This review is a personal response to the
work of my Left-field peers; Anna
Scott, Elle Anderson, Caroline Griffin and Toni Mosley, and not their
statements. My reactions come purely from my own learning’s, perspectives and experiences
and, I hope, that what they get from it will just be a variation of our group
critiques. As a newcomer to compiling a written response, I hope in return they
will critique me. Our Awk word Land is presented in Nathan Homestead’s Gallery; a quintessential public
exhibition space that I have, unfortunately, experienced as overlooked. As a council gallery there is no individual website and I feel this
limits the exposure of exhibitions and its artists. It is my intention that
this response contributes to the exposure I feel these artists deserve for their hard
work and dedication. Concealed upstairs, this charming gallery is amidst a labyrinth of
studio spaces and consists of four small spaces that are ideal for segregating Our Awk Word Land, allowing each artist
their own individual niche for their differentiating mediums and perspectives. Brendaniel
Weir accompanies the Left-field artists
in this presentation that explores the Auckland environment.
I have to say Scott’s sculpture
Fingers in the Pie? steals the show and
I am not the only one to express this. A rectangular box embellished with
hundreds of wax fingertips it is monumentally empowering as the first
work that you lay your eyes on and essentially as the biggest work (approx 4 x
6 ft.) it encompasses a large portion of its allocated space. Scott is without
doubt positioned as a sculptor but of late I have known her to play on a smaller
scale and that is where this work started. With her gas bottle, micro
crystalline wax and fingertip moulds, which she acquired from friends and
family, Scott spent hour’s repetitively making wax finger castings while being
the first of our Left-field artists
to accommodate the Left-Field cabin.
The final outcome was, to say the least, unexpected as Scott let out no clues
to their finished presentation and successfully pulled them altogether into a
stunning tangible conglomeration.
The micro crystalline wax that Scott has acquired is an industrial
wax generally used by foundries and references her background work with
foundries and its relevance to sculpting. Originally dark green, Scott has
added a black dye to the wax in varying amounts, giving off a heavy and dense impression
that when hit by strong light glows an uplifting emerald green. The addition of
the black dye makes the wax resemble black wax, a modelling medium that is used
for casting by jewellers. Appropriate, seeing that it is representing a body
part that is heavily associated with jewellery and is a medium that Scott dabbles
with on the side.
Fingers in the Pie? is aesthetically pleasing, and like any art done on a large scale has
dominance that naturally draws us in before anything else in the room. This can
often be a downfall in sculpture because as quickly as its scale captures our
attention, it can lose it, because it has to have something else that holds us
there. Scott has managed to hold us nicely as we are tempted run our own
fingers over its textural surface and exam the fine detail, repetition and
variation of the castings. Simultaneously it has a strong sense of loss, as if
there is a population of people out there that are trying to surface from a
dark muddy depth no matter what their age, race or gender. The fragmentation
and colour eliminates the origin of the individuals but the wax holds their
individual mark; their fingerprint. The large box, with its multiple blackened fingertips
gives us a sense of densely occupied spaces and feels somehow organic with a sinister
bleakness. Like something from a horror movie it looks as if it has been
cut-out, risen and solidified from something that’s been buried. Scott has
succeeded in making me wonder, along with the exhibition focus, are Aucklander’s
feeling as if they are submerged in some sort of dreadful depth, grappling for
exposure?
Unintentionally mirroring one another, Griffin and Scott have both
placed cast fragments, from completely different processes, on top of a boxed
support where the colour between the objects and the support merge. Griffin’s collection
of relic like clay casts, taken from surfaces around Auckland, is modestly
situated in a space that initially feels concealed and comprises of four
plinths, one topped with a glass case.
The space Pressed into Service
encompasses is tight, leaving only enough room for one person to comfortably
stand between the supports so that if more than one person is admiring the collection
of artefacts, they need to negotiate their path. Similarly, I expect Griffin had
to negotiate the paths she chose to take through the city to accommodate this fragmented
documentation of the city’s surfaces that embed history. Negotiating a path is
something that most Aucklander’s do on a regular basis , through its meandering
streets and highly populated spaces, often due to heavy vehicle and foot
traffic especially at peak times and the position of suburbs in conjunction to
one another. These well-trodden urban spaces hold details that are mostly
overlooked and Griffin successfully brings these surfaces to our attention as
you find yourself examining the fragmented imprints that are familiar yet specifically
unknown.
The physicality of Griffins,
Pressed into Service, not only holds
indentations of Aucklands municipal past but of an bodily presence that is
suggested by some pieces left purposefully face down, so that instead what you
see are Griffins finger marks where she has carefully but sturdily held the
once soft clay, moulding and pressing it into its current shape. The
positioning of these manmade fossils creates an interesting conversation around
the ideologies of both sculpture and artefact, where we are generally governed
by the more traditional galleries and museums, not to touch that which is seen
as original or precious. Sculpture, where I feel Griffins work sits,
historically was intended to be touched and its sensual bodily replications
caressed. Likewise, Griffin obviously wants the viewer to touch; by placing
certain pieces so purposefully she hopes to engage a sense intrigue that will tempt
us to lift it to see what is hidden underneath and become part of her process. Griffin,
concurrent to her sculptural past, is inherently concerned with contemporary
jewellery, recently developing a series of small sculpted rings. The New Jewelry movement of the 70s is
known to have originally questioned wearability and demonstrated that an object
held is an object worn.
