The 5 emerging artists in Gloss walk a paradoxical line: there is an unmistakable tension between the loaded images they convey and the lustre and attraction of the slick surfaces of their work. On one hand, each artist appears to be creating works that are all superficiality, finished as if encased in a smooth and shiny carapace and often accompanied by a kind of humour and tender regard for the 'prettiness' of the objects. On the other side, there is an implication of metaphor and judgement in these pieces; something more to be gained from scratching the surfaces.
Gloss implies a veneer or sheen - the surface of a thing. It also implies that there is something underneath that surface and, with the presence of 'gloss', we are somehow closed off and have lost the ability to interact with the real substance that lies beneath. Add to this the (exclusively Aotearoa) irony of the eminently tacky '80's soap opera of the same name and we have a word that is concerned with appearance over substance, newness over examination of history, pap over politics.
The very superficiality of these works generates their substance. As a group, the pieces can be read as dealing with various depictions of modern society. They split the veneer of initial appearances, encouraging the viewer to delve under the surface presented to explore the metaphors that can be found in everyday scenes and objects. Through this process of initial visceral attraction accompanying the eventual identification of a source of unease, we are reminded of the dangers of accepting face-value and the possibilities of a seamy underbelly existing beneath a clean exterior.
Some artists in Gloss are overt in their use of shiny-brand-new imagery - Mark Ussher's The Man and Pick Up scream at us with the fascinating tightness of advertising graphics and snappy slogans. With others, a crawling decrepitude is apparent - Maryanne Pennington and PJ Paterson both use decaying, mutilated everyday objects in their explorations to create a sense of falling away and waste within the lustrous surfaces and hot colours of their pieces.
Perhaps the most recognisable distortions occur in the figures depicted throughout the show. The faceless figures in Will Handley's paintings are all empty robes and dogma, their thoughts floating loose in the compositions with all the force of a radio broadcasting to an empty room. The digitally manipulated figure in Young Sun Han's collaborative piece Pareidolia gently nudges us that something is not as it first seems. The disembodied voice of the poet Siobhan Harvey reads the poem which forms the basis of the work to reinforce the sense of pastiche, the illusory quality of the 'woman' in the image.
These works in their different ways provoke questions. Alongside their exuberant external appearances, they are reminders of the need to question face-value; to trust that, when we feel that something is amiss, there is a value in exploring the difference between rhetoric and reality.
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