Marc Blake: Recent Works

“What History, our History, allows us today is merely to slide, to vary, to exceed, to repudiate”. Barthes. (Harrison & Wood: 265)

Marc Blake’s paintings already exist before they are painted. Every element is part of another reality, from the landscape on wood grain to a horse and girl, air balloons and rainbows, they’ve all been seen before. Some objects are recognisable. References to art and artists; Jeff Koon’s ‘Balloon Dog’ and Hokusai’s wave are carefully placed in an ‘all over’ composition giving the effect of flattened space, a strategy used by historical Japanese painters and printmakers. The trees also appear to have a Japanese influence, yet often pohutakawa is in bloom. Maybe the eastern feel is in the way they have literally been stunted, a bonsai on the surface of the board. Yet in the illusionary space of the painting they are life-size and stand like figures, signalling across the painting to each other. Objects of consumption and popular culture can be found alongside historical elements. Bungie jumpers and yellow-eyed penguins have come to signify a contemporary New Zealand culture, cars and guns, a world we see often in the media. A historical sailing ship seems almost as an apparition coming out of the misty sea, or is it land? Has time and space merged together?

There appears to be some indication of time passed yet the exact time can’t be placed. Maybe the works suggest the future, barren lands, red skies and a fragile environment where a gas mask is often seen. Memories of what was are left as shadows, rubbed out, scratched off, fuzzy and disappearing into the coloured wood grain. In areas the background becomes the foreground or the sea becomes the sky but all of the elements seem to work together, finding grounding in the grain of the wood. The illusion of three-dimensional space is only suggested by light stains in a natural grain or in the size of the specific elements in the work. Figures dressed in everyday contemporary clothing, seem to act out part of a narrative, floating on the surface in paint on wood yet grounded in the illusionary space. Men in corporate attire, sumo wrestlers in board shorts, girls in black singlets and jeans or dresses or underwear, stand alone, yet seem to be interacting with someone or something.

But what are these interactions taking place? And how do these various elements relate to each other? Blake places us in front of a painting, and we are compelled to read the image, to translate the history played out in the work- to work out what is or what is coming. But signifiers are switched, and common symbols are re-addressed. Koon’s ‘Balloon Dog’ becomes a self-referential sign of contemporary art and businessmen in suits now exist within a constructed world of wood. The yellow-eyed penguin walks alone, perhaps signifying isolation or extinction through a changing environment. The original meaning that these objects signify have shifted, “even one and the same sign … re-occupied, translated, re- historicized and read in a new way”. (von Bismark: 264) The story in the painting unfolds within each viewer’s translation. Seeing a black and white suit next to a girl with a gun takes one from Wall Street into a world of gangsters. There is no one reading, but a group of readings, a group of stories. The painting becomes a text of the moment that unfolds by the associations and relationships within the work. Blake asks us to readdress what we know as the everyday and historical. This contemporary world before us is constructed from the past and our history; who we are, where we are and what we know
effects how we read and analyse the stories he presents.

Blake has moved from Auckland, to Japan, back to Auckland and on to Sydney. The narratives and the journeys that unfold within his paintings reflect this global movement and the many influences seen and experienced in everyday life. Blake asks us to reflect on our history and consider our future; on what has been, what could be but also opening up the possibility of change. In reading and interpreting the text that is the painting, the viewer explores and develops their ideas, questioning stereotypes, and challenging the way signs are perceived in mass culture.

References:

Von Bismark, B. “Generating Space: Martha Rosler’s Representational Process”. MaSchube. Hannover, Sprengel Museum Hannover, 2005: 252 – 283.

Harrison, Charles & Paul Wood. “Roland Barthes (1915 – 1980) ‘From Work to Text’, Art in Theory 1900 – 2000- An Anthology of Changing Ideas, Blackwell Publishing: MA, Oxford, Victoria, 965 – 970.

For more information about Marc Blake, view his website.

Hamish Jones: Toys As Everyday Objects

Toys are revealed as everyday objects of an adult life; a modern life where objects are standardised and difference is limited, yet human intervention reveals that there are some aspects of the world that remain out of our control.

Imagine for a moment about being a child again (can you remember?). Games that lasted weekends, a bedroom full of colourful and animated objects, birthday parties, innocence and carefree days - no stress about money, work and a general day-to-day survival. Oh to be young again!

