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Watering cans in the parched Australian outback ironic twist
Published by the Communications and Development Department
24 October 2002
A stretch of country in the Australian outback at a place called Moon Plain is the stunning location for an installation featuring 1800 perfectly white, toy watering cans, the focus of an indicative exhibition at the University of Canterbury’s SOFA Gallery, Christchurch Arts Centre, from Wednesday 30 October.
Moon Plain is an installation created this year by Slovanian contemporary installation artist Matej Andraz Vogrinic who is currently artist-in-residence for the Christchurch Art and Industry urban arts festival, SCAPE.
There will be a free floor talk by the artist about the installation at 3pm this Sunday, 27 October at the SOFA, and a preview to the opening on Tuesday 29 October at 5.30pm.
Matej is known internationally for his challenging installations often executed on a grand scale: in 1999 he clothed a house in Venice (a project originally for the 49th Venice Biennale); in 2000 an installation for the Adelaide Festival of Art consisted of a brick carpark wall covered with 50,000 matchbox-sized toy cars donated by Adelaide citizens.
Moon Plain, the installation, features the watering cans arranged in an area of about 800 square metres in what is considered one of the driest places in Australia, where temperatures can reach 50 C and the average rainfall is impossibly low.
Moon Plain at the SOFA is a photographic survey exhibition of the installation, with some images showing Matej at work, but most showing the installation from various angles and at different times of the day.
Describing the installation itself, Angus Trumble, of Adelaide University, says that from a long distance it looks like a slender strip of white, incised on the red-brown landscape, “a kind of gash”.
“On closer inspection the formation of plaster objects resembles a flock of greedy white sulphur-crested cockatoos, a sight that has always tormented Australian farmers.
“Meanwhile, the ironic choices of motif and medium . . . water is scarcer in Australia than in any other continent . . . demonstrate the artist’s capacity for dry wit, and his determination to tackle through his work environmental and social questions of global importance.”
• Moon Plain, a photographic survey exhibition by Matej Andraz Vogrincic, at the SOFA Gallery, Christchurch Arts Centre, 30 October-8 December 2002. Gallery hours: 11am-5pm Monday-Friday, 12noon-4pm Saturday and Sunday.
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