John Hurrell – 31 March, 2011

These three photographs by Jennifer Mason of dilapidated empty rooms, modified by Photoshop to include extra tilted planes and placed on billboards in Reeves Rd opposite Te Tuhi, intrigue because of their spatial depth. This illusionistic property is something not often explored in these artists’ projects; most cling to the plastic fabric’s picture plane.

Such viscerality appeals. The viewer is swept through the rectangular ‘apertures’ in the roadside wall and along or around ramps on the other side. Sometimes outside walls or windows are inserted inside, planes thickened into slabs, or rightangles made obtuse, creating a swelling ‘fisheye’ sensation internally. The observer is continually being teased bodily.

Sometimes too walls are flipped around and single doors repeated in reverse to become double - as if part of a suddenly widened cupboard. Straight lines get bent, torqued walls and twisting floors stay filthy but bright glaring light emerges from solid corners - mysterious though from a spot. There’s a hint of Magritte but in a setting that is inhospitably squalid and ramshackle. Surrealism gone derelict, residing in a squat.

Just how memorable are these? To me, standing on the footpath, they seem a little bit obvious, the Photoshopping just too apparent. They are not boring - they clearly have a point - but over time they might pall. For queues of drivers though their roadside location could prevent that. Passing glimpses might keep them enigmatic and intriguing, forever vibrant.

John Hurrell

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