Sightlines

Hullabaloo Art Space, June 26 - July 15, 2011

Two hundred years ago, wealthy tourists (and all tourists were wealthy then) used their Claude Glasses to compose aesthetically pleasing scenes while on their travels. While Claude Lorraine himself peopled his landscapes – providing the ‘Argument’ of the picture – the fashion for landscape he helped start eventually favoured the Sublime and the Picturesque. Neither needed a protagonist other than the land itself. Awe-inspiring manifestations of the might and wonder of God in the case of the Sublime, and charming vistas that provided a spectacle and record of place for tourists in the case of the Picturesque.

The history and origins of landscape ín art can never be ignored. The weight of convention means landscape paintings now have to work hard to avoid the formulaic. Even at their best they may still be a mask, a seductive curtain behind which the activities of the inhabitants take place.

Three of the works in Sightlines are small, brightly-coloured, jewel-like paintings that have their feet firmly planted in the picturesque. But on closer inspection the chosen vistas are non-places – unremarkable on their own account and of nowhere we can locate exactly. And the painting style has a decidedly kitsch feel to it, with its highly-keyed palette and whiff of a paint-by-numbers style.

Kitch, with its associations to ideas of mass culture, lack of value and nostalgia, combined with discussions about place (and non-place) provide a different lens to view the land in New Zealand. This is a country that is well practised and enthusiastic about exploiting its natural beauty for commercial gains. Our scenery draws tourists in the hundreds of thousands, for it is not longer just the wealthy who travel. Today’s tourists come armed with their own digital Claude glasses, and images of the snow-capped Southern Alps and the golden sands of the Coromandel populate photo albums around the world. My concern is not what the tourists are up to – let them look – but rather how the scenic and the picturesque govern New Zealanders’ own attitudes to the land. There is more to preserving our land than ensuring the tourist vistas remain pristine.

The two larger works in Sightlines pick up the idea of non-places in more detail. We are drawn in to the picture, only to discover there is nothing there to get a fix on – the images are compelling and repelling us at the same time. By focusing on the non-places, those places that are normally overlooked and therefore perceived as valueless, I want to draw attention to what we do with all our land, not just the small pockets of spectacle amongst the paddocks and the tracts of housing. Unsustainable farming practices, endless subdivisions for housing sprawl, and exploitation of resources at any cost could turn New Zealand into nothing but lovely bones.