There’s an exhibition opening on Saturday week (December 11) at the City Gallery in Wellington that is going to be using a nice combination of literature and art. The exhibition will pay tribute to the work of the late Joanna Paul, one of our most prolific and versatile artists, who died suddenly last year aged 57 (Frugal Pleasures, right).

The child of literary parents, she also wrote, which makes the inclusion of the ‘small but elegant publication’ which goes with it even more appropriate. The booklet is called beauty, even; there are pieces in it by Gregory O'Brien, Bill Manhire, Ian Wedde, Jenny Bornholdt, Cilla McQueen, Bridie Lonie, Bernadette Hall, Mary Paul, Michael Nicholson and Daryl McLaren and Robert Cross. The show itself, 3 New Zealand Painters, also features the work of Max Gimblett (grr, yum) and Melvin Day.

I think the two disciplines can complement each other so fantastically well that it’s surprising there isn’t more of it. And we’d love to see more galleries commissioning pieces by NZ writers to… extend exhibitions, as it were. Why not? More writers employed, another profit stream for the gallery, and an extra dimension added to visual work. I could go on, but perhaps someone else could launch into a discussion of the philosophy of external vision versus internal. I’ve got to do the school run.