New York tribalism thrives at art show

Anthony Goicolea's figures in 'Window Washers' are multiple self-portraits.

The large format photographic environments created by New York-based artist Anthony Goicolea are fantasy worlds of pre-adolescents. Scheming gangs of unsupervised boys populate his enormous images, roaming wild and causing mischief.

Two of his Mixed-Up Childhood works, Warriors and Window Washers, are from his Detention series and were exhibited at Artspace three years ago while Goicolea had a residency at Unitec.

Like his earlier works, the figures are multiple self-portraits of the artist, exploiting his own boyish looks to digitally create unnerving studies of youthful tribalism and play.

Acknowledging the influence of Lord of the Flies, Goicolea says he is interested in the innate ability of children to rebel but still create equally rigid systems. These pictures appear to be of schoolchildren in an institutional environment, but it is equally an institution of their own making, complete with hierarchies and peer relationships. Self-image is imperative; not conforming has consequences.

Whether this is Goicolea playing out adolescent fantasies and ideas or depicting the play-acting that is an integral part of approaching adulthood is ambiguous. By placing himself in the picture, he is both voyeur and performer. It is also unclear whether the boys, who are all engaged in tasks, are at work or play; whether the window washers are licking windows as a banal after-school punishment, a peer-imposed torture or as some strange, possibly fetishistic, game.

Goicolea has visited New Zealand on several occasions, also exhibiting work at Gow Langsford Gallery and creating new material, including his third contribution to Mixed-Up Childhood, Tree Dwellers, which is based on photos taken in the Auckland Domain.

Unlike his earlier works, the Kidnap series (2004), which Tree Dwellers comes from, focuses less on the figures and more on the environments they inhabit. Their identity becomes less important, he says, what is illustrated is the way they become absorbed into the landscape.

Rather than using multiple images of himself, Goicolea is now working with other people. No longer set in the repressive context of institutional routine, his characters achieve anonymity by concealing themselves in masks, balaclavas and matching hooded tops. It remains unclear whether these are perpetrators or victims, bandits or abductees, or just participants in an elaborate game.

What is highlighted is their make-shift means of survival in desolate forest settings. Using PhotoShop, he has composited different landscapes, carefully placing treehuts in one of Auckland Domain's giant fig trees and removing the statue and road that should be in the background, leaving the inhabitants in their own world.

These scenes still depict the awkward in-between-ness of adolescence and the complex social codes of pre-adulthood.

Exhibition

*What: Anthony Goicolea in Mixed-Up Childhood
*Where and When: New Gallery, to May 29