A dog's life on canvas

By LINDA HERRICK

The saying goes that dog-owners end up looking like their pets. Artist Lydia Elliott believes the opposite can be true. Take her beloved young English bulldog, Beautiful Miss Jeep, best known as Jeep and, although female, never to be crudely referred to as a bitch.

Jeep wears jewellery, usually a string of pearls. Her strongly jawed face has a tint of palest pink, as if dusted with blusher. She watches Elliott devotedly, following her wherever she goes. And as the lives of the pair, who have been together for two years, are so entwined it seems inevitable that Jeep should become the subject of Elliott's first solo show.

At last night's opening function at Vavasour Godkin, owner and dog both wore the same style of pink silk jacket but Jeep was definitely the centre of much gooey attention. But what is The Dog in Your Head?

According to Elliott's vision, it comprises multiple images of her in costume, ranging from tiny lapel buttons to cards, tapestries and huge digital portraits of her posing in costume.

The centrepiece of the rather yap-yap party was a pink velvet armchair on a fluffy pink rug on which specially invited guests - dogs and their owners - posed in one of three Jeep costumes to have their photo taken: one copy to take home, one to pin to the wall.

All eyes were on Jeep, her owner's aim all along. "This is my first solo show and I am a bit nervous," explains Elliott. "So I arranged the opening night so I could bring my security blanket with me and she can be the centre of attention."

Jeep's costumes are carefully thought out and designed. One is a deep-pink version of a cheongsam, another is made from a Union Jack and the third is a pale-pink bomber with a patch on the back.

Elliott, who has had two of the same jackets made for herself, laughs, "Who's imitating who here?"

The patch, while gangland-style, is hardly intimidating. It's an embroidered portrait of, you guessed it, Jeep.

"In the photo where she is wearing the Union Jack she looks quite staunch. There is a lot of symbolism associated with the English bulldog, of Britain, and New Zealand's largest gang, the Mongrel Mob, and a lot of sports teams as well. I sort of thought it was weird the Mongrel Mob chose the bulldog when it's a pedigree dog and British."

The show's title, The Dog in Your Head, came about after Elliott's conversations with a psychiatrist friend, Bob Hamilton, about the difference between human efforts to rationalise and mask emotions, and animals', which have no ability - or need - to filter primary feelings.

Thus so-called primitive emotions such as fear, sadness, happiness and curiosity are transparent in a dog's face. Literally, what you see is what you get.

"The dog in your head is your own emotions separated from rational thought," explains Elliott. "That is what we are born with before we learn to process emotion."

Elliott, 31, graduated from Elam School of Fine Arts at Auckland University in 1994, where she majored in sculpture in the department run by Greer Twiss. But she would not describe herself as a sculptor - "before my muse [Jeep] came along I was doing quite a bit of work with light boxes".

She has exhibited steadily in group shows at Artspace, the 23A Gallery, the Archill Gallery and Vavasour Godkin, and has work held in the Chartwell Collection.

Unusually, when she finished at Elam she had no desire to work full-time as an artist. "I wanted to get a real job and get some life experience so I worked at an advertising agency for a long time."

She now works part-time as a technician at the Manukau Institute of Technology and full-time as devoted caregiver to Jeep who has become a well-known figure in the High St area.

It's a relief to get the show off the ground at last. She had planned to stage it a year ago then postponed it because she didn't have the confidence to go through with the concept. "When I took the photos it was like that saying, 'Never work with animals'. I wasn't sure how it was going to go but somehow we got the shots done."

Watching Jeep strut her stuff at the gallery in front of the opening's admiring audience, one can't help thinking of another emotion inside this dog's - and owner's - head. Pride.

* Beautiful Miss Jeep will be present at the gallery on Fridays and Saturdays, when canine guests are invited along to have their pictures taken as part of the show's evolving installation.

Exhibition

* What: Love the Dog in Your Head, by Lydia Elliott

* Where and when: Vavasour Godkin Gallery, 2nd floor, 35 High St; today until December 19