Walking into a room filled with Jones’ art work, one is instantly taken back. Large toy-like objects fill spaces and the experience of reacting with an life-size toy is rather uplifting. The feelings of childhood start to tingle in the body- not just because compared to the objects, one appears small and child-size again but also because they are familiar figures that are instantly recognisable. The longing for days immersed in a seemly real imagined world is readily felt.

Walter Benjamin talks of toys as an escape from the adult world. They are mass-produced objects that are based around play as opposed to work. He describes them as objects that “set off magical experiences, Erfahungen, venting a concealed reality subtending everyday subject/object commerce.” (Leslie 1998: 11). This may account for the instant attraction to Jones’ forms- his ‘toys’ are easily associated with childhood days, when money, production and financial gain was not a priority of living.

But Jones objects are not play things- they are objects of the adult world and without the naivety of innocent eyes, these ‘toys’ become signs of a grown up reality. The objects are ‘adult-size’, rather than minature- infact they are larger than life. Each part exaggerated, grown exponentially - a toy gun becomes the size of a bed, a lego tree equivalent to an Xmas pine and a duplo man, a literal size of a child- making one feel small and bringing significance to these objects. Basalla writes in his essay Transformed Utilitarian Objects:

To enlarge an object is to make it appear more important than it is…. Pop artists, of course, have made extensive use of the exaggerated and immense scale in order to call attention to the formal, the humerous, and at times the grotesque aspects of everyday objects. (Basalla 1982: 195-6)

And one thing Jones brings to attention is how closely they relate to everyday adult life and adult situations. The toy gun, seemingly soft and harmless, transforms the comfortable, snugly, kids bed spread into a very adult object. When confronted with this over-sized newly constructed object, the subject of the duvet covers imagery is highlighted; human destroying robots, so aptly named ‘Transformers’ their catch phrase ‘Robots in disguise’. Jones’ work takes off the disguise, revealing these toys as objects of violence. Something that seems to have been glossed over in the latest adaptation of the Transformer movie, where the former leader of the ‘Decepticons’ has changed from his robot gun form to a airplane.

It seems perhaps many toys can be seen as miniature representations of everyday adult life and objects. Basalla explains toys as being “a microcosm of the material culture of adult life” (Basalla 1982: 187). He talks of the transformation of utilitarian objects into toys, teaching children how to act in the modern adult world. Miniature shopping counters, petrol pumps and ovens, show children how to conduct their affairs ans are items they will more than likely manipulate and own as adults.

Jones’ toys exist within the adult material world. They reveal the role of toys as signifiers of work, material gain and modern day living. Larger-than-life size lego figures stand in a group in his work Fit The Mould, dressed in white shirts with a black tie and black trousers; working men- executives, waiters or pilots. Michael Paraekowhai’s Kapa Haka springs to mind. His fifteen security guards, standing staunch displaying authority, but not of their own, of their employee. Jones’ figures too are like everyday workers, and they are manipulated and possessed by children, reflecting the actions of an adult world. Like these modern day workers, the toys become a commodity; something that can be bought and used to its owners devices.

Jones explicitly presents his works as objects to be owned; a commodity reflecting a modern world. As art objects, he has a price on each- one can purchase these works and take them home for their own pleasure. And with their mass produced qualities, everyone can have their own figure or tree. This reflects all to closely on the capitalist culture of our modern world where toys are produced in large quantities and marketed to children and parents as new, unique and collectible.

These objects bring to light the all to common serial production of toys, and the differences that occur within repetition. He shows us that although each work is different; a unique name, a slight alteration in colour, the objects are fundamentally the same. From Barbie dolls to McDonald's Happy Meal toys, match box cars to teletubbies, the mould and structure repeats itself, and each subtle difference is treated and marketed as something new. Why have one when you can have them all?

Allan McCollum exposes the consumption of quasi-same objects in his repetitive art practices. Whether large concrete earns, computer generated patterns or small framed paintings (called ‘Surrogates’) each serially reproduced object can substitute the one before. Owens writes that while the variables of each of his surrogates can be seen as singular, “the potentially endless repetition of essentially identical objects prevented us from mistaking the difference for uniqueness.” (Owens 1992: 2) Jones makes it clear that the serial production of toys, (marketed as the new and improved), are essentially the same as the one before. As with many everyday objects we are not really consuming a different object, but the same object with subtle differences.

