John Hurrell – 6 March, 2025

Seasoned Melbourne sculptor, painter and performance artist Mikala Dwyer has exhibited in Aotearoa a few times, mainly in Wellington with Hamish McKay. For Aucklanders, this dazzling Starkwhite introduction presents a characteristically sensual mixture of wall, floor and ceiling-clinging works. All incongruously formally & thematically unpredictable, yet spellbinding as very strange artefacts that you find yourself compelled to repeatedly investigate.

Upstairs on the mezzanine, a low tent painting dominates the floor, an unusual pegged down draped and stretched out canvas (Nest) kept aloft via long poles held up with damp clay bases, square transparent plastic squares weighed down with unfired-clay ducks, and overlapping hard-edged geometry that you have to move around horizontally to appreciate fully. You wonder perhaps about who might be the little people living under this strange shelter.

The angular hard-edged geometry (hints of John Lethbridge) apparent in Nest or Mother (the best of the paintings: a knockout) continues in the wall paintings that have real presence. As dynamic sprightly abstractions, they suggest mysticism and maybe magical processes, alluding even wider to Greek icons, apiaries and kids’ heroes like Sesame Street’s ‘Big Bird’.

Dwyer has a playfulness that refuses to conform to ‘serious’ adult commonsense. Whilst cultivated, it is also genuinely experimental in her search for new unanticipated but worthy content. She is conspicuously clever in her adventurousness, underpinned by a bubbling curiosity.

Also upstairs, a cluster of golden inflated o-shapes (Little Gold Cloud) can be discovered hovering under the ceiling, as if a gibbering bulbous speech bubble. They vividly contrast with the Empty Sculptures, 4 large transparent plastic phallic ‘rocks’ on the ground, that seem sourced from a distant ‘see-through’ planet.

One large particularly ethereal painting Big Spinny, however is not hard-edged, featuring soft ochre shapes, and bits of hazy gauze peppered with little beads. It seems to be generating turbulent (volcanic?) smoke and exotic fumes. Next to it is Duck Duck Spook. Dwyer’s titles like her imagery, often reference animated cartoons

In the large space, suspended high in the air on four vertical wires, with clunky chains, as if raining down from the ceiling, we find The Fevers, about three dozen glossy multi-coloured, tuber-like ceramics, holding up horizontally-inserted found objects such as little figures. These suspended undulating lumps are a treat; the show’s highlight, being full of small pockets and hollows containing minute versions of the weird and wonderful. On the wall behind them is a contrasting selection of more ceramics, but with flat shapes: Shards.

On one wall there is also an eccentric four x four grid of sixteen colourful nail polish panels presenting a varied range of individual brands. (Look at these names (talk about marketing!): Give Me a Treat; Gentle Green; Classy Pink; Love Yellow; Katie’s Green; Baby Pink; Sultry; What Happens In Vegas; Perfect Red; Noir; Orange; Green Garden; Bluebells; Antique Rose; Rosy Quartz; Party Red). It creates an unorthodox pleasure through its nutty collating, and by presenting so much streaky liquid polish on extended flat square surfaces.

Most of the works here have an impressive vibrating energy that locks you in; keeps you engaged. A couple of works though—such as the coloured quadrilaterals and triangles on one wall, and a pair of canvases—seem in comparison a little flat. However there is a lovely expansiveness and generosity overall about Dwyer’s material-based practice where she seems excited about every single substance she comes across—even things that might be called ‘infantile’—and is compelled to grab you by the lapels to show you their interest (seemingly psychoanalytical) value. We see a wild exuberant enthusiasm for symbolic tactile Freudian forms or substances—placed in a variety of spaces—that (as a possible comment on desire) goes far beyond being flippant or merely infectious.

John Hurrell

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