ART UTE project: 10 cubic metres of mobile space for artists, Surface Detail – Gloss Reds / Ute as Plinth
Alex Monteith – Temporary Mechanisms, Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland, March 2013
‘ART UTE project: 10 cubic metres of mobile space for artists‘ is part of Alex Monteith, Temporary Mechanisms at Gow Langsford Gallery. ART UTE is a proposal to support a community of artists over time. ART UTE is a 1991 Toyota Hilux utility vehicle, a custom set of personalised registration plates and a conceptual ideology, that when combined, supports the making and exhibition of art projects through the provision of ART UTE to artists by its owner.
For Temporary Mechanisms ART UTE acts as a collaborative project for which Monteith invited artists to install artworks as a response to the context of the ART UTE projects. These exhibitions rotate on a weekly basis within ‘Temporary Mechanisms’. Surface Detail – Gloss Reds / Ute as plinth is part of this broader project. ‘ART UTE project: 10 cubic metres of mobile space for artists’ includes:
John Ward Knox 27.02.13 – 04.03.13 / Sarah Munro 04.03.13 – 11.03.13 / Judy Darragh 11.03.13 – 16.03.13
In a second aspect of the ART UTE initiative sound artists were invited to contribute audio works to be played in the cab via the trucks sound systems. For the ART UTE project: audio for a good car stereo programme Monteith has lined up Rachael Shearer, Sean Kerr, D.A.N.C.E Art Club, Clinton Watkins and Linda T.
Ute as Plinth:
In the installation titled ‘Ute as Plinth’ Sarah Munro is interested the playful juxtaposition of one manufactured pigment coated object (Surface Detail – Gloss Reds) with the other (ART UTE). Both are coated in an industry standard paint system, however the high-gloss clear-coated paint surface used on the work ‘Surface Detail – Gloss Reds’ is usually reserved for automotive vehicles and ART UTE is unexpectedly a non-Toyota-standard ‘matt black’ marine paint.
Munro’s paintings, painted surfaces over custom made three dimensional supports, intentionally engage with spatial concerns usually attributed to sculpture while maintaining a dialogue with traditionally two dimensional concerns such as the pictorial conventions used to represent light. When installed in The Gus Fisher Gallery as ‘Surface Detail‘ the works intentional spatial relationship lead the viewers attention from the surface of the work, back to the wall surface the paintings were hung on, and the specific shape and orientation of the architecture. ‘ART UTE project: 10 cubic metres of mobile space for artists’ proposes to temporally highjack ‘Surface Detail – Gloss Reds’ original charter and emphasize the works discrete object-value through the use of the ART UTE as plinth.
In a second aspect of the ART UTE initiative sound artists were invited to contribute audio works to be played in the cab via the trucks sound systems. For the ART UTE project: audio for a good car stereo programme Monteith has lined up Rachael Shearer, Sean Kerr, D.A.N.C.E Art Club, Clinton Watkins and Linda T.
