Name suppression for party-goer who damaged $333k art piece
By Louise Ternouth of RNZ
A woman who damaged a piece of artwork worth $333,000 while attending a ball at Auckland Art gallery last month has been granted interim name suppression.
Guests at The Curious Ball in early March were served alcohol and given exclusive after-hours access to the exhibition of works by Olafur Eliasson.
One of the guests was charged with wilful damage after allegedly headbutting a hanging sculpture during the evening.
According to the art gallery's website, the event was tipped as an "unforgettable night of art, dance, music and culinary delights", with performances from contemporary dance groups, a soprano singer and DJ. Canapés and cocktails were served throughout the night.
About 200 people attended, with VIP tickets costing $300 dollars and general admission was $200. Notable New Zealanders at the event included fashion designer Karen Walker and model/actor Colin Mathura-Jeffree.
The highlight of the event was exclusive after-hours access to Eliasson's exhibition, which was a mix of installations, sculptures and photographs. His work had been on display at the gallery since early last December, the first time his work had been exhibited in Aotearoa.
The damaged piece of artwork is titled Firefly biosphere (falling magma star) - a large hanging coloured sphere of glass, stainless steel and aluminium with a motor and lights inside that hung from the ceiling at head height.
Auckland Art Gallery would not reveal the value of the artwork but in a police summary of facts obtained by Checkpoint it was valued at $333,000.
According to summary, the guest had consumed alcohol before and during the event.
At 9:45pm she walked into a large open room which had the Firefly Biosphere art piece and approached the artwork. Police say she stopped just before it, stepped back on one foot and then intentionally lurched forward, headbutting the glass sphere and breaking a piece of the glasswork.
The woman stated she was slightly intoxicated and meant her actions to be a joke in front of her friends. She acknowledged her actions were reckless but that she had not intended to break the artwork.
It has been taken down and fixed at a cost of $3440, which the defendant has been ordered to pay.
The cost to repair the sculpture was initially covered by Auckland Art Gallery's insurance with no excess payment.
In a written statement to Checkpoint, Tātaki Auckland Unlimited Chief Executive Nick Hill said the gallery expressed sincere regret to the artist's studio and owner following the incident.
He stressed the gallery does not allow food or drinks in exhibition spaces specifically to help protect artworks.
"When alcohol is available at an event, it is served responsibly, away from artworks.
"Staff are located in and outside exhibition spaces to monitor artworks and prevent visitors from walking into the exhibition with food or alcohol."
The Art Gallery has reviewed the event and incident to see if anything could have been done differently.
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'Tennis Court' – Pure Heroine The video is fun, and even though the lyrics don't touch on it directly, this song feels like Lorde reacting to the sudden fame brought on by 'Royals'. It's also fun to watch her start a chorus meditating on teen archetypes and let it devolve into 'Let's go down to the tennis court, and talk it up like yeah'. Only teenagers have those stirrings of analysis combined with incoherence! 11. 'Ribs' – Pure Heroine I have to be honest, I like 'Ribs' well enough, but as critic Anthony Fantano said, some of the lyrics on Pure Heroine felt a bit limited topically because of Lorde's age, and 'Ribs' does this musically as well. It feels like nostalgia and longing specifically designed for teenagers, and at age 35 it's not for me. It's still good! We've just got better songs to come. 10. 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He wrote back, 'All things aside, I value this friendship and clearly I need to put some effort in myself and send it your way. Coffee next week?' The reason I remember almost the exact wording a decade later is because it literally changed my life and helped me become a stronger person. This song and Lorde's verse is that unexpected relief – oh shit, you do care about me, I'm not a burden? – writ large, combined with pain and anger at a misogynist culture and industry. 6. 'Royals' – Pure Heroine The original article about how racist this song is felt exhaustingly Tumblrite, but it was kind of vindicated when Lorde (as I recall) said in an interview that she was using hip hop beats to critique the genre. We say dumb stuff as teens, but I hated seeing the Labour Party use this song in their campaign, and I wish Lorde would make Winz take it off their hold music playlist. Listening purely to the music, however, it's easy to see why 'Royals' was Lorde's breakout hit. The sparse beat, the crescendos and soaring of the chorus, the bemusement at watching plutocrat consumption patterns, it all still feels as compelling and fresh as when she recorded it. 5. 'Sober' – Melodrama This song starts tense and never lets up its sense of dread, except for a brief loosening in the bridge, perfectly capturing the drunk haziness of thinking that hooking up with your ex again is a good idea. A perfect follower to 'Green Light', reaffirming that we're not here to relax. 4. 'Buzzcut Season' – Pure Heroine This is what Lorde does best: songs that feel wide open and full of possibility and poignance, but also like an ordinary experience you might have with your friends. 3. 'Liability' – Melodrama Using Pachelbel's Canon as a base tune allows some of Lorde's best lyrics to shine through on this track. It's also a perfect comedown after 'The Louvre', the mournfulness of sitting in a dark room and letting your heartbreak permeate your entire, disgusted sense of self; not only am I unlovable, but my friends probably all hate me too. And in Lorde's case, this includes her sense of self as a public figure and product – remember all the 'oh my god, how is she only 17 she's practically a savant' gushing of the early 2010s? The second verse burns an audience who dehumanised her as a genius anomaly among teenage girls. Much of the backlash to Solar Power was because of how unrelatable the themes were to her working-class fans. But one night this very week I was sitting in a deserted carpark having a crying meltdown after a fight with a loved one, and 'Liability' came into my head. Thank u, Lorde. 2. 'Supercut' – Melodrama The music builds perfectly from sparse laments to a banger, the theme is relatable in a particularly vulnerable place, the energy of the song captures both the joy and the pain of toxic nostalgia. Perfect pop tune. 1. 'The Louvre' – Melodrama After looking up 'The Louvre', I feel like I may have misread it for years, interpreting it as about inexorably going back for breakup sex and breakup emotions, when as written it's more about the first obsessive stages of a crush. But all throughout 'Homemade Dynamite', I'm waiting for those opening chords of 'The Louvre' to start. The music swells and pulsates and feels open and expansive but never quite releases the tension; the spoken-word bit shouldn't work but somehow completely does. 'Blow all my friendships to sit in hell with you' at once feels startlingly original and deeply familiar. Can you hear the violence? So far, 'The Louvre' is Lorde's best song.
