SABATO, EL DIECINUEVE DE MARZO, VEINTI-ONCE
The photo, top-left, is a corpus-arm of a Crucified Christ statue that used to hang in the east chapel of the San Xavier Mission in Tucson, AZ. This is all that is left. It interested me as the rough wood skeleton is covered in canvas, then gessoed and polychromed. I knew that this was part of the process of making santos, but it's hard to see on complete forms. The saggy, torn canvas brought back memories of the skin surface of one of those bodies found in the bogs in a museum in the the UK. I also remembered a sketchbook drawing and a failed sculpture that I had made in preparation for my show at the Sarjeant in Whanganui in 2007. I had tried to recreate an arm out of cardboard and hot glue, nailed to wood with an ex-voto hanging off it. It didn't work, so I moved to casting in plaster, and the bottom left photo was the outcome. With molds, you can cast and recast, so I did a few variations on the dissected hand, looking at galvanisation, the power of the symbol of the hand. All these pics besides the San Xavier arm can be seen on the MOIV website here:
http://moiv.mattcouper.com/graveyore.html

MARTES, EL VEINTITRES DE MARZO, VEINTE-DIEZ
A new ex-voto that's in my upcoming three-person exhibition at Paper-Works in Napier, opening this Thursday. I displayed the work on the right, Recession Timepiece, at the Sarjeant Gallery until it was knocked off its plinth at a private function. Although damaged, it could have been a lot worse than it was. I had to separate out the two frames of the main box and glue them back together as they had split apart on impact with the ground and I had to remake the frame that holds the mirror and reversed canvas. Then a repaint touch-up. I'm so glad that the mirror didn't break, not because of superstition but because there is a painted dove on the reverse side of it.
To ease my pain though, Recession Timepiece, along with another box construction has been accepted for the Creative Hawkes Bay Invitational 2010 at the Hastings City Art Gallery. It will be good to have the ex-voto on the left on display in Napier while the actual object will be exhibited in Hastings.

MIERCOLES, EL DIEZ DE FEBRERO, VIENTE-DIEZ
A recently destroyed painting from 1999, called Blue Blood, Black Death. I chopped it up as it was riddled with borer, but kept a small piece (now soaking in turps) from the bottom left hand corner.
This painting came from a group of five, three shown at Anna Bibby Galley in Auckland in 1999, one sold, one lost and the rest destroyed. One of them, Game, came up for auction recently in Auckland and depicts a mokomokai and the Star Trek Enterprise, a comment on Delvanius Prime's valiant efforts to return mokomokai to NZ, while NZ's national Museum, Te Papa was exhibiting a Star Trek fanzine-type exhibition. This one shows the aged artist, at the time 22, thinking about his recent shift to Wellington (the BNZ building on Willis St), his history, lineage and future.
Oh brother!

DOMINGO, EL SIETE DE FEBRERO, VEINTE-DIEZ
A new ceramic piece I've had to remake. The original one on the left was the first of the new group of ceramics II've been making for Malfunction Baroque. I've had issues from the start with the crucifix breaking off its base a few times and also, because added at a later date, a couple of the feet fell off a couple of times. The whole object was held together with glaze... It went through the under-glaze firing ok, but after the clear-glaze firing (which is a heck of a lot hotter than the under-glaze firing) the base slumped in the middle as there was no support for the weight of the crucifix. A couple of days later, the crucifix cracked off the base. It was definitely the runt of the litter.
The new piece I've made is in two parts - the base and the crucifix, which I'll fire separately and then join together in the clear-glaze firing. I've also put feet under the middle section of the base for support.
Fingers crossed...

VIERNES, EL VIENTICINCO DE SEPTIEMBRE, DOS MIL NUEVE
ANOTHER RECENTLY DESTROYED PAINTING BELOW, BUT INTERESTING (WELL, TO ME) IN WHERE IT LED.
THIS PAINTING, WHICH SEEMS TO HAVE A LOT OF EAGLE BOYS (NOW DEFUNCT PIZZA OUTFIT) REFERENCES, WAS NOT THE FIRST PAINTING WITH A SPHINX PRESENT, BUT THE FIRST TO ISOLATE THE IMAGE. THE SPHINX TURNS UP IN AS A CARDBOARD SCULPTURE IN MY HUGS AND KISSES SHOW IN 2003 AND IN A VERY RECENT WORK, A CRUZ DE LAS ANIMAS, WHICH HAS A REPRODUCTION OF A PANORAMIC PAINTING I DID IN LATE 2000, JUST AFTER THE TOP BLACK PAINTING. I REMEMBER DOING A GROUP PROJECT AT PRIMARY SCHOOL ON THE RIDDLE OF THE SPHINX, THAT WE ALL ILLUSTRATED IN CLASS. SO MY INTEREST AND THE INFLUENCE PROBABLY COMES FROM BACK THEN. THERE WERE NO SUCH THINGS AS REMOTE CONTROLS THEN, SO THAT'S A LATER ADDITION