of being convinced, must have some aspect of passivity to it, must in a sense come to you. (Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, p.169). However this conviction ends up being mixed in with reflection, discussion and theorising to form the individual’s ethical norms.

In other words, one might as well stick with the ‘one mind’ idea that Tao Wells is simply just a terrible artist, especially as there is no articulated evidence here by his Gambia colleagues (or Wellington dealer, Whyte) to counter that, let alone claim he is a ‘terrific artist’ as well or instead. If they are convinced there are arguments for the latter, it might be a good idea for them to elucidate them.