David Woodings, “Just Hanging Out for a Ride”, Aigantighe Art Gallery, 25 November 2008 – 1 March 2009.
January 4, 2009 – 5:22 pm by Andrew Paul Wood
Blood is thicker than Absinthe, and each Christmas I go back to Timaru to visit the family. Yes, I know, you are shocked that one as dazzlingly urbane as myself should come from Timaru (he said with tongue in cheek – sadly his own). Need I remind you that Timaru was the birth place of Allen Curnow, Colin McCahon, Jason Grieg and Violet Fagan among many others. Professor Michael Dunn was an Old Boy of my school. Admittedly the very talented all tended to leave as soon as possible, but let us not get bogged down in details.
The Aigantighe (‘egg-on-tie’) Art Gallery in Timaru is an odd sort of a beast. On the info-sheets for sale exhibitions there is a note that all sales are by cash or cheque only, with directions to the closest ATM machines. I’m not even sure if you can even get $14,000 out of an ATM. On the walls, among the works of the permanent collection are assorted stuffed toys with speech bubbles. Imagine a lizard saying, “this painting is green like me” and you get the gist – but as the gallery has an important function servicing local schools that would otherwise be bereft of art, this kind of cringe-making twee-ness can be tolerated. There are often interesting works to see in the setting of this beautiful heritage house.
Christchurch-based David Wooding has a nice show in the Aigantighe foyer – large canvasses, photorealist in style but with a distinctly Pop Art suite of themes and candy-bright palette. Wooding homes in on the gleaming hard surfaces of cheerful, bulbous, curving objects: parts of cars, the magnificent Kiwiana of a Buzzy Bee. It is delicious work, full of comic-book vigour and populuxe-era utopianism, like something that shambled out of the consumer utopian visions of the 1950s. Rosenquist comes to mind.
