Pauline Rhodes
Two Tangles Touching
2006
flexlock hose
Pauline Rhodes has been working at the forefront of experimental art since her graduation from Canterbury University’s Ilam School of Fine Arts in 1974. The first ever recipient of the Olivia Spencer Bower Foundation Annual Award, she is one of New Zealand’s senior environmental sculptors. Her largely site-specific installations challenge conventional representations of the New Zealand landscape and traditional sculptural practice. Exploring the interaction of materials and the environment, Rhodes’ work requires a willingness to accept the complex by deliberately complicating easy definitions such as installation/performance, architecture/landscape. Her ongoing Intensum/Extensum (Indoor/Outdoor) project is a series of conceptual, time-based pieces that investigate the vulnerability and transient nature of materials and the temporality of ‘the moment.’
A continuation of her explorations into binary oppositions, Brick Bay’s Two Tangles Touching investigates ‘…the effect of two organic forms, roughly spherical, interacting with each other and responding to their surroundings.’* Generating intensive energies, the concentrated masses of looping flexlock hose create configurations that echo surrounding land and water forms. Rhodes calls into question the boundaries between the natural and the manufactured; while the curves and folds of the arrangements are distinctly organic, their material is synthetic. The sculptor’s use of a ‘ready made’ medium challenges the concept of sculpture as ‘crafted’ and recalls technologies and networks of human infrastructure.
Rhodes aims not to impose change upon the landscape, but rather to reflect her movement through it. Thus the sculptures are placed within their surroundings without intruding upon them, forming part of ‘an ongoing process of discovery within the environment.’* The ease with which the sculptures can be repositioned encourages an element of chance and links them with Rhodes’ concern with ‘…ideas of flexibility, variability and adaptability in a continuum of temporary placements within the outdoor environment.’*
Serena Bentley
*Artist’s statement Brick Bay 2006
Two Tangles Touching