'Southern Delites’

Press, 1 June 1989, Page 18

'Southern Delites’

“Southern Delites,” work by Judy Darragh at the Jonathan Jensen Gallery until June 3.

In “Southern Delites” Judy Darragh elevates tacky trinketry from lowly discard to a marvellous display of humour and satire. This is comedy in kitsch. Altar pieces, trophies, wreaths and tourist pictures are outrageously contrived with glue gun, Araldite arid electric lighting. Anyone wanting a gift with a difference — for a twenty-first birthday, Mother’s Day, a wedding or a commemorative gesture — need look no further. An engaging “Gold Box,” heavily ornamented with iconography, is ideal to keep Valentine cards, medals or gall stones in. "Mighty Mitre Peak,” painted on a mirror framed with flashing Christmas lights; Mount Cook mounted on pink imitation fur and edged with red roses; golden toy soldiers and guns and the hobbyist’s paua-over-all are just some of the fun.

The plastic torso of “Visible Woman” has the middle cut away to reveal, amidst garlands of roses, an internally lit

cavity complete with S.P.U.C.-style foetus, curled up in a heart-shaped bed. These unborn kewpies add their brand of sentiment to Darragh’s tightly composed constructs. Mutant fish and fecundity are transformed from static statement to a festival of lights in candy pink. But the ultimate in all this decorator/designer’s choice of accessory is the day-glo artificial flower. Hibiscus, orchids, daisies, gladioli, arum lilies and frangipani, not to mention shells, mermaids and greenery, abound. This cute, reverent vulgarity amuses and disturbs. “Nuclear Family" and “Global Wreath" have humanist anti-war overtones while others — “Floral Suite" and “Paua Suite” — are directed at marketplace exploitation, particularly of women.

Darragh’s artefacts are contrived out of an avalanche of retail rubbish. She simulates a pretence of deep feeling by elevating this extruded trivia in tableaux that send up the sham of consumer satisfaction — and laughs as she turns us on — before the great melt-down comes. PAT UNGER