Not us, or them, but the current show Under Construction at the New Dowse in Wellington presenting five artists responding to 'space, location and environment' is intriguing, and has gathered some fantastic talent.

Under Construction opened last month, and runs until September 26, so be sure to make a visit while these site-specific works are 'in-situ'.

And if you pencil it in after July 31, bring the children, who will go nuts for Fuzz, Felt and Fur, a new exhibition at the New Dowse "celebrating the magical touch of textiles."


The five artists represented in Under Construction are Joanna Langford, Karin van Roosmalen, Douglas Bagnall, A.D. Schierning, and Fiona Connor.  Two works that are real stand-outs for me personally are Joanna Langford's The Howling Country, and Fiona Connor's Stairs In A Series.  Although I'm not discounting the others, I have been intrigued by the work of these two for a while, and can see that these two pieces are rich developments of both of their works.

Wellingtonian's may remember Joanna Langfords piece The Beautiful and the Damned at the Hirschfeld Gallery last year, which was elaborated wonderfully with an architectural interpretation from Architect Sam Kebbell (read that piece here).

The Howling Country is exciting in the body of work of Langford, because it offers a new topography, discovered after a seriously ambitious journey through the skies (see down from the nightlands, 2007 installed at the Sarjeant Gallery, Whanganui), and even breached the clouds (see Beyond Nowhere, 2006) at the Christchurch Art Gallery.  But rather than discovering terra nova, or even terra firma, Langford's delicate, "raw and shonky" construction is more likely a rare glimpse at terra incognita.

Looming over the viewer, the engineered structural (in)stability of the work empties the landform of any earthly grounding, and literally forces the 'worm's-eye-view'.  So where to from there?  

The title offers an emotional cue, and perhaps is a climatic reference to its notoriously gusty host-city, not to mention that this landform might be an entity of itself, with its rippling tentacles wavering about - an aquatic analogy suggested by Mark Amery seems completely apt.

Read more on Joanna Langford here.


Joanna Langford
The Howling Country 2010
Courtesy the artist and Mary Newton Gallery
Image shot by Jeff McEwan.



The second work that draws me in is Fiona Connor's Stairs In A Series, which evolves from the middle of the floor, rising heavily but as precariously as Langford's to be truncated only by the ceiling, it seems.

Connor continues a line of work dealing overtly with mimicry and (dis)placement.  You might recall her beautiful work in Auckland's Michael Lett Gallery last year, Something Transparent (Please go around the Back) which is not surprisingly a finalist in this year's Walter's Prize.  

By carefully manipulating the immediate environments of wherever her work manifests, Connor is able to foreground the ordinary, and politicize the mundane architectural material around us.  This unsettling work continues in a similar line of enquiry, shaken (or broken) from its original placement –a post-earthquake aesthetic that should strike a chord with Wellingtonians– the stair fragments climb powerlessly to the ceiling, but can't seem to hold on to each other, crumbling about the floor in quite beautiful pieces.



Fiona Connor
Stairs in a Series,  2008
Courtesy the artist
Image by Jeff McEwan.
 


Fiona Connor
Something Transparent (please go round the back), 2009, installation views. Courtesy of the artist and Michael Lett. Photo Kallan MacLeod


My gratitude to Jeff McEwan, who shot the New Dowse images.