Reboot

Where’s the switch?

To ‘reboot’ a computer system is to hit the on-switch and set its programmes going anew. And one of the best places to start looking at this exhibition called Reboot is the switch nearby on this wall.

Fastidiously carved from a piece of wood and then covered in a concealing coat of white Twink, Glen Hayward’s light-switch sculpture doesn’t connect to any wires or channel any voltage. What it offers instead is imaginative illumination – a little glow of surprise and provocation. By switching the real thing for a cunning replica, Hayward invites us to switch our perspective on the world of ordinary objects.

The Jim Barr and Mary Barr Collection is full of art that asks us to look twice and think again. It is ten years since the Dunedin Public Art Gallery received 120 works from the Wellington collectors on long-term loan. This exhibition sets out to ‘reboot’ the loan collection by connecting well-known works with some vivid recent purchases. Multimedia energy and international range characterise the new acquisitions. Digital videos talk back to life-size mannequins, and recent graduates of local art schools trade ideas with international art-stars.

From a single word wider than a truck to a rabbit as huge as a hippo, there are several artworks here too big to miss. On the whole, though, the Barrs tend to steer clear of the conventionally ‘major’ acquisitions that fill many well-known collections. Fans of the fragmentary, the lo-tech and the idiosyncratic, they’ve also enthusiastically embraced ‘multiples’ – artworks that exist in numerous copies, the better to spread the ideas behind them.

Look again at Hayward’s nearby sculpture for an image of the attitude driving this collection. Here, art is a switch that releases jolts of humour, thought and productive confusion when activated by willing viewers.

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View the exhibition section panels — click here

View the exhibition labels — click here