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.

A Familiar Dream - Gary Waldrom 'New Works' 2009

I drive away from the coast and into the heart of the Hawkes Bay in search of an isolated driveway amongst barren, dry hills, off a tree lined country road. I am by myself, in a car unfamiliar to me, driving through places I have never been, imagining how it will be meeting Gary Waldrom at his studio in Waipawa.

As I pass a number of wooden gates and flat fields of grass, I spot objects a little out of place in the distance; globes of orange and yellow that seem to be floating by the side of road. As I draw nearer, I notice the orbs are balloons, markers leading me into the hidden driveway to Waldrom’s studio.

I am greeted at the car by Waldrom and joined shortly after by his mum and with tea in hand I am lead into the studio space. Three young girls stand before me. They are looking directly at me and as the title ‘Three Girls Watching II (2007-2009)’ describes, they are observing me as much as I am them. They stand in front of some stairs, leading to a large wooden door. I remember a photo my mother took of me at two and a half, pigtails and blue dress, standing before the door of the villa I was born in. The painting also prompts me to reminisce about childhood days with my two female cousins, the three of us playing together after school in our school tunics, and posing for photos to put into the large photo-albums our mothers kept.

I continue to look at the girls for a while, what are they thinking? Who are they? They are not telling; they are not smiling, nor sad. They have an almost adult quality to them, a knowing. I can see myself in his characters but at the same time they have a strange and unfamiliar air to them. All of Waldrom’s figures have a common look about them, elfish bodies with unique faces consisting large, confronting eyes that seem to stare. I slowly feel uneasy; I no longer feel I am looking at them, but that they are looking at me. They are strangers, in a strange place and I have entered their world.

The sensation I get from this work, as with others’ of Gary Waldrom’s is an uncanny one:
“the particular kind of fear provoked ‘when infantile complexes which have been repressed are once more revived by some impression, or when primitive beliefs which have been surmounted seem once more confirmed.” 1

Characters and places in Waldrom’s work are familiar yet strange. They conjure memories and I feel nostalgic towards the works but I can’t quite put my finger on why or how they make me feel so uneasy.

Waldrom’ paintings not only blur the boundaries between the familiar and the unfamiliar, but between everyday reality and the imagined world within. Although they are mindscapes in that they are greatly constructed from Waldrom’s imagination, elements of the paintings are recognisably from the real world. In ‘Girl and Ceramic Pig (2008-2009)’ a girl stands holding flowers, and an orange air balloon floats through the air, over architecture that is specific to Waldrom’s Waipawa and palm trees that are distinctly New Zealand. I instantly look at my own situation, my recent encounter of the Waipawa buildings and my experience of finding the orange balloon. That uncanny feeling hits me again, as my world is reflected in the painting before me.

There is a very real experience to be had in engaging with the paintings as physical objects. Areas have layers of thick oil paint, others thin washes, leaving remnants of what has been painted before such as in ‘Bench Seat Conversation (2008-2009)’ where shadows of where the bench once finished are left visible. Some of Waldrom’s works are expressive; he applies the paint with movement and physical gesture. Other areas of his paintings are very tightly constructed, almost looking like they have been ‘stuck’ onto the surface of the canvas. 2 On close inspection brush-marks are apparent, forms of coloured paint slowly merge into an image, painted line takes shape and ones perception changes; from the paintings physical surface to the illusion of the painting space and into the imagery that unfolds itself in the work.

Before visiting Waldrom I stopped in at the Hastings Art Gallery to view an exhibition called ‘Mind Games- Surrealism in Aotearoa’. A work of Waldrom’s from 2000 appeared in this show and although Waldrom does not fit this label entirely (nor any label for that matter), there are some similarities. The imagined world and the physical world are always prevalent when viewing a painting. One can move from the illusion of space in the work, to the painting as an object constructed with paint and canvas. Both the Surrealists and Waldrom break down the separation between the real object and the illusionary space of the work. They blur the boundary between the physical world and the psychological world through their painting process:
“these artists move freely, boldly and confidently at the borderline between the inner and outer world, a borderline that is physically and psychologically entirely real (‘surreal’) even if it has not yet been adequately defined and determined, that they undertake to register precisely what they see and experience there, and that they intervene wherever their revolutionary instincts suggest they should.”3

Waldrom describes himself as a ‘mood’ painter and although he has an idea of he wants the painting to ‘feel’ intuition plays a large role on the decisions Waldrom makes within his work. Characters and places are manifested from his imagination or from snippets of images or ideas he then assimilates into the evolving painting composition. To take a photograph of Waldrom’s work each day would be to reveal a constantly changing imagined world.

