Things I Learned At Art School

Things I Learned At Art School by Megan Dunn (2021 Penguin softcover 352pp)

 

Megan Dunn is a former artist turned critic, writer and commentator, she’s made something of a local media profile for herself and can be often heard on Radio New Zealand programmes talking about art topics or her own works.

“Things I Learned At Art School” is collection of short essays that together form something of a memoir. We first meet Dunn as a child in the 1980s, we learn about her close relationship with her solo Mother and their life in the town of Huntly. Toys, films and television are used to launch into explorations of the era and we learn a little history of each and how they affected her life.

Dunn uses a number of clever devices to construct her essays, from a letter to her uncle who committed suicide to lists and reviews of books, diverging all the time to take on multiple topics.

After a rebellious teenage phase, she ends up at Elam art school in Auckland and she gleefully recounts her bohemian lifestyle as she tried to create art from videotape. Saddled with a massive student debt she then moves on to opening an exhibition space/gallery with her friends. Once that venture fails, she works in a number other jobs, including as a receptionist/bar-tender for an inner-city brothel. She makes the most of what she saw in that industry, plenty of hair-raising stories about the customers and the staff.

A following stint overseas in the UK is barely mentioned even though it is there she studied to become a writer.

Most of the first 80% of this book kind of glanced off me, its mainly lists and stories about people who come and go from her life and writing about her failing career as an artist. The final section of the book which recounts her last days with her ailing mother is a whole different level from the earlier sections. I found her experiences in the hospital wards and the ICU quite moving and it seems to be much better written. The book that I was already mentally writing off suddenly became alive and worth reading again.

Overall, it’s an average memoir. Some of the structure she uses does get a little too cute at times but it’s redeemed by the final part where she just honestly writes about a recent trauma.

 

Knock-Offs

Knock-Offs by Brian Heiler (2021 Plaid Stallions/RQ Corporation softcover 132pp)

Not a great deal to say about this one – the contents are 95% photographs and most of the rest some wry, sarcastic captions.

Knock-Offs has the subtitle of “totally unauthorized action figures” and that pretty much describes the book – page after page of images of weird and wacky toy figures that sometimes look quite-but-not-totally-like some major media property. From Superheroes to Star Wars to WWF Wrestling, they’re all in here – cheap copies trying to cash in on a craze but often arriving too late to sell big. I recall these types of toys filling the shelves of ‘Two Dollar Shops’ here around the turn of the century and market stalls were also big dealers in these items in the recent past. I don’t see too many of them around these days but that might just show I don’t get out much anymore.

Some of the Knock-Off toys included are now collector’s items in their own right, no toy collector being able to resist the sheer weirdness of some of them.

Its an amusing read and there’s more than one chuckle to be had in browsing these pages. The only odd thing was the section that ends the book. Titled “Bootleg Art” it seems to cover the work of several contemporary artists whose art is toy figure related. Although it was interesting it didn’t really fit with the rest of the book and is at best filler material.

I read through this book in an hour, its enjoyable but some interest in toys or collecting is probably needed or else it might just be a blur of odd pictures to you.