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DAVID ECCLETON

It is a struggle to get the measure of the CentralBusiness District in Christchurch, with its wildernessgaps and its epic rebuild in progress. The centreremains partly adrift and derelict, blowing in thewind, and partly well-anchored, either sound or onthe mend. One such anchoring hub is the ChristchurchPolytechnic Carnpus. Just across from it is located theChristchurch Art Gallery's satellite venue, Artbox. Istrolled there from the shutter:ed-up CAG mothershipbuilding (closed till late 2015), absorbing along theway the CBD's multitude of defiantly colourful walImurals, wry rooftop sculptures, and necessarily pushynew streetscape artworks (notably Flag Wall, by SaraHughes in Cathedral Square: a flapping multicolouredmyriad of what looked like cheerfully affirmative teatowels, hoisted high).

Sandwiched between a hurricane fence hirecompany, traffic cones and road barriers, andprefab offices under construction, and facing ablock of buildings for which the term'munted'might have been specifically coined-gutted shopinteriors, collapsed and twisted frontages, charred

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The Bio-Engineering UnitBurster, Flipper.. . at Christchurch's Artbox

and blackened roofi ng timbers-Artbox necessarilytouches the earth lightly. It is an ad-hoc cluster of airy,partly-translucent shipping-container-sized boxes,neatly perched on a gravel and concrete apron, andidentified by loud CAG signage and photo blow-upsof the art inside.

This art inside Artbox is eye candy, having itsown off-street party in a tightly-focused exhibitioncurated by Justin Paton and Felicity Milburn andtttled Burster, Flipper, Wobbler, Dripper, Spinner, Stscker,Shaker, Malcer: polychromatic pop, showcasing a

singJe work, or work series, by 11 Australasian ar:tists.There is a joyous buoyancy to this show, or perhapsa deliberate levity. Its layout can put you off-balance,not surprising considering how much it crams intoa space not much bigger than John Key's walk-inwardrobe.

,[udy Darragh greets you at the door in the formof her sculpture Swqrm l1 (2074), a great escape ofwine bottle corks that bobbles up a wall and acrossthe ceiling, en masse. Each cork, jabbed in with wirelike a dart, has been daubed with trickles and smearsof fluoro paint, and thus given zing the corks looka bit like trendy cosmetic containers for lipstick oreyeshadow. Photographs in publicity handouts revealschool children being introduced to this erample ofthe Darragh school of bricolage, and certainly theireyes are glued to these merry capsules-to the hive-

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(opposite) JUDY DARRAGH Swarm ll-detail2)7[Corks, paint & wire, dimensions variable

(right) LIONEL BAWDEN Something that resonates-detail 2074Coloured Staedtler pencils, epoxy, acrylic lacquer

(below) Burster, Flipper, Wobbler, Dripper, Spinner, Stsclcer, Shaker,

Maker at Artbox, Christchurch showing, from left, Helen Calder'sYellow, blue, red and blnck (2013),Iohn Hurrell's Things (a Baker's

Dozen): Fiue whatsits, two thinguntmies, two doodahs and four thingies(2013) & Miranda Parkes' Spinner (2077)

like entropic vortex of them. Things fly apart; thecentre cannot hold.

If popped corks get the party started, encouraglngyou to forget for a while the bhZ,kri"g on the otherside of the stree! Flelen Calder's installation of droopymembranes-made out of congealed enamel paint-with their attendant black rubber cords loopinglistlessly, do rather bring to mind a room interiorfestooned with shaken-loose cables and wiring. Andthough her architectural affangement owes somethingto De Stijl, that art movement's optimism is barelypresent (mainly found in her primary colour choices);instead'paintings' detached from their'frames'are succumbing to gravity, so as to make paintingreductive, industnal, and by extension an analoguefor other processes of skin shedd ttagr such as flayedhides in an abattorc, or last season's coats in a fashionboutique.

Plasticky, sticky-looking skins, suspended uneasrly,dungeon-like amid bindings of black rubber, has a

certain Grand Guignol quality, a smack of fetish andcamp . Things. . . (2013), a combine sculpture by JohnFlurrell-made out of what looks like bushels ofcolourful plastic zip-tres-also evokes rituals and neo-primitive fetishism, though Flurrell's proto basket-weaving-the strands of ratcheted plastic are wovenonto a set of 13 translucent plastic peg baskets- isemphatically comical. Garlanded with pliable thicketsof plastic, the baskets suggest, by turns: nests inside

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nests where things are growing and mutatingiFlalloween fright wigs; the heads of straggly-hairedhippies; a shooting gallery in some city wheredinosaur punks with iridescent mohawks still roamthe earth.