In some case Waldrom uses found images to inspire or guide his ideas. He also revisits his own compositions, changing and re-evaluating aspects of the work. In the work ‘Blind Girl Dance (2008-2009)’ the motivation of other images can be found explicitly. The figures dancing in an arm linked circle has a direct connection to Matisses’s 1909 painting ‘Dance’ but also to one of Waldrom’s earlier works, ‘All Your Dancers and Twisters’ from 1995. For sometime Waldrom thought of reprising the work, “not because it is no longer extant, but I felt sure I could revamp the idea completely”. 4 Within Waldrom’s paintings, the initial images are taken into an entirely new situation where they become part of his alternate reality.

When given a first glimpse of Waldrom’s paintings in progress, a woman stands naked in the water, hands behind her back, pushing her pelvis forward, looking out at me with a sneer on her face. She looks as if she could be bathing in these dark murky waters. Now standing in front of the work ‘Swamp Wader (2008-2009)’, I recognise the same girl, she looks different though, now she is fully clothed, holding a fishing net, wading through the water. The sky has changed and the reeds are more recognisable. The moon looks different. The work looks different. The character in the world has lived a life through the painting and now stands transformed and evolved.

“Surrealists are widely described as painters of a constantly mutating dream-works.” 5 Waldrom’s works develop as he paints. He lets the works reveal themselves through the painting process in instinctual manner. Like dreaming, the works evolve in their own way, Waldrom letting his unconscious guide him along:
“at the outset it may be objected that dream-work is an unconscious process involving internal mental operations while artistic labour is a conscious mental process controlling manual manipulation of physical materials and implements. These differences exist but the unconscious also plays a role in art-work and… there are parallels between the unconscious operations of dream-work and the physical transformations typical of artistic production.” 6

This is not to say that Waldrom is unaware of painting conventions. Although he has no academic training, Waldrom speaks clearly about the formal aspects of how his painting operates. In notes on his painting ‘Reversal Rehearsal (Demo for a Lost Cause) (2008-2009)’, Waldrom uses compositional devices to guide the viewer through the work. He has purposefully shown the figure from the back view “using this ‘repeat pose’ aspects in a composition as a unifying /continuity device. The same applies to the magenta-coloured walk-ramp extending right across both panels, which is intended to double as an anchor for the composition as well.” 7 What it does however open up, is the idea that the unconscious or inner-world has as much part in creating a painting as the physical action:
“One of the most crucial revolutionary devices of surrealism was passionately to have attacked this myth (of divine creation) on well-considered grounds and thus to have dispatched it once and for all. It did so by insisting emphatically upon the purely passive role of the ‘author’ as far as the mechanism of poetic inspiration was concerned, by unmasking the notion of ‘active control’ through reason, morality and aesthetic deliberation as inimical to inspiration. As a viewer like anyone else, the ‘author’ can witness the emergence of the work can follow the unfolding phases of its development with indifference or passion. Just as a poet listens to the automatic processes of thought and jots down their results, so too the painter projects what his optical imagination suggests directly to him on paper or canvas.” 8

As I now stand before these works, I am left to interpret these paintings. I wonder what they mean. I wonder what these works reveal about Waldrom as a person, are they as much of his unconscious mind as his active mind? Waldrom gives me no help- the paintings have unravelled themselves before him as well. I’m looking into Waldrom’s dreamscape or mindscape. Each part of the work seems laden with meaning, both obvious and hidden. Not only does the work reveal things about Waldrom, I also know there is a story within the illusionary imagery and like a dream I’m left to interpret it:
“Already a parallel suggests itself between Freud’s view that dreams have double meanings (latent and manifest) and the way images function (signifiers and signifieds) and symbols work (literal and metaphorical levels of meaning). The correlation between art-work and dream-work is made quite explicit in Freud’s frequent references to the means of representation in works of art as examples of how dreams are formed. Furthermore, the task of the psychoanalysis in interpreting dreams appears to match that of the viewer or reader seeking to grasp the meaning of a work of art, a meaning which, like that of a dream, often stubbornly resists decoding.” 9

Like the empty Punch and Judy stage in ‘From Here to There (2006-2009)’, it seems there is a story waiting to be revealed. In fact when looking at Waldrom’s work I feel like I am in front of a stage, where the characters are the players. I look for clues as to what drama is unfolding. What secrets are there in this work to reveal? As my eye moves from one element of the painting to the next, I wonder what has happened or is soon to occur in the scene Waldrom has placed before me. An abandoned car situated in the long grass, below a wispy cloud (or possibly even smoke?) prompts me to think of gangsters and the suited character (with his shifty sideways glance) adds to the underbelly feeling of unease in the work.

