Nau mai, haere mai, welcome to EyeContact. You are invited to respond to reviews and contribute to discussion by registering to participate.

JH

Warning Sign

AA
View Discussion
Shelley Jacobson, Surface Expressions, 2016. Installation view. Commissioned by Te Tuhi, Auckland.  Photo by Sam Hartnett

This might refer to the tectonic plates on the edge of the Pacific Basin's ‘Ring of Fire', which some think, in New Zealand's part of the world, are becoming increasingly unstable, so that a global catastrophe is coming up. The recent increase in the number of earthquakes, and movements along fault-lines ('Surface Expressions') could suggest that a major eruption is on its way.

Te Tuhi billboards

Pakuranga

 

Shelley Jacobson
Surface Expressions

 

12 November 2016 - 19 March 23017

For the Reeves Rd trio of hoardings - opposite the Te Tuhi entrance - Shelley Jacobson provides two landscape photographs and a centrally positioned text. One image of the Wairakei blowhole, located in New Zealand’s most famous geothermal region, shows it in full spendour, erupting. The other shows it ‘resting’, the ground around the aperture encrusted with salts of sulphur.

The 1902 text states: This blow-hole is called by Sir James Hector the safety valve of New Zealand, an ascription which suggests that if it were to become clogged the country would, in its turn, become an exploded volcano, with all its people and industrial glory, distributed in space.

Because Hector was a geologist, this might refer to the tectonic plates on the edge of the Pacific Basin’s ‘Ring of Fire‘, which some think, in New Zealand’s part of the world, are becoming increasingly unstable, so that a global catastrophe is coming up. The recent increase in the number of earthquakes, and movements along fault-lines (Surface Expressions) could suggest that a major eruption is on its way.

According to Sir James‘ statement, the geysers alleviate that possibility, and perhaps the earthquakes do too - or do they in fact exacerbate it? Jacobson’s project locks into the alarm many New Zealanders feel about the apparent increase of earthquakes in this country, a fear that volcanic activity might be connected - leading to an event more cataclysmic than even very severe earthquakes; a possibility planetary in its consequences.

John Hurrell

Print | Facebook | Twitter | Email

 

Recent Posts by John Hurrell

JH
Still from Laresa Kosloff, New Futures TM, 2021, 4K video, made from commercial stock footage, 4.37 mins

Detecting Sentience & Cognition

TE TUHI CENTRE FOR THE ARTS

Auckland

 

International group show
Who can think, what can think

 

18 February 2023 - 7 May 2023

JH
Installation of Koen Delaere's exhibition 'White Light White Heat' at Fox Jensen McCrory.

Spectacular Paradoxical Delaere

FOX JENSEN MCCRORY

Auckland

 

Koen Delaere
White Light White Heat


11 February 2023 - 18 March 2023

JH
Cat Fooks at Anna Miles: Sour Orange Summer, 2023; Brittle Star, 2023; Pocockiella, 2023;  Kobold, 2022. Photo: Sam Hartnett

Typically Exuberant Fooks

ANNA MILES GALLERY

Auckland

 

Cat Fooks
Terebella


18 February 2023 -16 March 2023

JH
John Nixon: Untitled (Orange Monochrome), 1997, metal disc and enamel on mdf, 555 x 555 mm; Untitled (Black Monochrome), 1997, enamel on mdf, 600 x 600 mm.                                               Photo: Sam Hartnett

John Nixon’s Painting Passion

TWO ROOMS

Auckland

 

John Nixon
Works 1990 - 2014



10 February 2023 - 11 March 2023