Crucifixion lingers at C.S.A.

Press, 8 March 1978, Page 7

Crucifixion lingers at C.S.A.

"Platforms." An Exhibition of 15 dimensional structures by New Zealand artists — C.S.A. Gallery until March 18. Reviewer: Michael Thomas. Slowly he peels the glue from his stretched flesh. His crinkled belly glistens with its new skin. At last it comes away. He removes his mask, gasps tries to unravel the sticky film of latex. He throws down his mask and walks out. Andrew Drummond has completed his “Crucifi* xton" piece in the "Platforms” exhibition of sculpture at the C.S.A. For 35 minutes he has been lying naked on a cross while a new skin was caste over his body. People watched as the sculptor — splayed out on a platform raised slightly from the floor — had electrodes attached to his ribs and liquid glue wiped over his torso. While the latex was forming on his skin under the heat of two spottigirs, the throb of the artist’s heartbeat was heard and the pulsations were monitored on a TV screen. Polaroid photos and a videotape recording were made of the event, and these, together with the latex skin now stretched on the cross, remain on display as a record of the performance. This powerfyl work is

just one of the exhibits in an exciting and varied show by 15 contemporary New Zealand sculptors, in which each artist was asked to make the 9sq. ft platform — either a square, an oblong, or in the shape of a cross — an integral part of their work. This gave a starting point for the artists and provides a common element from which the viewer can compare the different “dimensions” which each sculptor explores. In another live piece, “Survigval,” performed before an audience of over 100, Nicholas Spill squeezed fresh lemons into a can and fed the liquid to two willing "prisoners” who were strapped by the ankles to his long platform. Each participant wore a T-shirt, one bearing the words “Art in the Hands of Capitalism,” and the other “Capitalism in the Hands of Art.” The whole event had a symbolic and political slant, but unlike Andrew Drummond's performance, it remains in the memory as a cluster of many bits, rather than a simple statement. The success of both these “live” works lay in the novelty of performance as an art form, rather than in their excellence as works of art. Both could have been less complicated, and neither is

as thoroughly thought out and resolved as Neil Dawson’s gravity defying, lilted cross. Hanging from poles, or appearing to this structure gives the feeling of being suspended at an angle to the floor, making the floor appear to drop. The ■ work is in fact in perfect balance —- a leaning “chimney” of bricks counterblanacing six poles set at the ends of the c r o s s-shaped platform. Plumb-bobs are used with their points following an angular rather than vertical line. The whole effect is one of surprise. The construction succeeds because the “tilt” theme, and the angular character of the work, is felt throughout every element. Finding the platforms in each exhibit is not always easy. Graham Snowden 'uses only pencil lines, rather than an actual timber platform, to relate the proportions of the wood used in the platforms to the tiles of the gallery floor. In Graeme Brett’s the platform becomes boxing for a concrete “Foundation” consisting of four sides to be built during the exhibition. Murray Horne builds a huge stack of timber about 20ft high, twisting as it rises with the platform placed on top, and Don Peebles — the only painter in the show —

hangs the platform on the wail, saying that this is the correct place for sculpture. A. clever balance of forces is produced by Paul Cullen, whose very open linear formation contrasts with the exhibits by Pauline Rhodes, Marte Szirmay, and William Collison, which fail to become any more than objects m space. Bring Dawe’s modest carving is well executed and refreshingly free from current arts fashions. The timber platform is made to curl like paper in one corner, or appear as soft as plastincine where a firnger seems to have been pushed across its turface. Rhythmic landscape forms, in highly polished maganese bronze and tinted perspex, are shown by Rosemary Johnson, and on the cross-shaped platforrh by Greer Twiss two bronze rope ends, definitely cut ,relate to frayed ropes on the walls, implying a link but defying locial explanation. The whole exhibition lacks a certain visual flamboyance —it w ill appeal to the mind rather than the eye — but the platforms provide a common basis on which each sculptor “makes a stand” and through which the public can appreciate the rich diversity on contemporary New Zealand sculpture.