Hurrell's immediate progenitor is the combine-master of the satirical totem, Don Driver. Yet Hurrellhas struck off in his own direction, a wrzard ofsympathetic magic, bindin1, connecting, intertwininginto energetic scribble shapes the nylon ties producedby extrusion mouldi.g. Like Calder and others inthis show, Flurrell sings of the appetites, flavours andessentialism suggested by prre colour-syntheticallycreate dby mass industrialisation. Like Darragh, heis a hunter-gatherer, gatheri^g in this instance likea beachcomber: he began by picking up cable tiesdropped by electricity company workers under powerpoles-beneath the pavement, the beach, runs theanarchist slogan. With his gestures as a recycler andremaker, he is pointing to the over-abundance of such

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long-life materials , to the ocean of cast-off plasticwreathi.g the globe.

So if Flurrell's 'heads' suggest portraits, or perhapsgeneric masks, they also evoke the demonic: theyare plausible personifications of the mass-industrialmonstering of the environment. Adding strand tostrand, he generates deadly fumbleweeds, snaredclumps of what might be discarded or abandoned. Agreat wave of strips of nylon combines to become theface of a boiled-dry eco-warrior. It is as if the 1960s

promise that was plastic has finally proved toxic-stifling the globe's green lungs.

Industrial multiples become an organic singul arttyin Lionel Bawden's 2074 sculpture Something thatresonates as weII, only he works not with a mass ofplastic but with a mass of coloured pencils. Chasingthe scent of freshly-sharpened pencils seems to gethim high. The great tree stump he has formed fromhundreds of pencils glued together and carved intoa gestalt is a magnificent object. It seems not quiteof this planet: it is a lobe, ot some speckled, scaledcreature invoking a time warp continuum, as inscience fiction; or else it is a space rock fallen to earth.Bawdery an Australiaru might be a geologist returnedfrom Australia's Red Fleart. That cluster of sharpenedpencil endpoints brilliantly red inside his smoothlycontoured object is reminiscent of a split-opengeode-ruby crystals at the centre.

Massive, seamed, densely-patterned, with a

poke-in-the-eye gleam to it, Bawden's stump isLnpt"dictable, cipable of growing tentacles. LikeBawdery the other two Australians in this show,

Iohn Nicholson and Rebecca Baumann, havesculptures here that bring to mind exotic landscapes,metaphorically at least. Nicholson works, on aminiature scale, with plastic laminates-and allthe colours of the rainbow. His Firewall (2072) is aprismatic curling wave, or twister, all. suspendedmovement. The individual discs, strata seamlesslyglued into a bounding, tumblitg curve, also suggest astack of lucky gambli.g chips-shake, rattle and ro11.

Nicholsory thery is both spectral traveller, and ludicinvestigator: his plasticity conjures a polymorphicsubstance unfurlirg both as cosmic bow-wave and

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cosmic game-as tiddly-winks, plinking across thespectrum in comic self-deflation.

Rebecca Baumann's wall-work is more obviouslykinetic, with 44 fltp-clocks, battery-operated , fTrpPingover smaII, laser-cut sheets of paper in differentcolours so that they flutter like leaves , ot the wings ofinsects. Her colours evoke a hot climate, or possibly u

hothouse. And the many small blank pages, turningit seems randomly, also served to put me in mind of arack of notebooks fluttering in a wasteland. This mightbe a poem of display, a poem without words, rhymingerratically its stanzas of colour.

The automatic shuffling of colours, the flick-overof pages, also echoes the pre-digital arrivals anddepartures noticeboards in airports. Baumann, welearn from the Gallery's hand-out magazirte, grewup in that long-distance city, Perth WA. The leavessnap into focus as analogues for the tremulousnessprovoked by arrivals or departures: they are cuecards to time passing, and to that dreamtime thetraveller knows. Baumann's touch is ligh! one mightsay floaty-slightly mirage-like. Her grasp of time,deliberately random, seems to offer a quest for elusivecausality: butterfly wings not in a lepidopterist'sdisplay cases but fluttery in a primal jungle, presaginga storm.

There is a sense of emotional transference alsooperati^g rn Spinner by Miranda Parkes, constructedfrom paint'spills' to which concentric paint stripeshave been added. On one level an exercise informalism, on another it is a landscape paintin1,delivering'a shaky isle'. There are suggestions ofliquefaction in the way underlying layers have beenallowed to pool and harderu while the central green'spiIl' might be Te Wai Pounamu, 'the Mainlar.d',

(above left) TONY BOND Swoop 2013Ceramic, dimensions variable

(above right) REBECCA BAUMANN Automated Colour Eield(Variation 4) 201.4

44 flip-clocks, laser-cut paper & battertes, 1.420 x 1430 x 90 mm.(Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu)

(opposite) JOHN NICHOLSON Fireutall 2012Plastic, 205 x 275 x L3 Smm.(Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu)

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subjected to some tectonic plate spinner, subject toconvulsions represented as seismic waves or ripples.And these might be psychic waves, waves of dread,alarm, anxiety channelled into the picture plane: thepicture plane has a pulse-and a racing heartbeat.Known for her scrunched canvases that render aparadisal Christchurch of roller-striped cricket pitches,of striped marquee aurnings, of lyric celebration,Parkes here holds hands with the 1990s painters of'the Dark Plain': uncanny Christchurch.

