Balance Of Power depicts our national icon – the kiwi – in a way which is deliberately unflattering, calling into question ideas of patriotism. This creature has the head of a kiwi, but the arms and legs of a human. No longer a shy, flightless forest dweller, the artist has created a monster – a drunken half-bird hooligan balanced precariously on a bottle and a syringe.
Dimensions: 600x500mm
Tony de Lautour refers to a series of similar paintings to Shore Party as being ‘revisionist’. That is, he buys cheap amateur paintings from op shops, usually of New Zealand landscapes, and then he adds his own twist – creating a painter’s version of a ‘remix’ or a ‘mash-up’. For de Lautour, these unfashionable leftovers of second-hand stores operate as Readymades, in the same way that Marcel Duchamp used a porcelain urinal and a bottle rack as pre-made art objects. Only, de Lautour doesn’t just put these paintings straight into the gallery as they are. He ‘revises’ them, giving them new meanings, adding strange characters to their otherwise predictable surfaces.
Dimensions: 584x435mm
