Art On
The Move
Tony De Latour
Ann Shelton
Paul Johns
Violet Faigan
June 1998 - February 1999
Taking it to the streets!
Working on the theory that if the people dont come to you
- then take it to the people, Art On The Move was a
project which aimed to engage a wider public than art galleries
have traditionally been able to tap into, by bringing the work out
of the gallery and into the public domain. Utilizing the familiar
urban landscape of the citys buses as a ground, this project
placed four artists projects alongside regular commercial
advertising, creating moving billboards which provoked and challenged
viewers.
More kinetic than Len, more subversive than sell out, Art On
The Move slipped into the minds of the people as the buses rumbled
their way around the streets of Christchurch, to an estimated 30,000
people per show. From Ann Sheltons single shaven head mounted
on the back of the bus, stark yet ambiguous, to Paul Johns
sensuous renaissance figure, complete with loin cloth, which reposed
down one wall, the works were demanding in their engagement with
contemporary pop and corporate culture. Butted up side by side with
advertising for soft drinks and burgers, these works refused to
be reduced to just aesthetics, interrogating, and complicating,
the images beside them.
The bad girl of New Zealand photography, Ann Shelton
has shown at Aucklands Artspace, Adelaides Experimental
Art Foundation, and the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Melbourne.
Brought up in Timaru, she is currently based in Auckland, where
she teaches photography at the Manukau Institute of Technology.
Anns project showed the image of a single shaven head, photographed
from behind, creating an image both ambiguous and provocative. Located
in Christchurch, skinhead capital of New Zealand, the image offered
questions of
Paul Johns has had a long and productive artistic career in Christchurch,
where he has consistently produced work which is critical, complex,
and often subversive. Elegant and formal in execution, much of his
work has played with the representation of alternative sexualities,
producing important social commentary in ways which are good humored
and engaging. For Art On The Move Pauls work, a nude figure
on sheeting in a long format, evoked religious and iconigraphic
works from history, including the high, and exceedingly homoerotic,
art of the Renaissance era.
A Christchurch artist now based in Auckland, Violet Faigans
most recent return to the South was in Tomorrow People, at the Physics
Room, as well as a residency at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.
Highly personalized, her often narrative based works take familiar
items (old music, op shop finds) and transform them into beautiful
and compelling installations. Her work for Art On The Move was a
community based project, where the artist used posters and signs
made by local children advertising for their lost pets - PeeWee,
Barney, Max, the handmade ads heartbreaking in their sincerity and
loss. Referencing the lost children campaigns of Americas
milk cartons, this work served both a literal social function, and
pondered bigger questions of community and public concerns.
Well known nationally as a painter of iconic New Zealand imagery,
Tony De Latour is one of Christchurchs most successful contemporary
painters. Playful and assertive, his Art On The Move played
directly with the medium of the project, utilizing the buses movement
around the city to create a humorous and ever changing tableaux.
A giant hand painted garage sale sign pointed from the back of the
bus to whatever the bus stopped beside - a suburban house,
another car, a corporate facade, drawing them all into the works
radar.
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