What: New Perspectives - an annual New Artist Show
Where and when: Artspace, 1/300 Karangahape Rd, to October 21
TJ says: The renaissance of activity and style at Artspace continues with a big and very varied show of work by young artists full of interest but do not expect much painting.
New Perspectives is an exhibition of the work of young artists selected in collaboration with artist Simon Denny. It fills every nook and cranny of Artspace beginning with the entrance stair, where Quishile Charan shows a huge length of fabric looped from the ceiling, dyed with mud and printed with Hindu patterns. The work and the spice spread on the floor underneath refer to indentured labour and Indo-Fijian conflict over identity.
In the gallery itself, much of the work is video and makes a social comment. This genre is mostly accompanied by explanatory written text. Faith Wilson's touching short video is just inside the gallery entrance. A young woman enters a body of water that reaches across to a far shore. She slowly walks in until only her head shows as a spot in the wide expanse of water. Then she turns and after a time emerges on the shore and offers the earphones she had been wearing directly to the viewer. It suggests decision making: whether to reach for a distant goal or return to ordinary life. The dilemma is again reflected in a long letter to Simon Denny about selection and her identity. It frames the screen and reaches to the floor.
In Louise Afoa's video, a Polynesian woman floats in water, this time a swimming pool. She sinks for a time and slowly emerges again. Her sinking and rising to the air is made clearly symbolic by an accompanying pamphlet. The writer was living in her boyfriend's mother's house in an opulent suburb and using the pool while she was overseas. Neighbours, who often swam there became reluctant to do so and telephoned the absent mother to say the pool was dirty. Sinking beneath the water is being involved in a world of prejudice where you might drown but emerging from it is freedom. Video and writing are needed together to make an impact.
The same is true of an unusual work made by a collaboration called Yllwbro. A cross, crowned with a Don Binney-like painting of a bird, is formed by versions of the Maori division of the world into three realms and flanked by a closely printed framed myth about the discovery of fire and of honey. The insects, birds and trees involved in the myth act partly as in Maori lore and partly with European vocabulary such as "King of the Mountains", or references to the riddle posed by Sampson in the Old Testament about honey and a lion. The myth itself is eloquent and complex in contrast to the bold simplicity of its setting.
