Erica van Zon

Erica van Zon is the thirty-first artist to participate in Dunedin Public Art Gallery’s Visiting Artist Programme.  A highly regarded artist to emerge from the Wellington art community, van Zon has been developing this project over recent months, including ten weeks on the ground in Dunedin, reflecting on previous areas of interest, scoping out new visual terrain, experimenting with a rich range of materials and processes, and refining her final presentation.  This promises to be an exciting sculptural extravaganza that delves into van Zon’s rich back-catalogue of imagery from ‘domestic’ modernism, culinary fetishism, disposable and popular culture. 

Erica van Zon spent eight weeks in Dunedin researching, developing and editing together a new body of work, as part of the Gallery’s Visiting Artist Programme.  However, Dogwood Days represents an even more sustained generation of work, with the artist building the residency into a much larger production cycle of ten months.  So, this exhibition not only provides a moment for van Zon to stop, assess and hone her practice, it also marks a significant point in her broader art career.

Dogwood Days is a substantial and resplendent sculptural tableau, which hovers tantalisingly within ‘our’ grasp conceptually, metaphorically and visually.  Crafted and coerced away from their everyday environs, these objects bear all the marks of their handler’s treatment, while still retaining enough realism to be more than simple curiosities.

Van Zon’s sculptures are infectious because they walk an artistic tightrope between obsessive making, associative thinking and humorous provocation.  Dogwood Days is a ‘mixed-up’ repository of lateral image/word games, fictional reference points and fantastically speculative objects. This project cleverly weaves together a back catalogue of personal fascinations with local (residency) encounters, allegorical with historical personalities, in a tightly constructed formal and aestheticised set-up.

Curated by Aaron Kreisler

View the exhibition poster/guide – click here

A Dunedin Public Art Gallery Visiting Artist Project supported by Creative New Zealand Toi Aotearoa