Surprise and other sensations

By T.J. McNAMARA

One of the ironies about a recent exhibition by the much-acclaimed artist John Reynolds is that it is difficult to remember individual paintings but easy to recall the epigrammatic utterances that were pencilled on the wall of the gallery and on the paintings.

One quotation said, "It is never ideas we should speak of, only sensations and visions - for ideas do not proceed from our entrails; ideas are never truly ours."

The irony was that the exhibition was all idea and had only minimal sensation. It also begged the question: what sort of sensation?

One beguiling sensation is a sense of bright, witty surprise. Now, as Pope pointed out when talking about landscape gardening, surprise only works once. It needs to be reinforced by other sensations which give depth to the work of art, whether it is dragged from our entrails or conceived as a bright idea.

A splendid work by Scott Eady at the little Ivan Anthony Gallery in Karangahape Rd offers many sensations. The first is the ship-in-a-bottle surprise because the work is an agricultural tractor filling a small room and offering a sense of wonder about how it got there. This work offers ordinary realism and is a brilliant sculpture. Then we realise that this is a dinkum 1940s Massey Harris "Pony" farm tractor.

The sculptural qualities stem not only from the weight of the castings of the rear axle and the tractor tyres but also from the brilliance of its finish. It is painted a brilliant Ferrari red with a high degree of polish.

Then there are sculptural tensions provided by its linkages all in bright chrome. The chrome presents not only polish but the idea of value and caring which extends even to the top of the gear shift which glitters like a big silver irregular pearl.

Chrome is also used for the exhaust pipes which are not standard but hurtle backwards from the engine to evoke a racing car and its forward dynamics.

The attention and care lavished on this sculptural piece extends to the prancing pony on the bonnet and the lettering of a pet name like those given to its contemporary Second World War bombers.

In a wry, witty way this is a monument to engines, agriculture, agricultural machinery and a modern era. It is a marvellously detailed monument right down to the chrome crank handle and its destiny should be an art gallery rather than a museum of technology.

The exhibition is completed by two other lively works. One is a boy in a fire-helmet and his mother's shoes who is linked by a red umbilical cord to a dream boat and outboard his mother knitted for him. Maternal attachment and a New Zealand dream; the work is called Boat Buoy.

The other work uses a maternal washing machine and wringer to produce a gay young boxer turning to the tune of the Sugar Plum Fairy.

It is harder to warm to White Absence, the work of Mladen Stilinovic who comes to us from Croatia with substantial credentials. His work is at the Gus Fisher Gallery at the University of Auckland Kenneth Myers Centre in Shortland St.

Perhaps it is wrong to expect warmth; the works are an oblique comment on Yugoslavia. One work, with a room to itself, is pages of a dictionary where every word is defined as pain.

This bleak view of existence extends to the main gallery where every piece is in memorial white. The works in this room are small and oddly arranged, some on the floor, some near the skirting or near the ceiling.

All are isolated in the hospital white of the room. The sensation they provide is a bleak blankness which pervades every aspect of life.

Even a power plug on the wall is echoed by two similarly shaped white plaques. One part of the work is two white shoelaces hanging from a white plastic bracket. Often the white is not completely sterile but smudged and damaged.

The only alternative sensation offered in contrast to the prevailing, shrouding white is the presence of lumps of sugar which offer their sensation of the memory of sweetness. One little piece is simply a bracket with a lump of sugar offered at the end. Complementing the sugar are some spoons with the lip painted white. Does the spoonful of sugar make the medicine go down?

Four lumps of sugar are also placed at the corner of a photograph of the tomb of the Villon-Duchamp family which is on the floor under a fly-screen.

Marcel Duchamp of this family, who exhibited his bright, white urinal with a polished finish like the tractor and his cerebral ideas of art as demonstrations of intellectual positions, is behind both exhibitions.

Some think he has much to answer for.