The video works of Mark Braunias, screenedon various iPads affixed to the walls of Artbox andcreated in collaboration with film-maker Jill Kennedyand soundscape artist John Payne, explore movementtoo, but with different intentions. Braunias'topicalconcern can be summed up as bioengineering makingmanifest a conunon thread in BIrIAIDSSSM: its devotionto the biomorphic. Deliberately nerdy, his Klee-likeanimated drawings possess a certain controlledhysteria, suggesting'mad scientists' at work, possiblyon bioterrorism projects.

Antic, contrapuntal, schematic, set to a noisetrackof hums, whirrs and clanks, the looped shortcartoonesque sequences deliver obscure'experiments'suggestive of cloning, of incubation, of messing aboutwith test tubes. As various instruments extract orintroduce pictographic elements, the behaviour ofcurious shapes gets turned into a kind of fuee jazz.

Tony Bond, too, tends to the pre-apocalyptic, withan extensive set of small ceramic creatures whichreveal that the biomorph has lain down with themechanomorph. Moulding them from clay in manycombinations and permutations, Bond gives hishybrids a zany energy. They cluster high on the wallsof Artbor; but on tilted or canted little shelves, fromwhich they threaten to slide and topple. Only theynever quite do so; instead, clinging on, they seem topeer and eavesdrop like surveillance devices. Blobbyand polymorphous, they have slits and appendageswhich manage to suggest at one and the same timemammalian genitali4 and microphones and cameras,as well as smoke-sniffer detection alarms andbreathalyser kits. Yet with their lacquered gloss andcandy colours they also look like marshmallows, half-edible.

These are altogether weird little entities: cheeky-looking, half-hiding, perverse imps. They are, therlat once compliant, seductive, tyrannical: analoguessurely for where we are now, with our hi-tech gadgetsthat do our thinking and communication for usand that are enhanced through media promotionas consumer must-haves: our latest cute-lookinghelpers-. half sentient being and half microchip. Bondhas cleverly trapped a moment in high capitalism: itspoverty of abundance-machines we do not reallyneed, that serve to infantilise us. Those slits andappendages indicate their semi-erotic, obsessive-compulsive fascination for us.

If Tony Bond peers into what the immediatefuture holds, Steve Carr indicates how we aregetting there, how permission is granted by smooth,immaculate demonstrations of product-testing that

also glamourise and make desirable. Call it capitalisthyper-realism: the use of high-definition videos,cinematic techniques and emotional manipulationwhich mark out winning corporate strategies in ahighly competitive marketplace.

Carr's Screen Shots (2077), u video work on ninescreens (nine modular variations) is, in a wdy, theend-point of the exhibitiory laying out its themesof materiality, of illusionism, of communicatiory ofcommodification. As if operatirg on the other side ofa sheet of protective Perspex, Carr in his persona as'a product demonstrator' takes us to the core of art-making, while also holding us at a distance, as if tosay don't try this at home. A scrupulous perversitygoverns his aesthetic-the crisp white shirf the softlighting-even as he serves up what looks at firstglance like a Fonterra product: milk, yoghurt, icecream, being explosively subjected to 'testtng'-aproduct gettirg messy.

You could dwell on the elaborate formalismof the exercise and its making, which involved aproduction crew of ten. There is much to admire in themesmerising simplictty, the implicit absurdist humourof the minuscule pause, the hesitatiory before thegrand gesture which creates the centre of the 'event'.But beyond the hyper-deluxe look, the pastiche of'production values' and the artist's minimalist homageto movie magic, the nitty-gritty is the goo extracted byjammi.g pins into a swollen rubber balloon over andover and the emergence of a latex-based milky acrylic,chosen from the Karen Walker Resene Paints colourchart.

It is a video work both sensual and philosophical,where the flavour, or'palate' is made to collapse intoart, or 'palette'. Using Fligh Definition video, the arthistorical material-paint-is given body as FrancisBacon gave paint 'body', that is as a metamorphicplastic substance where chance establishes form butthen the form generates metaphor. Car{s shape-shifting material is an ecstatic explosion of primalfluid subject to the surgical precGior't of the digitalmedium. Normally elusive in motiory caughtslowed-down it ticks all the art-boxes: it bursts, flips,wobbles, drips, spins, stacks, shakes and makes. Carrencourages all sorts of associations around corporateindustrial production to begin crowding in. Pop -up?Start-up? Re-build? This artist has it covered.

PHOTOGRAPHS: JOHN COLLIE

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