Talking About Art
Copyright Mark Amery and The Dominion Post
When I hear the words 'Artist Talk' I sometimes want to run. "Get out of the way, let me see," I find myself thinking when I do get caught. Let me think for myself. Yes, they can be stimulating, but exhibition talks seem to have become almost mandatory.
They sometimes become principally a mechanism by which the public gallery continues to get publicity after the exhibition opening. Which means not only is your ideal contemporary artist or curator talented, they're witty and articulate on the spot to boot.
On Saturday I had no choice. I was keen to see Peter Trevelyan's show Actron and Reactron at Enjoy and he was giving a talk at the only time I could attend. I joined a small but engaged group on chairs. Trevelyan was naturally nervous but spoke well, and the audiences' thoughts and questions made this a particularly lively affair. I left wondering whether Viewer Talks would be more empowering - a chance for response and discussion, rather than the artist standing there trying there best to please.
It's an indication of the strength of Trevelyan's work that it led easily to confident debate from the floor. As the exhibition title suggests the work itself is about interaction - sequences of action and reaction in the gallery that force us to consider how we are being tracked digitally almost everywhere.
Entering the gallery a Medusa's head worth of motion sensors click on and off. The kind you have at home for outside lights, they dangle from the rafters like exploratory tentacles, leading back via power cords to a geometric cocoon, within which a tangle of standard domestic lights multiply in the mirror covered interior. The whole thing is bolted and plugged together like some DIY home garage job that is, Gremlin-like, taking on a dangerous uncontrollable electrical life of its own.
Trevelyan's art makes the digital mesh that enwraps us physical, drawing out with wit and technical know-how the sinister sense that it watches and controls us. He is making crystal-like the lines of binary code beneath camera and keyboard apparent. It reminds me of the sublime wonder and horror of Thomas Pynchon's description of "a great digital computer, the zeros and ones twinned above, hanging like balanced mobiles right and left, ahead, thick, maybe endless".
There's a charming homespun wonkiness at a human scale that makes us engage with these kinetic creatures as part of our world. The forms are nostalgic; reminiscent of when computers were banks of switches, bulky casings and endless wiring. They have the delight and mysticism of the computer in old sci-fi (et al. is a interesting reference point). Perched on wobbly dowling legs like an ironing board, three metal pyramids are covered by over a 100 switches which turn on and off red lights on a fuzzy monitor. It's like some primitive computer drawing machine or, facing out the windows to the city holding onto these pyramids, an old military navigational and surveillance aid whose illogical effects ensure you're lost in the matrix between things.
I didn't avoid my second review subject either, bumping into Lauren Lysaght in a café earlier in the week. Blessedly she felt no compulsion to tell me what her work is about. As with Trevelyan the work itself has bright, endearing things to lure us in with before digging its hooks in. Both artists are interested in working out how things are made. As we get caught up in studying how indeed they made them, layers of meaning are teased out.
For her latest exhibition Lysaght has learnt to make shoes. Shoes made out of wine cask cardboard, sourced from her local RSAs - places where its still sold over the bar. These are women's shoes with gauche, dressy frills, ruffles and bows, reminiscent of '80s corporate wear, sparkling like diamante with our complex, confused ideas of class and taste.
Finding the poetry in material that fashion has forgotten, Lysaght gives the marginalised new status - and at the same time reveals the cheapness of our contemporary treasured bling. These shoes may be cardboard, but they're exquisitely made by hand. They stand in pointed contrast to the sweatshop origins of most shoes today, and give new weight to old, cheap winery slogans like "guaranteed quality wine".
Presented in five different witty titled series, the styles of these shoes play off the mock traditional aesthetics of both wine cask and shoe design. Dig the square buckles for example that go with clever animation by Lysaght of the cavaliers from Velutto Rosso mock woodgrain packaging. Inspired by both the shoes of Marie Antoinette and our old unpretentious drinking habits, her shoes celebrate that aspect of New Zealand culture which can cut old European pretensions down with a phrase like Chateau Cardboard.
Actron and Reactron, Peter Trevelyan, Enjoy Public Art Gallery, until 3 November
Chateau Cardboard, Lauren Lysaght, Mary Newton Gallery, until 10 November
