A more fashionable sculptor would have mounted a coil of sprung steel on top of the pedestal but the artist is Bing Dawe at his most impressive and the vital twisting shape poised is an eel carved in rimu and painted with exact naturalism.
The pedestal brings its energetic presence eye to eye with the viewer and the detail of spread fins and tapering tail have a dynamic life that no moulding or casting could convey.
The Christchurch artist has a profound knowledge of natural creatures and this show at Whitespace is both evidence of that and his skill in conveying the character of animals and birds. Also high on a pedestal is Kaki, a black stilt in carved and blackened oak. It has springy, delicate legs but its particular energy comes from the alert turn of the head. Heads of birds are a feature of the exhibition. There is a series of eight on extended necks mounted on a wall in the manner of deer heads. These are carefully fashioned tributes, not specimens. They project almost aggressively out at the viewer.
The way they thrust forward from the wall brings the viewer face to face with the long deadly beak of the heron or the curious flat beak of the spoonbill, the aggressive head of a bittern and the colourful splendour of the black swan. The skill in the making of these works extends to a curious cabinet-like mounting of a fish, the kokopu. Equally well made are two wind vanes. Both are called Watching Out for St Francis (the saint who preached to birds) and combine carved kauri with sheet steel and aluminium. They are too precious to be outdoors and not quite solid enough to be indoors. Yet they and two complex paint and crayon studies of eels and of a stalking black stilt add a special charge to a fascinating and highly individual exhibition.
