'Less ordinary' opening this week

'Less ordinary' opening this week @ Michael Hirschfeld Gallery

'Less ordinary'
Five Wellington artists
The Michael Hirschfeld Gallery
9 November - 9 December 2001

If you thought soap and toilet tissue belong in the bathroom, think again. Wellington artists have transformed these and other everyday items into objects that are now dramatically 'less ordinary', in a new exhibition opening this week.

The five Wellington artists have a range of interests and practices, but they all share an interest in the complex relationship between art and everyday life, and the imaginative possibilities that can arise at the blurred boundaries between these two 'worlds'.

Jack Barber has created tiny carved baths and boats from household soap, evoking the comfort and security of daily routines, and also the 'dreamings' of journeys and far away places that can be indulged in during a long soak. Gabby O'Connor has made a fuchsia window blind from dyed and lacquered toilet paper. Set up against a large window in the Gallery, this rich 'colour field' marks the passage of time outside, through the changing light from sunrise to sunset.

Marcus Moore's kinetic sculpture and 'recording device', Extrasensory Equipment Type 30T5, could be a gadget straight out of a science fiction movie. But the sounds that it records are quite useless, as if its only purpose is to add to the mass of indecipherable information that already surrounds us.

Ella Reed's work, a two thousand piece jigsaw puzzle called 'Alabama Splendor', re-contextualises an object from her everyday life (it is displayed here on the table on which she completed it). And across seven television screens, the deflating balloon in Grant Corbishley's fragmented video installation makes visible the breath's journey through space, and specifically the space in-between. There is tension between the momentary and the continuous underlying this work, as in others in Less Ordinary.

Less Ordinary is presented within the 360 programme - a full perspective on Wellington Art - which is generously sponsored by Designworks. Generously supported by Montana Wines Ltd and Ruth Pretty Catering. City Gallery Wellington is managed by the Wellington Museums Trust with major funding support from the Wellington City Council. ENDS

ENDS

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