The works in the Monumental
obsessions series deal with artistic concerns
I have been investigating for a number of
years. The images juxtapose selected architectural
elements and familiar objects to explore the
relationship between female and male.
Singular architectural elements
have been used through time as monumental
architectural statements. In my work their
gender characteristics are defined by the
objects. Both genders are re-represented within
a landscape of life sized objects playing
on an obsession that is often overlooked.
Maree Horner
Selected images from this
series were exhibited at Grodentz, works on
paper, 17 Kenwyn Terrace, Wellington 12 October
– 2 November
also at Bath Street Gallery, Bath Street,
Parnel, Auckland, January - February 2004.
Maree Horner
- by Sue Gardiner
Extract
from Trevor Landers review in arts magazine
'Vibe'.
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mixed media,
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mixed media,
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mixed media,
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Eternal measures,
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mixed media,
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mixed
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" Her work captures
the tropes of modernist monumentalism and
contrasts this with items from the realms
of the familiar in ways which are both provocative
and evocative.
This series of works features renderings
of articles of domesticity such as boxes,
sheets, bags, suitcases and a sofa at life
size with addition of diminutized monuments;
disassembled archways and pyramidal columns.
At first glance, the work appeals simplistic,
perhaps even banal and austere and the product
of arcane aggrandizement, but this impression
is an entirely false one. Intertextually,
the works create a hubbub of conversation,
highlighting the frisson between mind and
body, the erotic, the corporeal and the cerebral.
An architectural observer noted that the detail
lines were illuminating, and the shadowing
was suggestive, slightly sinister and deeply
subversive. The real subversive quality lies
in the rendering of the various images in
contrapuntal connection, creating a new landscape
which fetishes the monumental and eroticizes
the familiar; the notes playing harmony and
discordance. The pictorial incongruity belies
a sardonic fidelity. The pieces offer tantalising
glimpses of alterior space; what is not revealed
is just as powerful. 'Box' seems to concatenate
these strands of ideas, the arch and the column
inside the shaded box suggest alteriority,
confinement, darkness but also, paradoxically,
more ambrosial readings. The most voluble
piece is 'Book'. The masculine, supplicant,
speaks on the outer trying to relitigate with
the interior feminine, a world of arcane knowledge
and almost mystical fascination. The voice
could be plangent, or conversely dictatorial
or conciliatory.
It is the suggestibility, the multiplicity
of readings which makes Horner's oeuvre noteworthy.
In a sense, the pieces are contemplative.
Though the mono print panels of the impressive
larger work 'Couch' display technical proficiency,
it is on the conceptual plane where the artist
generates a font of ideas and inspires paradigmatic
shifts in the viewer or the listener (though
the audio is metaphorical rather than actual)."
Trevor Landers
MAREE HORNER – by Sue Gardiner
Close your eyes for a moment. Now with
your mind’s eye, try to capture images
of some key objects in your home environment
that speak volumes about the most fundamental
functions of that space – be it social
interaction, the unfolding of relationships,
the caring for and sharing with others, the
exploration of self. The domestic environment
is potentially a space for some of the most
challenging experiences in our entire lives.
It is here we can encounter powerful emotions
wrapped up in the complexities of relationships
and human endeavour.
The objects at the core of this intensity,
those items of furniture or utensils that
you might now be thinking of, are often those
embroiled in the most social or the most mundane
of activities: a living room couch, the open
fire, the clothes line, beds, the bath, the
dining table, the laundry buckets and everyday
kitchen items. Now remove the myriad of emotions
surrounding these objects. Consider them instead
for their potential symbolic nature, for what
they can, in turn, tell you about a world
far beyond their domestic context.
This is the world that Maree Horner is interested
in, a world where the artist demands that
the domestic objects she paints tackle a bigger
job than that dictated by their obvious daily
functions. They must work hard to create new
and potent associations, indeed to challenge
and provoke. As writer Roger Peters has said,
“The whole weight of culture might, in
the end, find its denouement in relation to
a piece of furniture.”
Not every object is up to the job but by using
selected ones from around her home as her
primary visual imagery, Horner principally
explores the nature of the relationship between
the feminine and the masculine, between the
mind and the body, between eroticism and fantasy.
She deals with the internal and the external,
the unspoken and the articulate, the provocative
and the familiar.
A cardboard box, painted fleshy pink, could
be read in feminine, nurturing terms, for
example, while it can also be seen as an element
in a still life composition. (The same can
be said for her buckets, jugs and pots.) It
can also operate as a monumental landscape
element, taking on architectural forms and
dictating the equation between space, form,
volume and scale. In another example, the
couch is a strong metaphor with direct human
associations – it also has arms, legs,
a back and spine but the shadows and crumpled
cushions also create a new landscape within
its folds.
The mixing up of scale serves to undermine
existing power structures symbolically inherent
in objects such as monumental marble archways
and erect columns and to establish new, more
meaningful ones. Horner paints each central
object at a life size scale. Her passion for
minimalist sculptural installation brings
an aesthetic here of a pared down, controlled
environment where the viewer’s body,
placed in front of the life size objects,
instinctively reacts as if standing before
a three dimensional scene. You can, in fact,
measure yourself in relation to the objects
in front of you – like a fireplace or
doorway – and therefore in relation to
the internal dialogue of the works.
Taking these three key genres, the associations
to body, the interest in still life constructions
and the manipulation of internal and external
landscapes, Horner dislocates the objects
she paints and re-contextualises them, often
with theatrical effect, so they become players
in an uneasy socio-cultural debate.
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