Cave
A collaborative work with Iain Cheesman for the Auckland Arts Festival.
2013.
Materials: Aluminium, LED Lights.
Dimensions (L x W x H): Variable
‘Cave’ is a collaborative artwork with Iain Cheesman and Chris Hargreaves.
Here in the Remuera shopping car park there is a new addition to the concrete ceiling; its title is simply ‘Cave’. This suggests not just the artwork’s content, but also gives this location a new descriptive identity.
‘Cave’ is a collection of skeletal drawings which are embellished with LED lights not so different from that of a power station control mimic panel; a panel for explanation and illumination to an immediate world outside. This ‘mimic’ becomes a contemporary cave painting that references our progress from ‘the fire’ and its charcoal to the dammed river and its product; the electrically powered light.
This reference to progress also lies within the symbols and texts portrayed in the work. The drawing takes us from the caveman’s hunting rituals of thousands of years ago to the food processing methods like canning or freezing we so readily consume today. We leap from tins of ‘bully beef’, to troops in Gallipoli, to the process of us stepping out of our cars and then taking the short, if not slightly treacherous, march from the car park to the ‘New World’. In preparation you gather your cell phone, your wallet and your shopping list…..
Go the hunt go!