Simultaneously, it is not by accident that Griffin has chosen clay
as her medium, her mother was a potter, and clay therefore something that she
is overtly familiar. The clay contradicts its museum like longevity as it is air
dried, not fired and shows no signs of age. Consequently the pieces don’t
pursue any permanence as they are subject to Griffin’s belief that they are
ephemeral and will at some point become something else. With all of this in mind it is not surprising
that Griffin has accordingly created a body of work that crosses disciplines
and challenges establishment rules. She then continues by presenting in the antiquated
and organised fashion of a museum that has dropped its cataloguing.
Griffin definitely succeeds here in connecting us as individuals by
emphasizing visually mapped and fragmented associations that we are all exposed
to as occupied communities. No matter how culturally and sub-culturally grouped
we maybe there is always some common ground.
Anderson’s practice is relatively new to me and essentially sits in
print but she has pushed Now, SOON by
juxtaposing her small monochromatic prints with a stacked construction of
transparent Perspex boxes that are about 15cm square and occupied by varying
amounts of the iconic Cadbury chocolate
coated, Jaffas. It appears to be a metaphorical
‘tongue in cheek’ comment referencing Auckland’s progressively congested living
conditions. Living south-east of the
CBD, it isn’t hard to notice new properties expanding into our rural
communities where the dwellings grow skyward while the land they occupy shrinks.
People are living in a lot closer proximity and our suburban sprawl becoming
concrete jungles. What happened to the classic ¼ acre section with fruit trees,
tomato plants and meandering grape vines? Are we all really becoming too busy
to maintain this now retro life style?
I cannot help but also responded with a bit of black humour as there
is definitely some irony in Anderson’s use of the Jaffa, as every New Zealander also knows the word Jafa as an acronym for
‘Just another f……… Aucklander’. I say irony because a few
years back Cadbury threatened to take
the chocolate Jaffa’s off the market, but the public uproar won and they still exist
as one of our kiwiana favourites. Maybe this could also be a simple resolve to
our city’s congestion if Jafa’s just simply stop being made. There is also some
contradiction between New Zealand’s proven admiration for the Chocolate Jaffa, as
opposed to non Aucklanders obvious dislike to the “Jafas “ . Anderson literally invites us to eat the chocolate
Jaffa’s on display to relieve congestion and hypothetically help to dissolve the
Supercity’s over populated places but personally I can’t say I want to eat the
people I share my living environment with or my community, even though
sometimes this maybe something I feel like doing, in order to get Aucklands
population under control. I don’t think I would savour the taste, as I would
the chocolate Jaffa and over indulge, I would be more likely to chew them, gag,
then spit them out!
Mosley has been a printer for about the last 17 years and supports
her practice by teaching art to young Aucklander’s at Nathan Homestead and also
to a wider periphery. Assortment consists
of a handmade concertina book that sits on a plinth with its pages flowing onto
the floor below and a series of panoramic, traditionally framed prints titled Cross Section. Mosley’s content is
simple, fun and delicate, consisting of rows of relatively uniform caricatures.
The framed pieces appear to have been coloured by hand and vary from monochromatic
to having bright interventions of colour within their clothing. Admirably, Mosley
has no fear of using simple contour lines, a fundamental drawing technique, for
her prints and uses them repeatedly to the desired effect.
Over the last year Mosley has been printing self-portraits with
great satisfaction and recently exhibited them at Wellingtons Academy of Fine Arts. Assortment
references these with one of her caricatures holding above its head a box
similar to a suitcase, a preloaded symbol that frequently pops up in her
self-portraits. Knowing Mosley, the book will be her baby and once again is
self-referencing to herself as a maker, as she has created a few of these
complex concertinas before.
I take these caricatures as representing Aucklanders but I can’t
help but wonder why all the caricatures appear relatively uniform in size,
height and weight, although I must thank her for putting one in that is shorter
than the rest seeing that I am myself vertically challenged. With size in mind,
it was only yesterday that I was chuckling to myself as I parked next to a car in
Manukau that had an extremely weathered sign on it advertising Samoan Health
care and I couldn’t help but notice the empty 150g potato chip packet sitting
on the back seat. If anything Assortment
has intrigued me; statistically, where do Aucklanders sit nationally in terms
of obesity, considering the amount of fast food chains the Supercity
accommodates?
Mosley also seems to be addressing Auckland’s multi-cultural
communities with her title Assortments,
which makes me think of liquorice. Comparable to Scott and Griffin, Anderson and Mosley seem to have some sort of ESP
between them and their work, the latter being in terms of sweets.
Last but by no means least, Weir is the only one of these artists
that I really don’t know, but listening to his confidence and knowledge of the
Supercity, when he spoke at the opening, his conduct is enjoyably entertaining,
flamboyantly filling the room. Adjacent to Anderson’s Now, SOON is Local Boards,
Weir’s collection of 8, A2 sized, glossy acrostic-poems. They are hung directly
on the wall in a linear fashion, each print curling slightly at the bottom with
the text printed in the culturally significant colours red and black. The fonts
vary with each print so that they sit comfortable on the paper. Each Poem is
constructed from a central red word; Rodney, Northshore, Waitakere, Auckland,
Manukau, Papakura, Franklin and lastly Supercity. Cleverly well considered,
Weir has put together words that have relevancy to each individual place and
are applicable to the people and the issues that populate those specific areas. Weir appears quite excited about this politically loaded project
and sensitive to the individuality of each of these once separately governed
communities.
After going back and having a second look at Our Awk Word Land, getting another Jaffa fix and finally reading
each artists statement, it confirms for me that what was important for all of
these artists, above all else, was their concern for the individual and that is
apt for an artist. Equally as individuals it is not essential for us to try and
interpret the artist’s exact thinking; the strength in all of these works is
the ability to allow the viewer our own connection to it and be something that
stays with us well after we have left the gallery.
Sarah Walker-Holt
Edited by Lucy Pierpoint
Left-field 2013
