When Duchamp reached for a urinal to become one of his most famous readymades he probably wasn’t thinking of New Zealand or that nearly a hundred years later his radical poke in the eye would find an echo on K Road. If you do the gallery rounds for long enough, it's kind of hard to be very surprised by what you find, but Reuben Moss did a good job with his reconstruction of a first generation Exeloo (what the Exeloo company calls a ‘self-managing public toilet’) from the Helensville train station. It's not a replica reconstructed like the sixties Duchamp edition of his own toilet whiteware, Moss’s 'readymade' Exeloo has literally been reconstructed inside the first floor gallery because it wouldn’t fit through the door. Its mass is part of the shock after you've climbed the narrow stairs. Duchamp is not the only spirit in the room: representing New Zealand A.R.D Fairburn in the insults department, et al.’s there, Michael Parekowhai too and gotta have Hundertwasser.
