Peter Dornauf – 2 July, 2010

The current exhibition running at Ramp gallery, (in Waikato Wintec, Collingwood St) curated by Stuart Shepherd, consists of a suite of works selected from the Anna Bibby dealer gallery in Auckland. It is Shepherd’s last, his stint at the Polytec over that sees him return to Massey.

The show sports four up and comers from the Bibby stable and Shepherd reveals that he initially was going to call the show, neo-folk to reflect what he saw as a common thread, a retro feel embodied in the artists’ approach. But he changed his mind, on reflection, not wanting the revisited populist styles of the past to be interpreted as simply a superficial re rendering of old established formats. Fair enough, I suppose, if a tad picky. For Shepherd, the works had enough new edge to set them above such a nomenclature. What’s in a name? Plenty, it seems.

That aside, the best appellation of the title must go to Gavin Hurley’s smart and witty Wild Boy, a paper collage, a wonderful piece involving four Fifties looking collegiate portraits constructed from paper cut-outs involving separate components; hair, eyes, lips, shading and pasted together jigsaw-like, slightly reminiscent of something out of a pop-up book or paper dress-up dolls with the feel of a child’s DIY assemblage. Each slick portrait comes complete with proper names together with nick-names, (Cookie, Reb, Tinker). When Hurley adds a cheesy caption beneath each portrait; “Mine is a silent humour” or “Calm and quiet as a rule”, the picture is complete. It recalls all those slightly naff school Year Books that students from College filled out back then. Deliciously clever and funny and yet somehow perhaps too easy a target for mockery and social criticism.

Des Helmore’s small oils on board of beach scenes and urban sites posses the geometric pared back look of Patrick Caulfield together with something out of Kitaj. These scenes, minus any figures, along with their muted restrained colours; greens, greys and browns, create an uneasy sense of estrangement and isolation that conjures up Edward Hopper’s cityscapes without the claustrophobia. They are perfectly finished and hover ambiguously in their painterly style between hard edge Pop and softer Impressionism. A delectable mix.

The third member of the group, Sam Mitchell, goes for the no-holds-barred vulgar, kitsch, low-rent imagery and delivery of all those tarty silk paintings and stuff out of tattoo parlours. Images abound of cowboys astride rearing horses, a soulful Jesus haloed with flowers and bulging breasted nudes. Judy Darragh comes to mind. These images are scattered across the blue flesh of a period mother and child portrait, all saccharine sweet faces counterpointed by skulls and crosses and a sailor dad. Just to make her point, Mitchell paints the whole composition on Perspex with the title, A Family Man. Nothing too subtle here but one wonders why the artist bothered. The topic’s a little tired, a little pat, deliberately over-the-top, of course. Grunge has had its time.

Last of the bunch is Martin Poppelwell with a cast of small ceramics in five parts, painted neutral white and consisting of sweet Victorian mass produced images of birds nestled among flowers and a young winsome girl tugging coyly at her dress. But the joker in the pack is a figurine of a Maori warrior done out in traditional dress and holding a putu. Such blatant juxtaposition brings immediately to mind the old and by now much overdone subject of colonization in New Zealand beloved of art institutions up and down the country. Give it up. Pleasssseee! His single painting is a collage of random scribbles of texts and quotations; the famous one from Augustine mixed with the likes of “gingernuts voted # 1” recalling early Peter Robinson doing riffs on Basquiat. It’s a good spoof on McCahon’s angst ridden search for spiritual truth, but the sloppy, albeit deliberate, execution failed to aesthetically impress.

The show in sum; style triumphant over substance and when there was substance it was not matched with style. Adjacent to the gallery is a small alcove, a tiny corridor space in which Media Arts students are invited to display their wares. The theme this time was animal cruelty and the best engagement with the topic was the work of Stephanie Walker’s installation of bird feathers (white and brown) stuffed inside a large wall mounted Perspex box. Conceptually clever and arresting stuff.

Peter Dornauf

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