John Hurrell – 17 April, 2013

This installation by Tony Bond consists of thirty-four lacquered ceramics sprawling along a long wall. Configured in a flattened arch, and slightly denser on the right than the left - like the tail of a comet - it uses three pastel colours with forms that could almost be mistaken for children’s toys. Knobby and rotund, they look inflatable because they have no angular corners. These curvaceous sculptures might be hairdryers mixed with heat resistant ovenware, or underwater spongy creatures or cuddly little dinosaurs. Some, with various protuberances that could be insertable, might be motorised sex appliances - designed for self pleasuring.

Each glistening form, often with salt and pepperlike perforations, comes discreetly screwed on to a small tilted plane, seemingly about to topple off. Warren Feeney in a review of a much paler, earlier version, contextualised it in terms of the Christchurch earthquake. Indeed, it did seem like a form of black humour, designed to generate some form of cathartic release, Bond perhaps mocking his own apprehension of tremors. Beyond earthquakes, the sloping planes give the ceramics greater visibility, and this later version, with more saturated colours, has a playful mood.

There is a whimsical, but mischievous, cartoony quality to this installation, endlessly inventive and enjoyable as a timebased work that can be read like a comic frame sequence from left to right. Yet these small shiny sculptures are definitely not cute, or just ribald. There is something disturbing here, beyond imaginary buzzing, handheld machinery. The dominant confectionary hues (designed to soothe) are occasionally disrupted by a harsh ominous red.

The unsettling mood is caused by more than the sex toy allusions, or jarring red. Children’s cartoons often have sinister undercurrents, even cuddly curved forms. Maybe it is the suggestion they are inflatable and might explode with a bang. An incipient aggression. A covert layering of menace.  A hint of Takashi Murakami.

There is also an aspect to this work that connects it to eighties artists like Haim Steinbach or Allan McCollum, referencing the display of commodities and consumer fetishism. Like vaguely phallic detergent bottles in supermarkets they look designed to be fondled, caressed or grabbed. To be absentmindedly popped into your shopping trolley. Except they are morphologically inventive and deserve some prolonged scrutiny. They are fun to examine.

The dramatic sweep and scattered nature of Bond’s composition, part random like sprinkled falling stardust, also makes it hard to get away from. Thirty-four sculptures you can individually study in detail - the assortment shuffled so there is no determining pattern or logic - this sensual, strangely wild but subtly thoughtful display is a memorable event.

John Hurrell

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