As Baudrillard observes … no object appears on the market today in a single type, but with a range of strictly marginal differences – of colour, accessory, detail- which create the illusion of choice. Consequently, what we consume is the object not in its materiality, but in its difference- the object as sign. Thus, difference itself becomes an object of consumption, and the agenda of serial production becomes apparent: to carefully engineer and control the production of difference in society. (Owens 1992: 3)

In this sense McCollum and Jones’ objects suggest that it is not uniqueness we are consuming, it is difference. However the agenda of Jones’ work is not about controlling difference, so much as revealing difference that are out of ones control. When viewed together as part of a serial repetition, differences become more explicit. Jones’ objects show the intervention of the human hand and reveal that even within serial repetition, there are uncontrolled elements. Through repetition, something unknown reveals itself and each object can potentially develop into something beyond the original- beyond the standardized stereotyped product.

Like Warhol’s serial prints, it is the systematic process that reveals the differences in Jones’ Fit The Mould. No two figures are the same. Hand painted, cast and fished, each work is subtly different. Paint has a range of thicknesses, hands are of slightly variable size and shape, arms are at marginally different angles and seams may still be apparent from the sides of the mould in places. Dyer writes when a series of Warhol’s work are viewed together, the differences are obvious. He uses the example of Warhol’s flower prints where while the basic design is repeated, no two of the prints turn out to look the same. Slippages in the colour or format make each work unique. “The structure of Warhol’s series is a structure of repeated differentiations. Here, the processes of repetition generates differences.” (Dyer 2004: 37)

Jones’ work Evergreen shows nature as something that also generates difference. It is not immediately obvious that each of these seemingly identical trees has a unique quality. They all stand at the same height, and of the same mould but a differentiating element is revealed when the repeated works are viewed together. Through similar coloured stains the wood grain of each piece of laminated wood can be seen. A ironic form, the trees have been taken through many processes of industry and manufacturing to result in a mass-produced, standardised and stylised representation of its original form.

Deleuze writes in his book ‘Difference and Repetition’:

The more our daily life appears standardized, stereotyped, submitted to the accelerated reproduction of consumer goods, the more art must become part of life that operates between levels of repetition… and reproducing esthetically… the illusions and mystifications which are the real essence of this civilization- so that in the end, Difference can express itself… (Delueuz 1994)

Revealed through these repeated works are puzzling factors that continue to perplex and mystify. Evergreen
shows the uncontrollable aspect of nature, and Fit The Mould the realities of human intervention as each seemingly mass-produced object is varied slightly resulting from its hand-made production. Jones’ re-introduces human intervention; from manufactured to man-made, and suggests that these objects have the potential to change and transform. Jones’ art works reveal that as our world becomes more standardised, more stereotyped and more regimented the simple act of human interaction can open up the potential for difference beyond our control.


References

Basalla, George. Transformed Utilitarian Objects, Winterthur Portfolio, Vol. 17, No. 4, Winter, The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, Inc, 1982.

Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition, Presses Universitaires de France English translation, Paris; 1994

Dyer, Jennifer. The Metaphysics of the Mundane: Understanding Andy Warhol’s Serial Imagery, Artibus et Histoiae, Vol. 25, No.. 49, IRSA, 2004, pp. 33 - 47

Leslie, Esther. Walter Benjamin: Traces of Craft. Journal of Design History, Vol. 11. No. 1, Craft, Modernism and Modernity, Oxford University Press, 1998 pp. 5 – 13

Owens, Craig. Allan McCollum: Repetition and Difference, Beyond Recognition: Representation, Power and Culture, University of California Press, 1992

Niki Hastings-McFall - Have a Little Faith @ Milford Galleries Dunedin, 2009

Wall works reflect and objects glow in Niki Hasting-McFall’s exhibition ‘Have a Little Faith’ at Milford Galleries Dunedin. Hasting-McFall explores and plays upon the fleeting nature of life and the inevitability of death. Her two and the three dimensional artworks are intrinsically interrelated. Connections and relationships become apparent within the symbols of her work.

