Artist makes a point

By ADAM GIFFORD

A self-portrait in painted nails. A portrait of Parliament's Speaker Jonathan Hunt made from pebbles. A cat's face rendered in chocolate, each dot painstakingly mixed to the required shade and squeezed warm on to a canvas.

"I'll put this outside when I've finished, let the ants eat it," says Ryuzo Nishida, inside his cubicle in Whitecliffe Art College's Randolph St studios, hidden in an industrial building down a grimy Newton back street.

The chocolate cat is being prepared for an exhibition of edible art he is holding with a fellow student at the school's Ramp Gallery in a few months. It will also feature other chocolate works, such as the cast of his head, and a video of him eating another chocolate self-portrait.

The self-portrait in raised nails - a Japanese saying states the nail that sticks up will be hammered down - and Hunt's portrait are included in this month's exhibition at the Wallace Trust Gallery of 40 of the 138 works selected for the 2004 Adam Portraiture Award.

Nishida won first prize, which included $5000 cash and a $5000 commission to do Hunt's portrait. He met Hunt, took some photographs and went back to the studio for what stretched into a two-month project.

"I went through the traditional drawing process, then thought I should just use the computer," says Nishida.

The photos went into Photoshop, and Nishida blew up the pixels to give himself a map of the shades he would need.

This was not Impressionist pointillism, but digital life in a stone-age setting.

The first choice was jellybeans, but Nishida judged the speaker might be less than happy to be included in his experiments with impermanent art.

"My first attempt failed. I was trying to break rocks into the right shapes. I finally decided to buy some pebbles from the garden shop," he says.

And though it may hurt Mr Speaker's feelings, the subject doesn't really matter. "I just want to explore surface."

While assemblages of dots which read as faces seem to echo works by American painter Chuck Close, Nishida's starting point was British artist Marcus Harvey.

"I saw his portrait of Myra Hindley made with children's hand prints, and I thought that was a cool way to create an image."

Nishida is keen not to be seen merely as the guy who makes dotty portraits. He also does sculptures, videos and sessions as DJ Dor@emon, spinning hip-hop discs.

"That is named after a Japanese cartoon character who comes back from the 25th century. Whenever he gets into trouble, he reaches into the pouch on his waist and pulls out some new 25th-century tool to deal with it," Nishida says.

The influence of Japanese popular culture is also evident in the videos, particularly the chocolate eating one, in which Nishida, dressed in tuxedo, attacks the head in bursts like a competitor in a game show.

Between courses he is ministered to by a pair of hostesses, dressed variously like Playboy bunnies, nurses and dominatrixes.

It is silly, fun, non-PC and, since it doesn't fit any other category, it must be art.

His extreme performance piece, "I [heart symbol] myself more than you do", is sort of Puppetry of the Penis meets Ren and Stimpy.

In it, to a soundtrack of Japanese hip-hop, Nishida stands in front of the camera so only his boxer shorts are visible.

The centre front of the shorts is pixilated, following the conventions of Japanese porn, and Nishida appears to start a session of self-manipulation.

Aids are brought in, including needles, a hammer, mousetraps, jumper leads, razors and an electric drill until the shorts are dripping blood. Or tomato sauce.

Was that shown at Parliament too? "Mr Hunt stopped it."

Nishida was born in Saga, a country town in the south of Japan, 28 years ago. His father is an archaeologist, his mother a chemist.

"I was supposed to study science or engineering, but I didn't like computers and calculators," he says. Instead, he went to China to study but, after learning the language, decided not to seek entry into a Chinese university.

He came to New Zealand seven years ago, drawn by reports in Japan of the opening of Te Papa, a new example of art multiculturalism. After learning English, he signed on for Whitecliffe's four-year degree, after which he hopes to do a Masters at Elam.

He sees New Zealand as his future base. "If I was working in Japan, educated in Japan, I would be doing different types of work. The system is different there."

The Adam Portraiture Award is still in its early stages and has yet to achieve the influence of Australia's Archibald Prize.

This year's competition attracted 200 entries from around the country.

Judge Marc Patcher, director of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC, chose Nishida's work because, "I wanted to choose something typical of 21st-century New Zealand".

Other portrait subjects in the Wallace Trust selection include film-maker Peter Jackson, Invercargill mayor Tim Shadbolt and actor Ian Mune.

Exhibition

* Who: Ryuzo Nishida & the Adam Portraiture Exhibition

* Where and when: Wallace Trust Gallery, 305 Queen St, to August 21