Summer, Waikato Sculpture Trust
Waitakaruru Arboretum, Hamilton
Up 147 stairs, in a secluded circular clearing, the stone and glass Platform 2011 is revealed as spectators climb and arrive, breathless. In this quiet space, the sculpture also regulates breath. Sealed between two skins of polished glass, a sliver of factory air transacts hot and cold, and supports a double image. Both lectern and altar, Platform alternates between prop, manifesto and critique; a stage for performance and a site of production.
Summer: sky above, earth below
Curator: Andrew Clifford
The Sculpture Park @ Waitakaruru Aboretum
20 Nov 2011 - 4 March 2012
Sculpture in the Gardens
Auckland Botanic Gardens
Flanked by groves of Australian gum and New Zealand totara, the ancient kauri sculpture, Native Tongue, positions prehistory at centre-stage. The solid timber sculpture is formed from the heartwood of a single giant tree, a rare and unique timber radio carbon-dated at over 45,000 years old. Pre-dating modern Man, the kauri I-form re-connects humanity with primordial beginnings. With a curved geometry and silky smooth to touch, Native Tongue seduces the eye, the heart and the mind.
Sculpture on the Peninsula
Loudon Farm, Banks Peninsula, Canterbury NZ
Mounted on black columns, the white limestone sculptures Not I and II align, forming vertical and horizontal grids of symbols, pronouns, letters and numerals. II crowns a Tau cross, a sign of life and reincarnation. When viewed head on and together, II also rests on the foundations of Not I. Sited at the historic Loudon Farm, in earthquake torn Canterbury, the works develop a sequence, like building blocks, with humanity and hope at the core.
Silhouette
Smales Farm Station, Auckland NZ
Smales Farm Station Public Art Award 2011
Located at the gateway to a busy city transport Station beside a motorway, the black granite Silhouette anchored to a horizontal white stone platform, stands tall, robust and encompassing. Intersecting planes, geometric proportions, gentle curves, reflective surfaces, and an encircling shadow offer contemplative moments in a place of constant transition.
Developed in response to the history and ongoing transformations of the site - from pasture to 'green' office park, and from horse drawn carriages to modern transport hub, Silhouette refers to an underlying theme of aspiration. The black vertical stone and intersecting white horizontal platform reflect the elongated seams of the dark basalt that once ran through the old Smales Quarry and the Station's location at the edge of a volcanic lava flow.
Third Person
Centre of Contemporary Art, Christchurch NZ
A procession of glass and concrete forms move, in both materials and substance, from light to dark and into the depths of the gallery. Embodying the rubric 'I', each work notes the presence of third and subsequent persons. The three Maquettes are 'read through' one another, personae or masks that reveal and conceal sex and strategy. Like Greek Muses, they line up - backing vocalists to the lead characters: the large glass, Untitled, and the wall-hung Je suis. Dissolving boundaries between subject and object, Third Person considers the transformative potential within perception and identity.
Shapeshifter
The New Dowse, Lower Hutt NZ
NZ International Arts Festival 2010 Wellington NZ
In collonade form and parallel proportions, dressed in black and white, Babel and Portia conduct a one-word, one-number, one-sound dialogue - in duplicate. Like a film, the changes in weather, swaying trees, spectators and other structures surface and disappear from the works' reflective and transparent planes. Movement is stilled in the concrete body of the works, grounded, as Portia and Babel retain focus - taking turns to frame, interrogate and delete the other.
Exhibition 2010
Kaipara Coast Sculpture Gardens NZ
Nov 2009-Nov 2010
Stationed in an undulating landscape and adopting the idiom and icons that shaped a cultural psyche - from John Mulgan's Man Alone (1939) to Colin McCahon's Victory Over Death II (1960), Babel initially strikes a heroic pose.
Cast as a contemporary Tower of Babel, where humility and vanity collide, the muscular form reveals a hesitant grip on the text. In profile, the 'I' is pinched between columns of stone, allowing a shaft of light to fill the void and develop layers within a singular form.
