In the Forsyth Barr Windows Gallery, Janna van Hasselt invites you to Blowout!
Unlike anything previously shown at Aratoi, van Hasselt has engulfed the entire length of wall of the Windows Gallery with a textured ceramic installation on a bright fluorescent pink coloured wall.
Blowout!, displays hundreds of hand-sculpted porcelain tendrils, their forms and details outlined in a rainbow of hues. The filaments twist, curl and furl and appear to be blown outwards from an invisible hairdryer. The textured extruded ceramic hairs appear to grow out of the very wall from pores or holes.
“While the scene appears celebratory, there is a grotesque overtone evident with oversized and misshapen pores and obvious fingerprint traces left in the clay,” says van Hasselt. “Pointed and painted tendril tips reach out as if to grasp at any stray passers with their neon pink manicures.”
She continues, “I’d like the hairs to feel alive to the viewer; as if still growing outwards –their tendrils reaching out as if to delicately tap a visitor on the shoulder.”
In contrast some hairs have been cut short and have grown back into various lengths of ‘stubble.’
“It represents an aspect of the world that doesn’t fit with our preconceived notions therefore illustrating the margins or boundaries which we try to forget or ignore,” she says.
Janna van Hasselt: Blowout! is showing in the Forsyth Barr Windows Gallery until Sunday 9 August