Symbols accessed from a variety of sources (from early European painting to folk tales, from biblical imagery to modern technologies), speak across culture and history. Inspired by the Vanitas tradition of painting, Niki Hastings-McFall questions the validity of faith and delves into her own encounters with mortality.

‘Adam and Maiden’ stand distraught in the Garden of Eden. Hastings-McFall has fashioned a detailed and intricate light-box work that brings a well-known story into a contemporary sphere while addressing traditional and historic influences of paintings history. Skeletons, a snake, a monkey, a tree, and Niki Hasting-McFall’s unique use of ‘fake’ flora all take part in a complex relationship between elements and symbols.

‘Swansong’ explores the transition from life to death, transformation, metamorphosis, changing form and reincarnation. Life is as fleeting as is music and inevitably we will all have to take the journey from life into death. A swan floats ready to transport a soul across the mirrored water as a skeleton angel figure plays a conch shell, summoning the spirits.

The journey of life is a common element within this show and Niki Hastings-McFall. Road signs help us navigate through our everyday urban environments and Niki Hastings-McFall cleverly uses the road side vinyl to remind us that we are on a journey everyday. Her vinyl works glow and flicker, are they warning us or protecting us?

‘Flock’ shows a group of airplanes, like a flock of birds that make a pattern reflective of Polynesian breast plates (used for protection). A waterfall of shimmering vinyl is revealed in the studies ‘Papase’ea 1 & 2’. Papase’ea a waterfall in Samoa is visited as a site to jump off and plunge into the pool below. This work symbolises a ‘leap of faith’ or taking the steps towards a positive way forward.

Niki Hastings-McFall skilfully creates a common aesthetic that is distinctively her own; transforming known symbols, meanings and art practices into an individual and accessible visual language. She confidently plays with materials, media, light, symbolism and space, providing us with a variety of works that together and individually address issues that are often so difficult to fathom; the journey of life, faith in the world and the inevitability of death.

This was written as text for Niki Hastings-McFall's exhibition 'Have a Little Faith' at Milford Galleries Dunedin, 2009. For more information follow link.

Garry Currin - Inland @ Milford Galleries Dunedin, 2009

Garry Currin is producing some of the most memorable and important artworks in New Zealand’s painting history. His unique and emotive works are critically acclaimed and his recent win of the BMW painting awards further solidifies his place as a significant New Zealand painter.

Garry Currin’s exhibition ‘Inland’ offers the viewer a silent world to enter and contemplate within, yet speaks so loudly once engaged with. His atmospheric and mystical paintings are visually and mentally stimulating. They reveal subtle narratives and relationships between natural and constructed environments, showing the juxtaposition of manmade elements against moody landscapes.

Currin’s paintings speak of the future and the present. There is an overwhelming sense of imminence and melodrama, nothing is fixed or as it seems. There is flux and change. Both event and time collapse together. The paintings almost become portents. An apocalyptic sky burns and sparks in ‘Gate of a Dream’ and a glimpse of light or hope emits from the hills of ‘Age of Gold’.

‘This Distance’ shows a landscape bathed in a luminous and golden light, the water glows, the darkness evaporates and structures float in and out of existence as if they are a mirage. What has happened in this place? Structural elements give way to the natural environment in ‘Trojan’. This work demonstrates remarkable confidence and compelling drawing marks. Areas have been scratched away to reveal underlying structures, or built up with layers of oil paint giving an impression of afternoon haze. There is a physicality to this work; not only in it’s size but in Currin’s use of illusionary space. One feels they can walk into the canvas and experience this place.

In paintings such as ‘Inland I’ and ‘Inland II’ the natural landscape seems to emerge from a veneer of mist or fog, or maybe from behind a curtain, fogged up window or screen. Currin creates a visual barrier between the viewer and the painting that forces one to look beyond the surface.

Currin reveals and conceals. In spending time with the work, new images and forms start to emerge. The large patches of smudgy black paint in ‘The Magi’ merge into tar pits, or bellowing smoke from industrial machines- what does lie within those dark shadows?

Currin describes ‘Inland’ as ‘a series of works painted around the parameters of silence.’ (Garry Currin/June 2009). He offers works that ask us to contemplate our own environment; what has happened, what will happen and what power do we have over this reality?

This is the exhibition text for Garry Currin's exhibition 'Inland' at Milford Galleries Duendin, 2009. For more information follow link.

