Painted drawings and drawn paintings

Drawing on Paint: Amber Wilson, Anna Rankin, DJN, Elliot Collins, Linden Simmons
Snowwhite, UNITEC
30 November 2009 - 22 January 2010

Drawing On Paint carries on from a related earlier exhibition Painting on Paper at RM last year that looked at the relationship between painting and drawing. Though the short essay (written by Linden Simmons) that accompanies this new show presents the view that drawing is investigative research whereas painting is less concerned with process and searching and more to do with a fully resolved final statement, this show like its predecessor blurs the two. It has some completed drawings made entirely for their own sake, and paintings that function as tentative exploration. The display is smart, compact and sprightly.

Maybe also a pinch prissy – there’s nothing too rough or wildly dirty because as the title suggests it is mostly watercolour - not crumbly charcoal, crayon or smudgy soft black pencil. It is not likely to be graphic or tonally moody. Instead it is dominated by lettered language, liquid colour and pattern. Yet though paper as a support is ubiquitous, there are surprises: some of these drawings (they are mostly painted drawings) are on supports of board (Rankin); another consists of three lengths of painted timber, leaning on each other and the wall.

This last work, Superlative, by Elliot Collins, plays on one syllable adjectives having comparative and superlative forms, and so the three illustrative measures in wood lean vertically - with the tallest painted piece (a black ‘superlative’) against the wall, the shorter white ‘comparative’ on that and then the runty pale blue ‘adjective’ on the outside. It also casually plays with space outside of grammatical parts of speech, teasing out the tonal conventions of drawing and use of foreground versus background. You could say it is a painting in three parts that examines some of the linear properties of drawing.

Collins’ other work is eighty differently coloured sheets bearing the hand lettered phrase ‘You will last forever’ – drawn in felt-tip marker –and displayed like a thick pad on the wall. The expression could refer to an artist’s wish to be remembered forever, or it could refer to the fading properties of the unstable felt-tip ink – both drenched in irony.

Anna Rankin’s contribution consists of three somewhat clumsy watercolours of fantasy worlds in contained in bottles or glass hearts, and a more successful typed list of posthumous albums by Hank Williams added to other releases by his very much alive son, Hank Williams Jnr. The 53 items in chronological order play on the confusion between the music of both.

The best language works here though are written in stencilled inked letters and stained in sump oil. These drawings by DJN are not working studies but fully complete. They ironically refer to the market as a barometer of quality, and grimly joke about McCahon and the recession, and the power of curators as gatekeepers, using streaky dribbles of car oil that run away from the letters - from bottom to top - within each page, inverting the sense of the texts.

The two blue watercolours by Linden Simmons impress with their chromatic restraint, rich textured detail, intimacy and general ambiguity. One is of sky forms over an agitated sea and the other of puddle reflections on a muddy road. The nearby works by Amber Wilson are delicately patterned but not so compelling, despite their warm mosaic of restlessly fidgeting shapes.

This is a well assembled exhibition, though its curator is disappointingly unstated - it could be gallery manager Mary-Louise Browne or essayist Linden Simmons. The five artists interconnect well. There are similarities between Wilson and Rankin (images of colourful food on tables), Collins and DJN (with their stencils), and DJN and Simmons (related brushwork), and with the essay by Simmons, they make a good catalyst for debate around this topic. It’s odd because sculptors generally seem far more interested in investigative drawing than painters, despite the overlap between drawing and say watercolour painting. It’s a good theme to examine.

Taipei comes to Auckland

Szu Han Chen: The room is too small to store memory
Snowwhite gallery (UNITEC)
20 October - 6 November 2009

Szu Han Chen is an artist in residence from Taiwan who has studied at St. Martins College of Art and Design in London and at Cheng Chi University in Taipei. Her interactive and relational projects often incorporate videoed documentation of the various social exchanges or interpersonal negotiations she sets up. That aspect (of two earlier works) dominates the large front room, with her current ongoing interactive project occurring in the smaller back space at Snowwhite.

Her three channel installation Make a Wish (2009) shows abandoned objects (that can serve as containers) placed in front of a fountain in Washington Square in New York and filled with water as a symbol of hope for the homeless. It is hoped passers-by will throw money in. That way the needy can help themselves from these improvised ‘wishing wells.’

In Then I said ‘Have a Nice Day' (2009) the artist approaches various individuals handling out flyers on the very crowded streets of New York. Because the activity is filmed secretly from a hidden camera that is far away it is hard to see (or hear) precisely what it is she is up to when she chats to the distributor, takes their promotional flyer, makes an origami plane out of it, and hands it back. While she sees her activity as transforming a ‘purposeful thing’ to something economically ‘useless’ and also poetical or contemplative, they being busy are likely to be puzzled or exasperated. Though her manner is sweet and charming, her actions can be taken as peculiar or ‘oddball’ at best, or at its worst, a veiled form of insult. Her actions imply she is taking something ‘useless’ and adding value. However nobody ever gets offended. Just perplexed.

The 'Room' work that is continuing now until the end of next week refers to storage problems in its title, and how to recycle old memories for new. The artist’s role here is that of facilitator. She co-ordinates the exchanging of abandoned items and their contextual narratives, the details of which she records and passes on.

Szu Han Chen here serves as a conduit for snippets of information and history. Invariably she will be compared to local artist Eve Armstrong and her Trading Table performances but my impression is that Armstrong is more proactive in suggesting solutions for fair swaps. She will broker (I think) transactions so that equivalent balancing occurs between giver and receiver. She will insist on exchanges that she thinks are equal.

Chen on the other hand seems to be quite happy for the value to be lopsided. She doesn’t directly bring contributing parties together, nor does she refuse any offer. In fact economic or social depreciation (like say potlatch) might be more her point, along with a poetic sensibility. Her attention is focussed not so much on the objects changing hands and their matching worth, but the flicking on of stories. Of course I’m saying here these two things are separable, and maybe that can be disputed. You might argue the only value that these items have is the narrative that accompanies them from usage, but that that narrative cannot be pried apart from their (re)saleable value – it just gets reabsorbed.

So how do you assess this kind of work? It has of itself no detectable visual aesthetic, but maybe the conveyed anecdotes, the sequences of past ownership (and linked events) as imagined mental pictures replace that? However the quality of such stories seems to be not the point either, nor is it the quality of Chen’s channelling of information - which appears to be striving for invisibility anyway?

In the end you look at the treasures you brought home to put on your shelf or workbench, briefly think about what useless things you discarded to get them, and forget about the artist and exhibition to get on with your life. Just like that pot of homemade chutney you got from some school fair eight months ago that is sitting around half eaten in your fridge. It’s not going mouldy for it tastes good, but where did you get it, and who served you, on that autumnal Saturday morning? You are not sure.

(The above images show the artist in her show, chatting to Abby Woolcombe, a student of the Design School. Photography by Karen Crisp.)