John Hurrell – 9 August, 2025

The fifteen de Lautour paintings on display here present obscured (ie. blocked out) naming labels hovering high in space, with extended lines linking them below to mountain ranges or some individual peaks.

The labels appear to be initially intended to tie these images into Fortyniner mining history, presenting them as commentaries on the location of gold in the South Island in the 1880s. If history buffs are interested. Well, that’s one reading.

Another is that the paintings comment on the power of language, and try to envisage a world without it, where the experience of (mainly visual) sensation is celebrated, but devoid of accompanying thought (if that were possible.) Sensation is visceral but here avoids labelling. No language exists to provide a naming structure. Mountains and other geographic features are merely things that are physically encountered without ascribed mental attributes articulated by the beholder.

One very different (but contemporary and admittedly highly imaginative) interpretation is that the works comment on the geopolitical consequences of global positioning in the ‘art world’ and the lack of spatial proximity of many artists and connected art career influencers to powerful centres of artworld influence.

The spatial distance between practitioners and text-providing critics or curators could here be an issue worthy of note, especially if de Lautour is seen as alluding to the career trajectories of ‘internationalist’ versus ‘regionalist’ artists. The stepping stones or obstacles involved. And (as a NZ artist) maybe being a touch rueful? The term ‘location’ is thus loaded with a muttering ambivalence.

John Hurrell

Print | Facebook | Twitter | Email