Article

By Agnes So | 14 September 2009

Auckland University of Technology's annual Pilot Programme asks of its third year students the task of putting together a group exhibition in a predetermined gallery space. First there's the politics of choosing your groups, then the navigations around catalogue, sponsorship and the awkward St Paul Street Gallery Three. Throw in a final grade that goes towards the end of your graduating year and you have tensions running at apocalyptic proportions. No notable casualties this year, at least none that can top some dramas from previous bygone eras. But what did come out the other side were seven varying shows.

Being in the first Pilot can often be a harder challenge seeing as those in the group have no chance of learning from other people's mistakes. With that said, Dot. Dot. Dot was very much less about the overall cohesion of the artists involved, or even about the gallery space itself, focusing instead on individual concerns. One artist who did show some sensitivity to space was Kate Bedford who exhibited two paintings, both of which were beautifully installed in the lower gallery alcove. The larger painting was a towering, curved wooden surface that appeared to rest on the wall, just enough to keep it upright. The painting on this curious support seemed like some sort of otherworldly landscape, yet interestingly enough, it was displayed in a portrait manner. Opposite this was a smaller, more obvious landscape painting depicting a series of mountains and a similar water motif to the one demonstrated in the concave painting.

Kaleidoscope was in a similar vein to that of Dot. Dot. Dot, showing that people were perhaps still warming up a little to the Pilot project. Elliot Collis' venture into sculptural realms with his minimalist bouncy castle was an exciting risk that took him out of his normal painterly comfort zone. It did show that he is perhaps at the beginning of scoping out new territories of installation as it was less of an inviting, interactive space than something to look at.
My pick from Hold was definitely Clinton Cardozo's mask series. Cardozo showed two large passport style portraits in which the subjects were wearing masks. On paper, the idea of mask-wearing seems ludicrous. However, these photos are far from laughing matter. There is an ambiguity in the situation. Cardozo's intentions are purposely unclear, as to let the viewer come to their own social and political conclusions.

The vibe at pilot show four, Ship High In Transition, was that of tongue-in-cheek. One look at the acronym produced by the title and you can see why. However, I feel that it was perhaps the first show to consider how each work could sit in conversation with one another. This was partly due to Fristar Viliamu's attempts at appropriating the art practices of the members of his own group. In a sense, his works were a kind of glue to the other three artists, forcing audiences to discern between the blurred boundaries of original and copy.

Thomas Finn Stewart's architectural constructions were the stand out of Bypassed Territories. Stewart built two rather minimal interventions onsite. My favourite one of the two was comprised of a thin slab of plaster on the floor, illuminated by an overhanging light, and two wall frames, which met to create a corner wherein a wooden box was attached. The box housed a miniature model of the very construct that was holding it up. The catch was in Stewart's arrangement of the intervention. The plaster physically stopped the viewer from easily gaining access to the delights of the model itself, while the architectural constraints of the Gallery Three railings also rendered the viewer a spectator from afar. What was so successful with Stewart's sculpture was his acknowledgement of the difficulties of Gallery Three. Where most people who have gone before tried to fit their work in and around the interior of the gallery, often causing a compromise on how the work itself was viewed, Stewart instead manipulated the annoyance of the cage-like railings to his advantage as a way of highlighting the push/pull relationship he had with the very gallery space in which he was forced to co-exist with. This in turn caused a heightened spatial awareness from the viewer, who was also forced into an immediate exchange between the constructs and their own bodies.

Group six took the idea of cohesion to a whole new pilot level, initiating the collaborative project Dare. Truth. Promise. Natalia Birgel, Alan Joy, Sam Leitch, Lee McGarva, Seilala Sini and Vaimaila Urale built four new walls, object-like in appearance, dividing the gallery in half with obvious references to performance and the theatre stage. Attached to these walls were six speakers, one for each artist in the show, acting as an aural platform for their artistic practice. They were adamantly brave, refusing to show their own work. Instead, they challenged the viewer to patiently listen, first as a collective sound piece then to the six inner components. The installation demanded a lot from the viewer, asking them to question their own sense of how they feel an art practice can operate.

Claudia Jowitt's delicate paintings were the subdued participants in the last pilot show, standing their ground, even with Ahilapalapa Rands' Lady GaGa soundtrack as brazen background music. Jowitt had six small works littered between the two spaces that Pilot group seven had fashioned due to the new wall additions from the previous group. One was placed in the upper gallery, which housed the Four Walls exhibition and five in the lower area which was the set for One Hand Clap. Her main subject matter is that of crystalline geometry in a 1980s home decor palette. This reference is made even more apparent in her application of paint in a stucco-like manner. However, Jowitt seems very adamant about the process in which she produces razor sharp lines, accepting no help from tools other than a paintbrush and a steady hand. Some could perhaps align this with the artist's own neurosis. But what is most interesting about this set of works is the tension caused through her self-imposed attempts at breaking free from the rigidity of this process. It is almost as though Jowitt is starting to accept her instabilities as a human being. As a result, these paintings seem to take themselves less seriously as they are far less laboured and overworked.

With this year's Pilot participants done and dusted, the question is whether they are now ready for the big, wide art world. Is it worth considering whether Pilot is just the introductory test, still nestled quite safely in the folds of the art school/art world hybrid? It will be interesting to see how these oncoming graduates go about taking the skills learnt over the course of the last few months into a larger art world context, where one must apply for funding, residencies and all other things that come with a professional art practice.

- Agnes So