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21 October - end of Feb
Turn off the Century features sculptural installations by Chris Heaphy, Stuart Shepherd and a collaborative project between Peter Madden and Sam Sampson. The artists have created collage, kinetic and mobile installations that interpret such big mythic themes as the creation theory, the politics of nationhood and the fragility of nature.
Poetry, dioramas, collages and sculptural books intertwine in Peter Madden and Sam Sampson’s ephemeral installation The Deep End. Stuart Shepherd has used props, sets, lighting and recycled materials to create his playful kinetic installation The Hit and Myth of Creation, while Chris Heaphy’s elaborate hanging installation After The Big Bang consists of over three hundred cut-out shapes illuminated and suspended in space.
In The Hit and Myth of Creation, Shepherd has created a culturally hybrid, shrine-like installation of theatrical proportions consisting of mechanical tubes, miniature houses and cars, evoking the domestic folk art of his childhood. The abundance of backyard shrines he observed on a recent trip to India, led him to reflect upon the significance of the home-made Christmas nativity scenes of his childhood in New Zealand. Shepherd observes, ‘I grew up in Morrinsville where there weren’t any museums or art galleries but what I did see were store window displays and the Christmas nativity scene at the local church’. Shepherd collaborated with mechanist Bill Thompson in the creation of an ingenious arrangement of hydraulically operated telescoping tubes. He favours the humorous junk shop aesthetic and deliberately works at the low tech end of multi media art. Shepherd’s down-home kinetic tableau offers a contemporary take on current politics and religion. In his second installation, Young Nick’s Headspace Shepherd has created a group of ‘rocking pictures’, through which he questions the ‘stability’ of history, reinterpreting Cook’s arrival in New Zealand, ‘from a cabin boy’s perspective’.
Poetry, wall collages, intricate three dimensional sculptural books and dioramas wrap around the gallery walls in artist Peter Madden and poet Sam Sampson’s immersive installation The Deep End. Their installation transforms the gallery space into a visual poem that celebrates the interconnections between image and text, extending the relationship in new directions. According to Madden the space can be read, ‘not just as a page but the building itself becomes a poem’. While Sampson’s poetry is spare and evocative, Madden’s collages, sculptural books and wall sculptures teem with a profusion of visual imagery. His invention and skill with collage is extraordinary; he transforms images cut-out from National Geographic magazines and encyclopaedias into diminutive sculptural books and collages using wire and threads. The text of Sampson’s poetry is also derived from the text of National Geographic magazines. While Madden and Sampson leave their work open to the interpretation of the viewer, the images of roses, birds, butterflies, ships and shipwrecks, are unmistakeable symbols of fleeting beauty that suggests the ephemeral nature of life and the fragility of nature.
Chris Heaphy makes use of cut-out shapes in his mobile installation After The Big Bang. The visual impact of his installation is immediate and powerful. Silhouetted black metal shapes are floated in space, suspended from the ceiling by invisible threads, while a central light source casts dramatic, spooky shadows on the walls.
After The Big Bang invokes the scientific proposition that the universe was created within a millisecond. Heaphy says, ‘The universe is expanding. To think that all space, matter and time were created as a bang... The Big Bang. And what happened after The Big Bang? Everything! We are still apart of that event (from 15 billion years ago), it hasn't ended yet’. Despite the celestial references implicit in the title, the work also operates at a very personal level. The imagery represents an inventory of images Heaphy has used in his work over the years: figurative Maori motifs relating to the Ratana Church, Te Kooti, ancient rock drawings and kowhaiwhai patterns are interwoven alongside the card symbols and badges of European colonisation.
Peter Madden and Sam Sampson
The Deep End 2006
mixed media installation
Courtesy of the artists and Michael Lett, Auckland
Peter Madden
In the Search for an Invisible Rose 2004
two found books
Artists’ Book collection, Fine Arts Library Te Herenga Toi, University of Auckland Library Te Tumu Herenga
Madden has created a new and hybrid book of roses filled with holes where he has cut out images and as you flick through them. Peter Madden says: ‘It has poetic ambiguities. Is the book a flower? How does it open? It opens like the wings of a butterfly; it sustains a curious interest’
Peter Madden
Escape Into Order 2005
mixed media
Melanie Roger and Guy Williams collection courtesy of Michael Lett Gallery
The blank pages of an open book lure a cloud of butterflies to it.
Chris Heaphy
After The Big Bang 2005
powder coated Zintec and light source
Collection of the artist courtesy of Michael Lett Gallery and Jonathan Smart Gallery
Stuart Shepherd
The Hit and Myth of Creation 2006
cardboard tubes, clay, acrylic on canvas, electric motors, glitter
Mechanist: Bill Thompson
Collection of the artist
Stuart Shepherd
Bush lied 1000s died 2006
recycled mixed media, electric motors
Mechanist: Bill Thompson
Collection of the artist
Stuart Shepherd
Young Nick’s Headspace 2006
acrylic on canvas, electric motors, plastic
Collection of the artist
The Deep End (Exhibition project commissioned by Te Tuhi, Manukau City)
PETER MADDEN and SAM SAMPSON: Escape into Order
PETER MADDEN and SAM SAMPSON: Wall Sculpture
CHRIS HEAPHY: After the Big Bang
CHRIS HEAPHY: After the Big Bang
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