China and Hardware

Eve Armstrong is an artist based in Wellington, who graduated from Elam School of Fine Arts in 2003.  Her art practice is concerned with ‘extending, adapting, assisting and facilitating exchanges of form and value’¹  – an investigation that has positioned her as a leading figure in her generation of contemporary New Zealand artists.  Armstrong’s work examines the sculptural and creative potential of everything from the products (and by-products) of consumption, to the activities of trade and exchange.  At its heart, it is a process of translating experience into form – making material her daily observations, exchanges and encounters. 

Armstrong was resident in Dunedin as part of the Dunedin Public Art Gallery Visiting Artist Programme over the summer of 2016-17. Part of her research process led her to the former use of the gallery site as the DIC department store.  Archival research yielded layers of history; ranging from romantic, sepia-toned views of the Victorian shopping experience, through to the brash language of 1980s visual merchandising and stories of corporate takeover. This monumental collage, China and Hardware (2017), echoes the artfully arranged, disembodied contents of a product catalogue; reflecting the artist’s ongoing interest in value, consumption and the aesthetics of advertising, packaging and sales.

1. Artist biography: http://michaellett.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Eve-Armstrong-CV.pdf [accessed 07/04/2017]

The Dunedin Public Art Gallery Visiting Artists Programme is supported by Creative New Zealand, and Project Partner, Dunedin School of Art.