Gary Waldrom - New Works @ Milford Galleries Dunedin, 2009

The unique, dramatic and magical paintings exhibited at Milford Galleries Dunedin in Gary Waldrom’s show ‘New Works’, demonstrate why he is one of New Zealand’s significant painters. His provocative dreamscapes entice the viewer into an imagined world where one has an active involvement in unravelling the relationships, narratives and symbols within the work.

Gary Waldrom has a distinctive yet varied painting style; from his tightly and skilfully rendered application in ‘Girl with Horse I (Second Series) (2008-2009)’ to his expressive and gestural brush work in ‘Blind Girl Dance (2008-2009)’ to the almost drawing like quality of ‘Bench Seat Conversation (2008-2009)’ where shadows of previous marks are still visible.

Characters and figures play an important role in Gary Waldrom’s works and their unrevealing yet inquisitive expressions are familiar and at times unsettling. In the work ‘Three Girls Watching II (2007–2009)’ both the viewer and the girls within the work take the position of onlooker.

His works elude an atmospheric glow; this could be due to the regional light of both Gary and his characters. The hills and grasses are instantly recognisable in Gary Waldrom’s work ‘Swamp Wader (2008-2009)’ and the architecture of ‘Jack-Hammer Jimmy and his Daughter Dolores (On Sunday) (2008)’ reflects a rural New Zealand town, once thriving with industry and now almost ghost-like.

It is difficult if not near impossible to liken Gary Waldrom’s works to that of any other painter. His intuitive scenes are highly individual yet at the same time they are strangely familiar. The power of his work is evident in its physical and psychological impact; in experiencing Gary Waldrom’s alternate realities one takes part in the drama unravelling before them, an exploration that is unforgettable.

This is the exhibition text for Gary Waldrom's exhibition 'New Works' at Milford Galleries Dunedin 2009. For more information follow link.

Peata Larkin - Tuhourangi Revival @ Milford Galleries Dunedin, 2009

With their colourful, sculptural and visually dynamic surfaces, Peata Larkin’s paintings stimulate associations with traditional weaving patterns, the movement of light and colour over water and landscape and visual elements of the present day such as digital computer pixels and DNA strands. Pioneering a distinctive and individual way of working Larkin pushes small beads of paint through a mesh to reveal abstracted compositions, resulting in visually and technically unique paintings that ripple with colour, and have a very real physical presence.

The exhibition ‘Tuhourangi Revival’ at Milford Galleries Dunedin celebrates and explores the ongoing history and knowledge surrounding Tuhourangi with a particular reference to the building of a Marae this year on Lake Tarawera. Of Tuhourangi and Tuwharetoa decent, Larkin focuses on the area surrounding Lakes Tarawera and Rotomahana, her ancestral home. The Tuhourangi tribe resided here before the eruption of Mt Tarawera in 1886 which destroyed villages, now buried along with the Pink and White Terraces.

In ‘Tuhourangi Portrait’ colours and pattern reference the Pink and White Terraces “a powerful metaphor for cultural identity, loss and revival”.1 The stepped poutama (stairway to heaven) composition revealed in this work and also in the Tarawera Poutama compositions “is similar to the geometric patterns in woven tukutuku panels in Maori meeting houses and represents the acquisition of knowledge”.2

The organic and distorted forms of the ‘Rotomahana’ and ‘Tarawera’ works, suggest movement, energy, fluidity and rhythm. Associations with the changing light and colours of the landscape are easily made while engaging with the mixing and melding of form and colour.

Peata Larkin continues to push the boundaries of structured space; opening possibilities and the potential for change and movement within the confinements of the grid. Visual codes and systems are ways in which to pass information in both the ancient and modern world, and Larkin creates her own language that calls to mind multiple associations with Maori tukutuku and Patiki patterns, binary systems, digital pixels, maps and diagrams. Between traditional and contemporary, organic and rigid, macro and micro, Peata Larkin’s paintings open up a space where ideas, knowledge, culture and history is ever
present.

1 Virginia Were ‘Stairway To Heaven’ Art News, Winter 2009 pg 51
2 ibid

This is the exhibition text for Peata Larkin's exhibition 'Tuhourangi Revival' at Milford Galleries Dunedin 2009. For more information follow link.