Derrick Cherrie: Blind Glass
11 March - 5 April 2008
Starkwhite is pleased to present Blind Glass, an
installation of new sculptural works by Derrick Cherrie.
Cherrie has created a collection of works employing a broad
array of ready-made materials and pre-constructed objects that draw
their form and imagery from the familiar and every-day. Like
partial stage sets, the works present us with traces of scenarios
suggesting narrative. Yet, on closer inspection, these are works
that actively resist narrative validation. This strategy of
interpretative resistance is a feature of Cherrie's practice. His
work has constantly denied straightforward readings, remaining
always on the edge of making sense.
References to the body run through the exhibition - for
instance, in a raw fibreglass tub large enough to hold a person and
an open-framed partially constructed table standing precariously on
thin wooden legs. The works have the potential to be read as bodily
supports (furniture) and body substitutes (physical and psychic).
They open outwardly onto a socially indexed environment and
inwardly through personal reflection.
Despite the apparent potential of subjective relations and what
might be described a sculptural variant of narrative production,
one would be hard put to summarise quite what story has been told.
Cherrie has carefully crafted a leaving-open of the connections
that may be drawn between the various elements. More overtly than
in the previous works we find ourselves as audience enticed into
the artistic production process itself.
The artist says: "The rationale for the work possibly relates to
an interest in exploring what Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe might describe
as 'pre-semantic' poetics which I interpret as an experiencing of
the work prior to the development of more complex discursive
structures. The sculptures occupy what might be described as a zone
existing somewhere between the recognisable and familiar matters of
their everyday qualities, and an almost dreamlike state of
autonomous ideals and semantic absence."
Primed by the juxtapositions of form and object, subjective and
objective referent, we are constantly reminded of how the
conclusions or ideas we generate in response to the works are
socially constructed. However, our engagement with these
constructions remains inexplicably underwritten by sensibilities of
another order.
Derrick Cherrie is an Associate Professor and Head of the Elam
School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland, National
Institute of Creative Arts and Industries. Well known for his
modernist consumer culture-referencing furniture sculptures, he has
a substantial record of exhibitions and representation in thematic
shows including: The Big Sleep, Starkwhite, 2005;
Small World, Big Town: Contemporary Art from Te Papa, City
Gallery, Wellington, 2005; High Chair, St Paul's St,
Auckland University of Technology, 2005; Pressing Flesh: Skin,
Touch, Intimacy, Auckland Art Gallery, 2004; Headlands:
Rethinking New Zealand Art, MCA, Sydney, 1992; and
Supralux Suite, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth,
1992.
Located in New Zealand on Auckland's Karangahape Road,
Starkwhite presents a programme of artists' projects, solo shows,
independently curated exhibitions and occasional forays into new
music and other interdisciplinary practices. Starkwhite also
represents artists from New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific
rim.
For further information on the exhibition, or images, please
contact the gallery.
Starkwhite
510 Karangahape Road, Auckland, New Zealand
Tel. 64 9 3070703
Monday to Friday: 11.00am to 6.00pm
Saturday: 11.00am to 5.00pm
starkwhite@starkwhite.co.nz
www.starkwhite.co.nzs
