John Hurrell – 20 July, 2024

Good grief! An exhibition title preaching moderation and tolerance in a judgemental (art)world, used to confrontation and opposing politicised factions. It is claiming nothing is self-evident. I’ll have to get my eyes tested!

So how does Phil Dadson’s plea for restraint or calm (espousing the mixing of two opposites to form a compromising grey) connect with his exhibited works displayed here? The show in total consists of ten items: six of them sets of images on multiple paper sheets; one suspended ‘branch’ sculpture/painting; and three videos.

The answer lies in one work especially: a mantra (October Mantra - 31 Praise Names, 2023) where the writing (using a cursive stave-like script with curved parallel lines) lists the names of a diverse number of spiritual belief systems. It presents 31 names (such as Atua, Allah, Rama, Tao, Shiva, Io, Ra, Notos and Papa) on thirty-one sheets that can be read and recited in song as an aid for meditation—an aid that proclaims its own diverse hybridity as a community of sympathetic faiths.

Each of the 31 sheets is divided into black and white, on which are spontaneous and lively splashes (in blue, pink, sienna and grey) symbolising drops of water or miniature combusting explosions of energy. Collectively the vertical black rectangles set up an irregular linear pulse in the large space that is emphasised, reinforced and then broken. The black and white of course reference the title of this show, and the other colours confirm it.

Another month, May (May Music, 2018), seems to focus instead on the circulation of vinyl records, presenting square sleeves with holes in their centre, and coloured pigment that has been agitated through dragged sticks and finger painting: comparing those marks with the musical content of the enclosed discs. Many of these sheets feature circles or triangles, favourite spiritual/community symbols in the Dadson and From Scratch corpus of musical experimentation.

January Music (paper, hand, ink, eye, wind), January 2014 on the other hand, features spidery horizontal coloured marks and dribbles—made by the wind pushing and tugging suspended inked brushes resting on glassine paper sheets. Nature is seen as an active art-producing agent driven (in human terms) by the need to be expressive. A related work (July Music 15 (Mirror Pool Series), 2020, presents a circle of tiny delicate densely packed squiggles also on translucent paper—as if generated by the turning of the earth.

Dadson is also known for his passionate love of river stones as percussive clicking instruments, so one draped scroll work (September Music - Song/Stone Soliloquy, 2022) suspended from high in the ceiling and curving down to rest on the floor-held down by a black and a white stone—features 60 drawings of pairs of stones. (26 pairs on one side, 34 on the other.) One of each pair is coloured in, the other is outlined in ink. Maybe this inverted-V scroll functions as a score, with the coloured and drawn shapes a code for different rhythmic textures that Dadson can decipher?

A second suspended work has separated bands of colour on a silver-painted dried branch and attached root. Those colours appear to be that of the Palestinian flag. Entitled Gaza Lament, 2024 it is clearly intended as a symbol of the damaged consequences of the conflict. It might also be pantheistic in motivation, suggesting this dead part of an Auckland tree is cognisant of the tragedy in Palestine, that global issues never ever stop at national borders or isolated human intelligences. Some might argue too that Dadson with this work is contradicting the demurring ethos of this show’s title.

Outside of the political and emotional content of this work as discussed above, the shape of the branch is highly suggestive; perhaps fortuitous. It could be a bird with outstretched wings, or a bridge to be walked under—depending on the angle you approach it. Or simply what it is: a dead part of a tree forming a wobbly line that hovers in space. A botanical specimen that is an assisted readymade. 

Dadson’s videos employ a different kind of sensuality that is less direct. July Music Flip, 2020 shows two hands turning the translucent glassine paper pages of a large artist’s book, briefly pausing so each presented delicate ink drawing can be absorbed by the viewer before the blurred page-turning recommences.

With August Music, 2021 and April Music, 2017 (two other videos), the screen is split vertically or horizontally: the first with two channels that focus on climate change, incorporating swivelling inverted camerawork and a softly talking person drowned out by ominous news broadcasts—and traversing poetic texts like ‘part wild horses mare’ or ‘shield of light waves of air’; the second an inverted view of a Northshore mangrove-packed waterline seen from the sea—or horizons of parks and estuaries at dusk—that divide the screen so that the cloudy sky is below.  At first slow moving, it suddenly speeds up with a vigorous left to right motion, turning into a whirling blur that streaks across the monitor, and seems to allude to the trancelike mystical state sought by dervishes.

The salient thing about this show is just how remarkably consistent Dadson is with his many varieties of art/music practice in the way they match up with his personal spiritual and community beliefs. The degree of integration of these threads is extraordinary.

John Hurrell

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