Tuesday, June 05, 2012

Tape recording

We’ve not seen much of the Swiss artist Thomas Hirschorn’s work in New Zealand although he did contribute to One Day Sculpture with his work Poor racer and we understand Gregory Burke ex-director Govett-Brewster is working with him in New York on a project.

We saw this telling piece titled Outgrowth at the Quai Branly in the exhibition Masters of Chaos. Hirshorn had identified crisis hotspots around the world and represented each one with images clipped from newspapers and magazines located under its own globe. To mark where the crisis had manifested Hirshorn built up lumpen globs of packing tape in proportion to the horror and scale of the event.

For anyone still wondering why the rich of the world are all headed down south to claim property and residency, one striking feature of the 113 globes was that New Zealand (and mostly Australia) was never touched.