Every week, we send two writers to an art exhibit in Ōtepoti Dunedin. One of them will choose a specific piece, and describe it to the other without them looking. They’ll try to figure out what the piece actually is before diving into their thoughts on the entire exhibition. You can’t ascribe any one meaning to any one piece of art, so this functions a bit like a game of artistic telephone. Let’s dive in.
This Week: Beyond the Hedge
Esmond: We’re looking at something toxic, something shiny, something massive. It symbolises life and legacy, but with an ironic and dystopian twist. I understood it as a metaphor for the gilded age of greenwashed consumerism, a harbinger of a future in which the only trees that grow are the ones we’ve made in labs, where everything is shiny and clean, but nothing is left standing and green.
Maddie: I’m going to guess that we’re looking at some sort of sculpture, maybe a cast iron leaf? Maybe a painting, perhaps, of a skeletal and desolate tree in a tarnished cityscape?
The answer: We’re looking at Reuben Paterson’s sculpture, The Golden Bearing: a life-sized golden glitter tree. It’s part of Dunedin Public Art Gallery’s Beyond the Hedge exhibition, which we followed all the way down the rabbithole. What else did we find?
A giant pastel acorn, a dazzling gold glitter tree, and a sparrow large enough to peck your face off: three things you wouldn’t normally see anywhere but a dream. This exhibition may seem cute at first glance, like a fairytale. But look closer, and it’s Brothers Grimm-level dark. We’re talking a giant inflatable bunny corpse, courtesy of Michael Parekōwhai’s Jim McMurtry sculpture. If this is Disneyesque at all, it’s Disney in the moment when Bambi’s mum dies and five year olds learn about mortality.
The surreal play of shapes and sizes in the exhibition is a nod to Alice in Wonderland, that iconic story of a young girl’s first trip. It gets curiouser and curiouser with Seung Yul Oh’s Dottori, a large fibreglass acorn in whimsical colours, which offers a vision of a natural world rendered almost unrecognisable by human intervention. Or at least that’s what crippling climate anxiety made us see!
A definite standout from the exhibition would be Reuben Paterson’s sculpture, The Golden Bearing, a life-sized golden glitter tree. Despite its beauty, it is a toxic creation: made from fibreglass-covered polystyrene with a hefty coating of glitter that would make festival girls jealous. It’s ironic that a representation of a plant would be created in such unsustainable materials harkening to an age of ecological disaster, where all experiences of flora and fauna are from fabricated replications of long-extinct species. Cute!
The dystopian allegories continue into the main gallery. Michael Parekōwhai’s Ed Brown depicts a giant sparrow, while Margaret Dawson’s Rook features some sort of bird-hybrid. Perhaps mutant creations, born from nuclear fallout? Erica Van Zon’s Flatto is a ceramic peach that looks like it's in the process of decomposition, especially in comparison with the watercolour illustrations of perfect fruit made by unknown artists. It feels like a display of artefacts from a lost civilization.
Finally, there is JS.02.03 “The Hedge” by Hannah and Aaron Beehre – a digital, sound-activated, interactive installation work, in which noise causes the leaves projected against the wall to fall. The interactivity encourages you to make as much noise as possible, something very foreign to the usual staunch silence of art galleries. This playful work possibly shows us some kind of silver lining; despite the oncoming ecological collapse, we can always upload our consciousness to the simulation, and go outside and touch the digital grass.
Recommended song for your visit: Toxic by Britney Spears
This column is sponsored by DPAG, but they have no influence on the reviews
Seung Yul Oh
Dottori
2014
Fibreglass and two-pot paint
Collection of the Dunedin Public Art Gallery. Given 2015 by the artist.
Hannah and Aaron Beehre
JS.02.03 “The Hedge”
2003
Single-channel digital animation and computer generated immersive projection.
Collection of the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū. Purchased, 2003.
Michael Parekowhai
Jim McMurtry (maquette)
2006
Woven nylon substrate, pigment, electrical components
Collection of the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.
Reuben Paterson
The Golden Bearing
2014
Mixed media
Courtesy of the artist and Gow Langsford Gallery