Wednesday List: Bah Humbug

Today's List theme is centred upon my new found passion for not spending money. When I say "new found" of course, I mean "about to be embarked on" (wish me luck). I spend most of my money when I am bored, and mostly on food (see how this could potentially end in disaster? A 180kg Sarah bored and impoverished. UGH).

• Sorted would probably be a good place to start. I could like, work out a budget and stuff. It would be good for me *sigh*.
• Maybe a term deposit would be good for actually generating some money from the money I already have - instead of nibbling away at it and frittering it away on food whenever I'm bored.
• To solve my bored=eating conundrum I could cook whenever the slightest suggestion of boredom was in the air. I could cook incredibly long, tedious recipes, full of methods and ingredients I would never normally use because they are so long and tedious. Or ice enormous cakes in increasingly elaborate styles... mmm, meat cake. Or finally I can make  the "I Hate Cake" cake that I've been obsessing about since I read a comment by somebody named(?) Gucky on Cakewrecks.
• Breakfast Sandwich. This is my new exciting idea that will revolutionise (ie: prevent) my scone/muffin/danish buying habit. I will be pre-making my Breakfast Sandwich and pre-preparing a pot of coffee to pour into my re-usable take away coffee cup and then *whooooooooooooosh* out of the door I shall go: Breakfast Sandwich in one hand, coffee cup in the other, Super-Extra Young Prof Woman to the Bus Stop. Never late, often sleepy.
• Other options to keep out of money-spending weekend mischief involve me skating outdoors and in the sometimes-sunshine, visiting the Fiona Hall exhibition at the City Gallery, the Hogarth etchings at the Nat Lib, and re-visiting our Rita at Te Papa (which I've just discovered finishes this weekend - PANIC). Free is good. People could come with me. It could be a social event. We could have a picnic afterwards. With Cake.
• Finally, I have more crafty whatnots that I am halfway through working on than you could shake a stick at... and also some patterns and some fabric with which to make things using the patterns. Productive and within budget. Go go Sarah Budget Woman.

Secret Hand Shake

I'm freaking Natasha out with my simulated secret handshake - the handshake I hypothesise as giving Brent special privileges at the Nat Lib (ie enabling him to take out library books. Tut). Last night I watched Chris Knox sing to Bill Hammond paintings, but enjoyed the Tracey Moffatt works LOTS more. I'm going back again... could watch "Love" forever. It makes me think stuff... like about women... and men... and emotional and physical abuse... and differing standards thereof... and the co-dependence generally coined 'love'... and the fact that as a rule I rather enjoy all that passion and drama. And about how much I like old movies. The other night I watched Liza Minnelli in New York New York, and discovered that my love and admiration for her and her dysfunction goes beyond her role in Cabaret. Secretly, I kind of want to be her, which is an odd thing to desire. I also secretly kind of want to be Anais Nin (also dysfunctional) and I want to be Peta Mathias *sigh*. I could be some kind of freaky Liza/Anais/Peta combo. I wonder if Peta Mathias ever googles herself. If she did she'd discover my scary stalker love of her. Hm. [I listened to her on the Nat Rad the other day and she was fab - S sent me in her direction when he switched on the radio, keeping in mind my stalker love. Good boy.]

I have achieved Date

I'm going to the City Gallery to see the Sam Taylor Wood and Peter Madden exhibitions with Work Place Crush on Friday after work. We swapped phone numbers. I'm stoked and am barely controlling my desire to gush. AND only one cup of coffee today.

Sunday Evening

Today has been an intriguing sort of a Sunday with enough drama to keep me going for the entire next week. Post morning coffee I decided to go to Te Papa and see the new Toi te Papa exhibit (this is a sort of semi permanent exhibition where Te Papa's national collection is exhibited with suitably nationalistic curatorship and accompanying rhetoric to really reinforce Te Papa's concept of what makes New Zealand culture and identity... mmm, subtle). Holy Mother of God some of the placement of the paintings was bizarre and almost offensive - issues of appropriation totally subsumed by neutralising language - art history lite. Honestly, who thinks to put a Gordon Walters and a Sandy Adsett side by side and basically suggest that each artist had a similar aim in their production of work?? Gordon Walter's program is expressed with barely any address to the issues of appropriation that his work brings about. And (this, I found, was the piece de resistance) who found it appropriate to put the work of Theo Schoon and the Tovey school artists side by side where the work can only affirm the sort of (ridiculous) concepts of bicultural utopianist ideas that continue to conceal the need for further discussion of race relations in this country?!!!? Feeling suitably smug I proceed to the City Gallery to see the work of Martin Thompson in the Hirschfeld Gallery. I read a review earlier this week about this exhibition and I have to say that I agree with the reviewer in his assessment of the large scale digital prints of Thompson's work - that part of the magic of Thompson's work is the fact that despite it's kind of spooky mathematical precision if you examine the work closely you can see where mistakes have been patched with tape. In this exhibition though I kind of think that the curators probably had a different kind of relationship with the work selected - and (of course) a totally different agenda in showing Thompson's work, as the Hirschfeld Gallery shows the work of strictly Wellington artists and there is no doubt that Thompson is a Wellingtonian (he's a sort of civic icon). After all this I decided to go home and feel sorry for myself re: breakup with Andy. After a long series of (rather hurtful) text messages about A's intrinsic selfishness, a good bawl on the phone to Mum, coffee with Bryna and one of those dreadful crying too much/post coffee drinking headaches I feel exhausted but stronger and I'm determined to do an awesome job of being myself, alone, and being strong and independent and wilful.

At the Opening

At the Opening

The Bomb

Today I had my weekend for the week, but basically I had TOO MUCH STUFF TO DO to relax or anything like that. I worked on my text for Enjoy (which is now almost 300 words over my (arbitrarily?) assigned word limit). During this I discovered something clever and wanted to draw parallels between the work of Hotere during the 1980s and the work of PinkPunk (everyone's favourite Estonian socio-political performance artists). I am now working on strengthening the tenuous connection between the two. I am over writing about sexual politics (where I struggle to find anything to write that hasn't already been said at least three times over: maybe I should let go because in this postmodern age, we know that the concept of originality is DEAD)And yet still have to write about PinkPunk's second performance. Dull.