John Hurrell – 30 June, 2010

This is a genuinely nameless show of five artists at RM that doesn’t even say ‘Untitled’ as a title. A number of possibly coincidental connections between its works join up to serve as a kind of structured loop. It was put together by the RM administrators.

Ian Jervis contributes a group of intriguing works made up mainly of pairs of small paintings that look like squares of tiny tiles set on swivels, or diminutive oil painted panels. They are scattered around the main walls far away from the other work and with them go three poppylike, ‘Russian constructivist’ funnels, set high into corners. They are red on the inside and silver on the outer; gorgeously poetic, hollow, speaker cones. Jervis’ work seems to be a comment about the fluctuating status of painting, its varied functions, and how it can be talked about in revolutionary terms.

Mathew McConnell’s work is a sort of mini-installation: sculpture that includes three photos on the wall next to a nailed up ceramic loop covered with gold leaf. The inkjet photos show the artist seated at a table lecturing an audience, and he also seems to be photocopying a document - which might be the same images. With the loop (a frame), and some oilstik paint marks lower down on the wall, McConnell seems to be commenting on the hermeticism of art practice. There is a freestanding, tall, shiny, black column nearby that has bits of timber leaning on it, referring I suspect to the transmutation of ordinary materials.

On the other side of the room is another freestanding column, made by Joanna Chow. This obelisk is made of wet sand applied to a vertical plywood armature hidden underneath. Over the duration of the exhibition the water will percolate to the bottom and theoretically the higher dry sand will fall off its support to form a pile at the base. At the moment it seems to be the middle section that is disintegrating, leaving the inner plywood core exposed. It might be different densities of slow-drying wood that affect the sand.

Helen Broome is displaying a facsimile of a visitors’ book maintained at the Auckland University’s School of Engineering. This version has photocopied pages showing pages of signatures and comments, plus fake pencil-drawn marbling on their outer edges. The original tome was removed when the School moved to its third and current site in Symonds Street in 1969.

With the book is a MP3 player and set of headphones through which you can hear a retired engineering professor apparently being interviewed. He talks about visitor books in general, how Gauguin once visited Auckland Art Gallery in 1890, and later on, strangely about the belief in the mysterious and fraudulent substance of aether (as propagated by institutions like the Jefferson Laboratory in Washington) whereby building were made nail free - with special joints and wooden pegs - so that the aether in the air (note: not moisture) could not rust them. Broome is obviously interested in belief systems and the vagaries of fact and fiction.

Broome’s hefty book and audio player is on a bookcase shelf behind the gallery minder’s desk, and Milan Haber also exploits a horizontal presentation, a table on trestles for the standing viewer. His whimsical sculpture centres on the improvised use of tape rolls: both the unravellable sticky ribbons and the inner cardboard cores.

Haber uses a variety of circular rims to make little platforms, and piled up, leaning configurations with drink cartons. He inventively combines intact rolls of gaffer, masking and duct tape, a clothes peg, and bits of  folded card with the empty cores and odd piles of coloured oval-shaped paper, to explore a logic he detects in these prosaic object/materials. To one side is an origami-like, squashed folded paper pyramid with a stack of square cardboard squares partially hidden within. Only at the far end of the table, on two painted, empty juice and milk boxes, do we see sticky tape actually used vaguely in the adhering manner for which it is designed: the purple-brown boxes are covered with decorative patterns of diamond-shaped sticky slivers.

As for the loop I referred to earlier: on Haber’s table is a rectangular piece of blue card with a wide black bar going down its centre. Related black bars can also be seen in two of Ian Jervis’ small paintings. The connection is utterly fortuitous I’m sure, but nevertheless curiously noteworthy.

This is a characteristically low key show from RM, but it deserves a close look. There are lots of understated but intelligent, nuanced things going on. It’s an excellent exhibition that will appeal to the curious.

John Hurrell

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