Culture

The Blue Oyster Art Project Space on Dowling Street - recently re-located, re-furbished and re-directed - is the coolest little gallery I’ve been to in Dunedin. Comfortably minimalistic with its smaller sized rooms, unpolished wooden floors, white walls and warm light, Blue Oyster is the perfect space to exhibit interactive, involved and intimate exhibitions. With new Director Chloe Geoghegan (originally from Christchurch’s highly successful Dog Park Art Project Space), who has a flare for developing project-based exhibitions and events, and publications investigating experimental contemporary art practices, Critic is anticipating an energetic and diverse programme by local and international artists in the coming years. Last night was the opening of Chloe’s first exhibition as Director at Blue Oyster, and I was delighted to be there; with Cat Auburn’s work, plus wine and friends, it was fab.

Cat Auburn is a contemporary New Zealand artist who exhibits extensively around the country. Auburn also works as a sculptor and prop-maker for film and television, and she has recently taken up a position at Weta Workshop. Auburn graduated with a Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art at Elam School of Fine Arts in 2007, and then received a scholarship at the University of Auckland, where she also tutored Critical Art Theory. After graduating, Auburn trained with leading New Zealand sculptor Michael Parekowhai, and has received several awards to date, including the year-long Olivia Spencer Bower residency in Christchurch.

Animals in one form or another have been a recurrent feature of Cat Auburn’s conceptual work. In her first solo exhibition last year, entitled Push Me, Pull Me, at the Bartley + Company Art Space in Wellington, six life-sized sculptures of hunting and hunted animals and a limited edition suite of pewter maquettes, made from concrete, were shown. Similarly, in When Your Neighbour’s Problems Become Your Own, strong skilled carving and fabrication techniques are exploited in the poetically charged sculptural works, suggesting the artist’s interest in the animals’ ability to personify human characteristics and emotions. This body of work is a refined, contrasting version to Push Me, Pull Me, in the sense that the density and overt heaviness of the concrete animal sculptures that were shown in her previous exhibition have seemingly been stripped back to their bare skeletons of tall steel, appearing gangly and limp as they subtly sway in their weightless height.

Auburn expertly renders the animals’ figures, which are elongated, distorted in scale and generally appear to take on a mechanic, skeletal appearance. In doing so, she continues to explore the psychological spaces of freedom and constraint in both the material and the subject of the work. Moreover, Auburn’s investigations into the limits and biases of materials have found several strong directions; most noticeable in her work is her ability to create a distorting sense of illusion. In Auburn’s ability to create the illusion of polystyrene being heavy, and steel being weightless - the artist completely subverts the order and expectations of an object’s composition, expressing Auburn’s apparent interest in qualities of psychological change and transformation.

Also intrigued by found objects in the form of antlers and taxidermy, the polystyrene, wire and tinfoil bow and arrow sculpture - displayed separately in the second room of the gallery - engages the viewer again into the paradoxical illusion of weight and material. This piece fascinated me the most as it was the more conceptually challenging and visually intriguing piece of work; a rare gem.