Nau mai, haere mai, welcome to EyeContact. You are invited to respond to reviews and contribute to discussion by registering to participate.

JH

The Body Flows Through Texts and Architecture

AA
View Discussion

On the other side of the gallery, two woven, steel-framed works - mats on table legs - reference coffee tables and knitted rugs as domestic furniture, presenting on their upper planar surface, coloured imagery of bodies in intimate domestic spaces; these are akin to the patterned paintings of Howard Hodgkin and his subtle inclusion of rendered body parts. They feature illustrations of the world ‘out there' beyond the corporeal realm of our data gathering senses.

Auckland

 

Ruth Buchanan
Never Not A Body

 

7 October - 5 November 2016

For this new Ruth Buchanan show the artist presents an array of suspended banners in the small Hopkinson Mossman gallery, and some sculpture, wall drawing and video in the larger space. The former seem to be about books, a codex with three readable pages; the latter about the artist’s body in a room - a contemplation of that phenomenological state.

Accordingly the ‘book’ or ‘document’ discusses the metaphorical content of the ‘building’, expanding the notion of the brain (and mind) dwelling within the body - just as a body inhabits a dwelling or room. Using a playful Steinian text that is incessantly repetitive and circular, it espouses dualism while simultaneously attacking it. After all, a body can leave a room or building, but a brain can’t abandon the body, or a mind the brain.

The design of these pages, printed into wind resistant geo-mesh so they can be presented outdoors, is fascinating. The layout - with its dominant arrows (descending down the margins) and diagrammatic spacing (so characteristic of Buchanan) - seems derived from artists like Shusaku Arakawa / Madeline Gins or Lawrence Weiner - and contemporary L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets like Steve McCaffery and Tina Darragh.  It could be described as earnest with a flippant edge, occasionally lightening up the analysis by incorporating jokey puns as prepositions, like ‘inn’ where letters are repeated.

In the large gallery, three rapidly changing (and migrating) videos combine variations of the body’s age with the limitations of fleeting ocular perception, while a wavy (spray painted) wall drawing references the physics of light and Buchanan‘s often used motif, the curtain or undulating fabric screen that serves as a form of isolating (and containing) parenthesis. It is also schematically like the surface of water, and the flowing unchannelled nature of consciousness and drifting thought.

On the other side of the gallery, two woven, steel-framed works - mats on table legs - reference coffee tables and knitted rugs as domestic furniture, presenting on their upper planar surface, coloured imagery of bodies in intimate domestic spaces. These are akin to the patterned paintings of Howard Hodgkin and his subtle inclusion of rendered body parts, but transmuted through a Rosemary Trockel-type sensibility. They feature illustrations of the world ‘out there’ beyond the corporeal realm of our data gathering senses, a sculptural installation that with its small (literarily elevated) rugs conveys a self reflexive sense of mise-en-abyme.

By this mingling of two discussions (in two adjacent spaces) about perceptual cues and literary tropes, Buchanan creates a fascinating and amusing synthesis for the moving viewer, allowing them to ponder the ramifications of their own bodily participation in a readable (and walk through-able) text.

John Hurrell

Print | Facebook | Twitter | Email

 

Recent Posts by John Hurrell

JH
Jae Hoon Lee, Mother and Child, 2024, inkjet on smooth pearl. 1500 x 1500 mm

Looking Through (or At) Jae Hoon Lee

IVAN ANTHONY GALLERY

Auckland

 

Jae Hoon Lee
Internal Landscape Part II


16 March 2024 -13 April 2024

JH
Outside installation of part of Shiraz Sadikeen's The Natural Rate, at Treadler. Photo: Alex North.

Sadikeen @ Treadler

TREADLER

Auckland


Shiraz Sadikeen
The Natural Rate


8 March 2024 - 23 March 2024

 

JH
Still from Marcus Coates, The Directors: Lucy (2022) Single channel HD video on loop, projection, 21 min, 24 sec--⁠presented at Yellow Brick Road, courtesy of Artangel.

Attempting to Describe the Experience of Psychosis

Te Tuhi /Auckland Arts Festival

5 inner city sites


Marcus Coates
The Directors


24 February - 24 March 2024

JH
Ava Seymour, Manhole, 2023, Maribu solvent screen-printing ink on aluminium, 1120 x 910 mm, unique.

Maternal Appurtenances

COASTAL SIGNS

Auckland

 

Ava Seymour
Heels of Mothers


14 March - 13 April 2024