Sculpture as an arrangement

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33665, 15 October 1974, Page 26

Sculpture as an arrangement

The Dunedin-born sculptor, Kevin Burgess, exhibits nine works in an exhibition called “The Evolution of Pleasure” at The Canterbury iSociety of Arts Gallery.

Mr Burgess, who was born in 1951, is a graduate of The University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts, and has previously held one one-man show. He was a finalist in the last Hansells Sculpture Competition. He sees sculpture as a means of communicating ideas rather than as a mar' ketable commodity. His subjects include sections of turf contained within, and sitting on concrete blocks, or wrapped in a long sausage of plastic sheet. In two other works plaster forms are incorporated in arrangements of 4 x 2 timber and pink fibreglass insulation. Old palings strapped together with bands cf calico and suspended by ropes are the ingredients of another work. Two shell-like forms in plaster, stuck to glass and joined by a chain, are called “Mutual Contract.” This type of exhibition is essentially anti-art. We are confronted with subject stripped of all mystery and left with the sheer banality of realism in terms of whatever material the sculptor has chosen to use. The main skill involved is one of arrangement of the various parts, which is mainly a problem of display, an aspect that is well handled by Mr Burgess.

The exhibition will remain open until October 19. —G.T.M.