Last Curtain Call

The five selected artists use a range of different strategies to remind us of the building's history. Seung Yul Oh presents as sculpture elements that are normally hidden behind gallery walls - vents, insulation cladding, foil tubing and boxes; John Reynolds writes or 'tags' with silver paint the names of various artists and artworks on the walls of the largest room, making the installation a kind of walk-in inventory; Peter Madden makes intricate collages and sculptures using postcards of artworks; Andrew McLeod displays his own art with a selection from the AAG collection; and Lisa Reihana looks at the history of the Auckland isthmus and the land purchases and resales that resulted in the settlement of the city.

The varied range of approaches to the set theme makes an interesting mix. Added to the combination is a sixth element: a programme of sound and performance work curated by freelance curator Andrew Clifford, an art writer for the Herald. His schedule begins with Clinton Watkins' video Cont Ship 1. This work shows the container ship Wallenius Wilhelmsen moving across the screen to a rumbling soundtrack, in front of Motukorea Island. Its orange hull and white horizontal superstructure makes the screen look at times like a minimalist wall relief by Don Driver. Within the stated context, the ship seems to be a trope for the gallery bringing its art to its various publics.

In the first of the five rooms, Seung Yul Oh's installation has some links to his recent Starkwhite show, but his trademark organic forms from fibreglass resin are now absent. Instead the industrial fittings he has discovered for this installation are designed for gallery climate control: ducts, tubes, rolled cones of fabric, polythene pyramids, and crates. They make his show look like one designed by Donald Judd or Robert Morris, with colours added by Anthony Caro. It is a rich array of forms [some motorised to be energised by timers] that highlight just how beautiful these normally hidden elements are.

With his use of one solitary light bulb to light up a very large room John Reynolds' installation looks dramatic, especially when the moving viewer notices the flashes of silver paint reflected on the walls. While the cave-like ambience is refreshing, the drawn names of artworks, artists, dimensions and media don't relate to the room convincingly.The writing seems decorative and shallow without any ideational thread linking the 'tag' aesthetic to the written references. The texts could be about anything, and even as marks they don't hold your eye.

Unlike Reynolds' use of long sweeping lines, Peter Madden's visually dense images focus on the diminutive. You have to get very close to appreciate his fiddled-with postcards of art. Usually two art references are sandwiched together, with one being seen through the emptied contours of another. One of the three Madden works is a wall sculpture of many cut-out collages floating in space, held in place with wires and thread, and supported by a tier of ascending shelves. We seem to be witnessing an explosion of photographed art objects, a plethora of sliced out forms mingling in mid-air to await our attempts to identify them.

In the room used by Andrew McLeod, the wonderful Walters, Schoon, McCahon and Killeen paintings he has selected from the AAG collection to contextualise his own work can be very distracting. So much so that it takes another visit to give McLeod's own very inventive digital prints and drawings their due. They don't need the extra company, but the resulting dozen or so collection works do provide a wonderful bonus.

Lisa Reihana's intimate installation in a small octagonal room, refers to the initial payment to Apihai Te Kawau in its contemplation of the prices paid for early purchases of land in the Auckland isthmus. Her central placement of a barrel covered with tobacco leaves, accompanied by columns of paired white pipes up the walls and four muskets suspended from the ceiling, effectively activates the space, while a video of a camera panning over a city map, using strategically positioned, histrionic music, provides nuanced commentary. Reihana's and Watkins' soundtracks provide aural bookends at the opposite ends of this exhibition.

Also of interest is the presentation by Ron Brownson of material about the artist projects presented in the building over the last thirty-five years. The material is very informative, despite its domination of one Peter Madden work in a nearby corner. Brownson's projected slides, three vitrines of catalogues and various posters on the wall, show how the five exhibiting areas have been used by key artists [some international] since the P. A. Edmiston wing opened in 1971. This is a good way of contextualising the current 54321 line up, and saluting the building's history before its demise. This excellent show is well worth a visit.

Pictures from events associated with this article: