Sculptures by Neil Dawson

Press, 10 January 1986, Page 22

Sculptures by Neil Dawson

Sculptures by Neil Dawson at the Robert McDougall Art Gallery until March 8. Reviewed by John Hurrell. In two white bays the McDougall is presenting examples of Neil Dawson’s sculptures. In one is the 1979 “Seascape” installation, and in the other are four wall sculptures, three of which are owned by the gallery and one loaned by the artist. “Seascape” presents six hovering tilted cones made of plastic gauze and wire, representing the sea, and the air and light immediately above it. At the base of each floating cone is a tiny wooden boat, and each of these craft is able to be seen from above or below. Each cone represents an isolated climatic microcosm above each circle of sea. As variations on a theme, these forms explore the interaction of simple masses, reflections, shadows, and to a slight extent, refraction. They play off line, shape, opacity and transparency, and utilise unusual feats of engineering to remain suspended in space. Occasionally they wittily jolt the expectations of the viewer by having inverted boat shapes suspended above water instead of below it, or hulls that are not solid but in fact holes cut in the flat sea of green gauze. These concerns are further elaborated on in the four comparatively recent wall sculptures. They too are cleverly constructed so that the forms appear to float in space with no supports. The stress points bearing each weight are carefully hidden. “Rock Construction 7” is a tray of wire mesh, painted fluorescent blue which looks as if it has been pressed over a boulder. The absent rock has an implied presence and the mesh projects into space like a floating landscape. “Moon Illusion” is made of black corrugated iron that looks as if horizontal waves have been split by the bow of a ship. Above the negative v-shape floats a solid black ball linked by a black wire to a flat mesh circle. This work could refer to the Moon and its tidal pull, and the idea that it may have come out of the Pacific. “Poles Apart” is a work which inspired Linda James’s exhibition of the same name at the James Paul Gallery last year. Using bent wire and mesh, Dawson has constructed a curved wall of bricks and gauze which appears to sink into ripples of water. Above it hovers a solid moon and in the water floats an almost flat, slightly convex reflection.

The fourth sculpture consists of a narrow rock and a cylinder of wire netting above it and slightly to one side.

Both are fastened to the wall. They are painted so

tnai me same colours are applied to matching areas of both rock and netting. These colours exaggerate the mass of rock, yet they also etherealize the form of the wire-netting. One you

look at and the other you look through. This is an excellent display of work by one of New Zealand’s more important artists. As witty threedimensional objects that

specialise in sleight-of-hand engineering and the manipulation of visual cues, these works will reward anyone interested in the nuances of sophisticated contemporary sculpture.