Brilliantly evocative

Florence Wild & Clara Chon: Waterfront morals / Fatherly functions
Window, AU library foyer
23 December 2009 - 19 February 2010

In this exhibition within the narrow but high glassed-off gallery of Window there are three main items presented for scrutiny. One is a hessian mat draped across two low trestles or saw-horses. Stitched into it in different shades of green thread (for different walls) is the floor plan of a possibly Romanesque, rectangular fortress. We can see it has only one doorway at one end of the stone construction and regularly positioned buttresses going up the outside. The internal space is taken up by a complex maze, turning around the inner space so that the ‘target’ in the very centre is a long oblong hallway.

Another object is suspended from the ceiling on a hanger, and is perhaps a more mysterious and overt fetish item: a black woman’s top. It is covered with diagonal rows of pinned on silver safety pins - hundreds of them, all overlapping. Identifiable as a Punk fashion accoutrement it could be an oblique reference to Giovanni Intra’s famous studded suit. A type of armour that is both contemporary and medieval, it is a chain mail version of ‘cool’ perhaps.

The third item is a pair of austere hand-painted posters, not identical, stating the title of the musical revue ‘Jacques Brel is alive and living in Paris.’ They are positioned on the right-hand transparent end wall, over some of the vertical fluorescent tubes that illuminate the show.

So these three elements, what do they concoct when combined together? How do they relate to the show’s enigmatic title which seems to be about generational conflict?

The two sculptures allude to inaccessibility - unassailability perhaps – resulting from the separation caused by geographic, chronological and generational distance. Military and psychological protection is a murky metaphor mixed in with the stretch in taste between music and theatre from different decades – along with a smearing reference to ethical responsibility.

However you might speculate on their meaning, these intriguing exhibits work well collectively. A fine, nicely resonating exhibition at Window.

Nice surprises

Elam Art Upfront: The Foyer Art Project
Curated by Sonya Korohina and Mythily Meher
Various windows and foyers in Shortland St
6 March - 20 March 2009
Auckland Festival

Here we have five downtown corporate venues in the upper reaches of Shortland St – spaces that are often visible from the street - and nine artists. Good artists who because they are immensely varied, make this a show worth making the effort to get to. Lots of unexpected things to ruminate over.

Let’s start near the top of the street and zigzag our way down.

Shortland Street Chambers (#70) has three artists. Firstly there is Florence Wild in the window. She likes to write out a cursive script by draping lines of cassette tape across a space so you can read words. The lines are suspended in the air by invisible threads of nylon. She seems to be a bit of a punster who loves anagrams. This one says Live Evil, and as it is audio tape it is likely to be of commercially recorded music. Perhaps it is from a cassette of Miles Davis’ live recording of the same name. Behind the window glass the wrinkled, brown, skinny ribbons shimmer in the sunlight.

In the foyer, leaning against the wall near the lifts are two photographs (Work is Work) presented by Fiona Gillmore and Louise Menzies. The images of a stream in some lush tropical bush are blandly dull, but the nearby wall label is immensely interesting. It tells us that the artists purchased the images from the national Geographic Image Library via Getty Images, who laid down three strict stipulations. (1.) Only to be displayed internally, i.e. indoors. (2.) In one location only. (3.) For six months only, then the licence expires. These terms intrigue as they ensure obsolescence and likely renewal of purchase. Not much generosity there.

Also at this address was a Timothy Chapman sculpture which I didn't see but which is pictured above. It had a sibling I discovered at AXA.

Across the street just inside the door leading up to the NZ Post office (#69) we can see Tiffany Singh's presentation: moulded wax effigies from India placed on interlocking triangles of spread rice and herbal powders. Fruit and flowers dipped in wax can be seen from the street on the window ledge but hidden on the floor below are ines of the mentioned plump elephant gods and pointy angular Madonnas. The beeswax has a penetrating aroma that is quite overpowering when you go inside.

In the WHK Gosling Chapman Tower (within The Shortland Centre at #51-53) is a dramatic display of six hollow fibre-glass spheres by Priscilla Brown that vary in size. These have been suggestively stained with undulating organic patterns of black ink and areas of ‘skin’ removed. They seem to have a printmaker’s graphic sensibility, and so are unusual when seen on large sculpture. Brown’s orbs have a real presence, successfully competing with the Bing Dawe sculpture attached to the low ceiling above them.

In the AXA centre (#41) we can see works by three artists. A very special treat is provided by the moving image and sound installation of Katie Theunissen. Her three projections dramatically exploit blurred motion created by tumbling rolls of bandage, jerking bags of spilling flour and suspended but stationary, testicular pear-shaped forms. Theunissen knows how to make compelling viewing out of the most simple of methods. She has a real instinct for strikingly lit movement that holds your attention, has ocular appeal but which is also theatrical and vaguely profound.

Roisin Moore’s three photographs of plants growing alongside the AXA building comment on the sterility of AXA’s foyer area where they are placed, as they do the external sites being documented. On her label she compares her photos with fake plants but actually they lose out in the comparison. Fake plastic pot plants have more appeal than her dry, somewhat icy, photographic images.

On the outside of a skylight just around the corner, but viewable from below, is a giant plunger created by Timothy Chapman. The handle trembles and flickers through the glass like a stamen on a flower. Its movement brings a nervousness that makes the sculpture anthropomorphic, denying any possible reading as Pop Art but showcasing the airy environment affecting it.

At 34 Shortland Street Warren Childs manages to upstage Dick Frizzell’s nearby mural of rippled Australian bottle glass. Childs’ black tubular plinths have flat mirrored tops that look like whopper guitar picks. They hold bizarrely shaped, glass-tanked mini-motorcycles with large chrome exhausts. These small choppers seem like colourful rocket-ships that have morphed into insects. They seem inseparable from the shrewdly constructed plinths that possibly were once plants conceived by J.G. Ballard. It’s an unusual pairing of gently lumbering botany meeting a delicate but abruptly stilled velocity.