Arts matters
First, let's get the gripes out of the way. The name of the Auckland Triennial - "If you were to live here ...", mundanely scrawled on the world's largest Post-It note - manages to be both insulting and even more insipid than last year's land-title "Home AKL".
Who are "you" supposed to be?
"For most of us from abroad," writes Hou Hanru, the Triennial curator, "living in New Zealand seems improbable due to its distance from the 'centre' of the world". Who are "us"? I suspect "us", "you" and Hou are all part of the same globalised, Cartesian-minded, art jetset.
Then, scattered across multiple venues, a triennial needs hype - and, as the main placemat, Auckland Art Gallery should be rah-rah central. Yet I went there for an unrelated talk last week - and even walked underneath a triennial artwork (Saffronn Te Ratana, Ngataiharuru Taepa and Hemi Macgregor's chilling, powerfully angry "Ka kata te po") - without once being reminded some triennial thingy was on here, right now.