I think about Waldrom, painting alone in his studio, amongst these Hawkes Bay hills, and how in a way he is like the man in front of the Punch and Judy show, inviting me to experience the situation. The more time I spend looking at the work, the greater the possibilities. I feel the need to decipher, to know what is going on, what it all means, and I am left with unanswered questions. The work retains its secrets- the characters look only to me for answers.

Another painting is displayed ‘Girl and Horse I (Second Series) (2008-2009)’ and through hazy orange, post-apocalyptic skies I sense a light I am all too familiar with, the light of mid-afternoon New Zealand sun. The light in the work shines upon the face of a stone building. I am instantly transported back to a time I spent in Oamaru at art school, living close to the ‘old town’ a restored area by the sea where old buildings remain. I know this place Waldrom presents before me; I can almost walk around the side of the building and know what will be there.

Again a girl stands in the foreground of the work, her head tilted slightly left and her eyes closed as if day dreaming. In front of her a very still orb is placed, (a ball?) and beside her stands a large white horse. I wonder if it is a figment of the girl’s imagination (don’t most young girls dream of ponies, and older ones dream of knights on white horses?). I begin to realise that these paintings are just as much about my world as they are Waldrom’s. All of a sudden I see myself in the girl with the ball, dreaming of that white horse; maybe my knight is just around the corner.

I begin to see a Waldrom painting in my own experience of this journey to his studio; a girl, in new and unfamiliar surroundings (however the New Zealand landscape and light is unmistakably familiar), guided by balloons 10 , standing, looking out into an alternate reality; Waldrom’s world.

As the afternoon wears on I move from one painting to the next, exploring Waldrom’s constructed worlds, their stories, landscapes, painterly qualities and my own feelings about myself and my experiences of this alternate reality which is strangely close to home.

Before saying my final goodbyes to travel back to the big smoke of Auckland, I revisit “Three Girls Watching II (2007-2009)” and find something intriguing. The work has changed. Light that earlier seemed to signify early morning, now appears as an afternoon haze. The girls look at me in a different way; it has been a long day for all of us, they are in front of a closed door, wishing me well. As we stand face-to-face they look at me as if they know what I’m thinking and what I’ve been through here in Waldrom’s studio. I wonder what they’ll get up to when I leave? Will they wait until I see them again? I feel a little melancholy knowing that the works will remain locked away in solitude until the day that they travel away from the studio but I am already looking forward to experiencing their ever-changing presence when they arrive again in my world.

Vanessa Eve Cook, 2009


1. Lydenberg p. 1073
2. Area’s of Waldrom’s paintings have been worked and re-worked, meaning that areas of the work look more built up than others.
3. Harrison & Wood p. 493
4. Waldrom
5. Harrison & Wood p. 492
6. Walker p. 109
7. Waldrom
8. Harrison & Wood p. 492
9. Walker p. 109
10. Waldrom


References:

Harrison, Charles. And Paul Wood (Eds). ‘Max Ernst (1891-1976) ‘What is Surrealism?’. Art in theory, 1900-2000 : an anthology of changing ideas. Blackwell Publishers: Malden, MA, 2003 pp 491 – 493

Harrison, Charles. And Paul Wood (Eds). ‘Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939) from ‘On Dreams’’. Art in theory, 1900-2000 : an anthology of changing ideas. Blackwell Publishers: Malden, MA, 2003 pp 21- 28

Lydenberg, Robin ‘Freuds Uncanny Narratives’. PLMA Modern Language Association. vol. 112, No. 5, Oct., 1997 pp1072-1086

Waldrom, Gary. ‘New Paintings’. Artists Notes on Works. 2009

Walker, John A. ‘Dream-Work and Art-Work’. Leonardo. Vol. 16, No. 2, 1983 pp 109 – 114.

Written as a catalogue essay for Gary Waldrom's 'New Works', 2009. Please see exhibition details @ Milford Galleries Website www.milfordgalleries.co.nz