Q&A Andrea Duchatenier
Artist
How would your mother describe you?
This is an easy question. Just the other day my mother said to me,” you are a little like me and a little like your father”. She was commenting on my ability to fix broken things and I think she was being kind letting me have access to my fathers gene pool, everyone else in the world says that I’m exactly like her.
What’s your favorite TV show (and why)?
It’s a toss up between Heroes and Hamish Keith’s Big Picture. (He’s a hero to undertake the task of telling the NZ art story to such a critical audience)
How would you be body painted?
As Hamish Keith so I can give my opinion about art on TV too
What are you like at parties?
An over-excited chatterer
Do you have a muse?
Not really, my partner Anthony will often give me feedback on my work. The idea of the perfect muse, the Isabella Blow of Philip Treacy, the elusive person who has just the right yin to my yang, who understands my work and has just enough distance to give insightful criticism and be so astute and fabulously clever that I won’t take offence or become petulant if the comments are not positive, has not yet been found.
What’s your principal defect?
Bad eye sight
Describe your creative side?
I like making things and I love the idea of art- that something as decadent and complex as art making exists within societies is quite fantastic. So my creative side is a mixture of pragmatism, an angsty response to the tradition of art making, and other things that my mother could tell you about but I’m not quite sure what they are or where they come from.
New Zealand needs more…
cheap international airfares/people who buy art
What do you smell of?
Dog
Most disliked conversation topic…
Who’s in the next Prospect Show
What would your Mastermind topic be?
Dog Training Manuals
Describe your first kiss:
The most focused moment of my life
Beatles or the Rolling Stones and why?
Beatles by day, Stones by night (optimism versus sex)
What is life’s greatest mystery?
Why, when the ratio of female to male art students is 5:1, is this ratio reversed for exhibiting artists? It’s an international trend but it’s reflected in NZ too
What song would they play at your funeral?
The Sun has got his Hat on