Arts & Minds

GOOD KARMA, BAD KARMA: Anti-genetic engineering lobbyists Madge (Mothers Against GE) have brought the art-for-social-issues concept to Auckland, inviting artists to contribute works for auction as a fundraiser, the most recent a series of painted flags sold off in May.

The concept is global. In Britain, a touring exhibition of 11 painted surfboards, organised by Surfers Against Sewage, was auctioned on Saturday in the British surfing "mecca" (yes, there is such a thing) of Newquay in Cornwall. The artists pulled in more than £70,000 ($190,000); little wonder, with names like wunderkind Damien Hirst, Jamie Hewlett of the band Gorillaz, the graffiti artist known as Banksy, and comedian Dennis Pennis (real name Paul Kaye).

Hirst's two boards (pictured) sold for £38,000 and £21,000 ($103,000 and $57,000), which will greatly boost the Surfers Against Sewage fight against coastal pollution. Hirst said if the fight for clean water was left to "big business and pansy politicians, surfing would be a health hazard".

All very PC, but the day before the auction, he was under fire from another environmental action group about a work which will be in his new show at London's White Tube Gallery next month. Amazing Revelations is a collage made of thousands of wings Hirst plucked off tropical butterflies, prompting Peta (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) to label him a sadist.

The Guardian reports that when the artist was unknown 12 years ago, he filled a gallery with hundreds of live butterflies, and that David Beckham bought a Hirst butterfly painting for £250,000 ($678,739). Now, says the newspaper, he is about to "harvest a whirlwind of bad karma". Linda Herrick

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YOUNG ONE: Anthony Young is the only Aucklander to reach the finals of the NZSO's Douglas Lilburn Prize, and you can hear his entry, Mamaku, in the orchestra's Saturday-night programme. Young sees the competition as a terrific break. "It's a bit difficult writing orchestral music when you never hear it." Mamaku will exploit the full potential of the orchestra to "explore the ideas of metamorphosis and slow change over time, with a modernist perspective".

Young has also almost completed an opera based on H.G. Wells' Through a Window, and there are plans to be made for his upcoming year as one of the Auckland Philharmonia's resident composers. William Dart

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RECOMMENDED: New work, by James Cousins, Adrian Jackman, Denys Watkins Bath Street Gallery, 43 Bath St, Parnell.

The spacious gallery suits these disparate works. Cousins dissolves landscapes behind a tight mechanical grid. Jackman applies computer-based images to bright landscapes, but is at his best in a car with a leaping jaguar inside it. Watkins plays elegant games with the word Tui on a series of panels. But the best things in the show are the delicate colour and shapes by Watkins on ceramics by Bronwynne Cornish. Until August 30.

The Kumara Chronicles, by Hamish Palmer Oedipus Rex Galleries, Upper Khartoum Place.

Kumara are photographed to make amusing satirical, legendary and even iconographic photographs. It sounds absurd, but here the indigenous tuber is made into that rare thing - a work of art that's really funny. Until August 22. T.J. McNamara

Auckland Grammar School auction.

Alongside the work of young, promising art students from the school, the work of "old boys" such as artist Max Gimblett and sculptor Patrick Kennedy will go under the hammer this weekend. More than 200 works will be offered, including Mary McIntyre, Fatu Feu'u, Stanley Palmer and Peter Siddell. Preview on Friday (6.30-9.30pm, $25 ticket covers wine and nibbles) when all the works will be on sale, followed by 10am-6pm Saturday and 10am-2.30pm Sunday. Linda Herrick