En Plein Air
COCA Centre of Contemporary Art, Christchurch NZ
From the C19th French term 'in the open air', the exhibition title refers to the practice of painting outdoors under natural light. This innovation changed the essence of landscape painting, enabling a direct connection between reality and its representation. In an art-historical twist, En Plein Air brings the outside inside to make landscapes of live grass and magnetic fields within the confines of the gallery, 'remaking' key paintings first made en plein air by modernist NZ painters seeking to represent an abstract landscape.
Suspended Sentence
Physics Room Kiosk, Christchurch NZ
Hooked to the electricity mains and suspended inside a steel sentry box, a barbed 'I' pulsates in a central city square. In daylight, the text is a slender line drawing, a subtle refrain to the noise and constant passage of city workers. As night falls and the space becomes the domain of streetkids, skaters and nightworkers, the text beats bright and insistent. Incomplete and open to each viewer's reading of 'I', the work enables a collective body of unique multiples.
Current Work
City Art Rooms, Auckland NZ
Rethinking the constraints of the banal 'new work' or 'recent work', Current Work develops a mise en scene in a suite of works 'still in the making'. Deadline, an 800volt electric current dissects and connects the two galleries. The live wire imposes an element of care and the need to genuflect before the large glass text I AM / MAI in one space and the registration plate, QR8, in the other. Placeholders for characters in a production, the texts embody and critique the roles of author, artist, curator, viewer and gallery, within a landscape of concrete, magnetic and lawn painting.
Performance Painting
Blue Oyster Gallery, Dunedin NZ
Dunedin Performance Art Series 2008
Where performance art usually centres on the artist in the act of making or on mechanical and digital devices, Performance Painting continues to develop independently. During an underground exhibition, the art objects relied on internal energy systems and attendance by gallery visitors. Prick hovered and shimmered in the spotlight while Lawn (Otago) grew upwards, seeking light in the dark.
BeingMade
City Art Rooms, Auckland NZ
Proposing a departure from Duchamp's readymades, the Being-made shifts internally in pivotal ways, evolving and inhabiting a permanent state of flux. Transforming mass produced and natural media (turf-grass, float glass, mirror, bird feathers) into permanent performative art, the beingmade activates a direct relationship between artwork, environment, viewer, gallery, and collector.
Beingmade n. 1. a work in progress 2. an object or idea permanently in production 3. an image in flux through materials, context and open authorship 4. a work of art able to manifest in multiple, unique versions. (Definition: Gill Gatfield, 2007)
Canvas
Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland NZ
'Off the Wall', a fundraising event and final show at the old Auckland Art Gallery prior to redevelopment, provided a context for Canvas, a 12 sq m disposable nappy weave. Through media, form and context, the work explores the notion of 'support' - for the gallery and by the gallery. Literally a support for painting, Canvas stretches over and covers the wall, simultaneously soft and taut. The ambiguous open nature of the work is carried also in the verb: 'canvas' - to sample, enquire and explore.
National Contemporary Art Award
Waikato Museum and Art Gallery
Before installation of Lawn (Greener on the Other Side) in the NCAA exhibition, the Waikato Museum requested the work was doused with pesticide - effectively killing it, to prevent insects migrating and invading important historic works. With the assurance that worms and grass insects prefer a warm ecosystem over a dry alternative, Lawn was hung alive in the exhibition, along with gallery pheromone devices for the 10 week show. Trimmed and watered daily by gallery staff following a schedule of instructions, the grass grew upwards and went dormant inside the cool dark gallery. In subsequent years the rules of entry for the National Contemporary Art Award specifically excluded living art.
Kaitiaki
Te Tuhi/Manukau Public Art Gallery, NZ
A monochromatic 30 sq metre grid of crisp white disposable nappies stretch in one continuous plane from gallery entrance to curator office door. Central to Maori collective land ownership and a cornerstone of the Treaty of Waitangi, 'kaitiaki' also refers to the management and care of public art/taonga and to the collective care of small children. A disposable work made of profane material, Kaitiaki appeals and repels.
In/Out
University of Auckland, Auckland NZ
MFA(Hons) Exhibition, Mount Street Studios Rooftop
Enveloped by high rise construction on all sides, works in natural and manmade media abstract and address the edges of inside and out. Walls operate as windows and glazing becomes substrate. Viewers and space are punctuated and refilled. Feather discs fill circular cutouts in square mirrors. Male and female symbols and forms interchange. Exit and entry points are framed.
