Feeling Nature, Feeling Free

Christchurch artist Rob Hood has long been drawn to the banal, the objects of our everyday, and with his droll humour and keen sense of placement breathes unexpected new life into them. He has in the past subjected broken windscreens, roadside markers, buckets and poles to his unusual visual poetry. Now in Feeling Nature, Feeling Free it is towards nature, and our activities in and around nature, that he casts his wary eye.

Two heavy rocks have entered the gallery. One lies still on its sack barrow intimately attended by a fan. The other is also under close scrutiny. Sitting quietly within a handsome table-top vitrine, another fan blows a continuous stream of air past it. The look is part workshop, part wind-tunnel laboratory, and the endgame is clear – as the title of the work suggests, we have Erosion Problems.

Willful and wry – these problems are not just surreal. In New Zealand, the increasing manipulation of landscape is a pressing problem. Hood makes his point elegantly and well. A subtly reconfigured old (inch to the mile) map of Otira framed on the end wall makes the same point. And a looped DVD, Coupland’s Waterfall (from the corner of Buchanans and Curletts Rds in Christchurch) explores similar territory. Never has this water feature looked so good. Two storeys high in concrete, fibreglass and generous planting – if you can’t get out into nature then at least, while waiting at the lights on one of Hornby’s busiest corners, you can see it recreated in all of its splendor – feel good and feel free.

This show is Hood at his pared back and elegant best. It can in its entirety be taken in whilst sitting on Donald’s Pew. Throughout his oeuvre, Hood has riffed on Modernism’s best. Smithson and de Maria are acknowledged in the smashed windscreen and road-marker works, and Klein’s leap has been echoed by one of his own. Here his clean lines, angled planes and scrupulous working of radiata pine ply offer antipodean thanks to Donald Judd.

On ya Rob.
JS

Selected works

List of works

Erosion Problems, 2016
vitrine, fan & rock, 1400 x 940 x 1800mm

Erosion Problems II, 2016
sack barrow, fan & rock

Washing Machine Brazier, Kindling & Sausages, 2016
mixed media

Donald’s Pew, 2016
radiata pine plywood, 425 x 245 x 2370mm

Otira, 2016
framed collage, 720 x 710mm

Coupland’s Waterfall, 2016
DVD, 18 min loop, 1/1