Artist's new beginning in Nelson
Tao Wells is living and working at an artists' retreat that is being set up in Wakefield. He and his partner, Laura Shepard, are expecting a child, with a civil union on the horizon next month.
Wells gained notoriety in Wellington in 2010, with a controversial installation project that promoted the virtues of being unemployed.
His taxpayer-funded installation, The Beneficiary's Office, urged people to abandon jobs they didn't like, rather than suffering eight hours of "slavery".
Wells, who was on a benefit at the time, ran an office in Manners St with five "staff" for two weeks, promoting his unemployment philosophy publicly.
The project received a $3500 grant as part of a $53,000 performance art installation series paid for by Creative New Zealand and the Wellington City Council.
Even before that, Wells was no stranger to controversy.
Wells has performed different versions of the same piece, 27 times since then and will do so again at the New Performance Festival in Auckland in February.
In 2007, Wells used a Creative New Zealand grant to visit Melbourne as an artist in residence, where he exhibited "a whole lot of really full-on political artwork" exploring race relations.
Wells said he expected his exhibition at Conical gallery in Fitzroy – "a hot-bed of political activism" – to evoke strong reactions, but was shocked when the curator of the gallery censored his work.
Wells had printed 3000 pamphlets saying there was "no culture in Australia" and that the country was "20 years behind New Zealand" in terms of race relations, but the curator banned him from delivering them.
"It
was like they were willing to invest in me as an artist as long as I
behaved in a way that didn't actually do anything," he said.
Wells features in the latest issue of edgy New Zealand art magazine White Fungus, which forms part of a new exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art next month.
He said he had found "a new lease of life" in Nelson and was excited about getting involved in the region's art scene.
"My work ebbs and flows. There's the controversial and shocking stuff and there's actually just normal products that I try to sell," he said.
Wells is working on a series involving "domestic linen paintings" using pillowcases, which he hopes to show at some point.
"It has been quite a crazy road. I was in Wellington for over a decade and in the last five years I felt like a rusty old car in someone's yard that no-one wanted to fix. People give you a go here."
The Happy Bene, a film documenting the Wells' installation project and the reaction it received, is available online.
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