Review 1 - Last Ride in a Hot Air Balloon

The art exhibition 'Last Ride in a Hot Air Balloon' is my first review attempt for this paper, happening at many galleries around Auckland, I took the afternoon off to visit Auckland Art Gallery and check the exhibit out. Having little experience at viewing art this is an experience that I quite enjoy being encouraged to have as it is not something I might have usually visited on my own accord.

The exhibit itself is quite large so I think I might instead speak briefly about the exhibit in general and then a few specific pieces. "The theme of the 4th Auckland Triennial looks at the impulse towards adventure and risk in art today," I didn't find anything in the gallery that I found in my opinion lived up to this statement, there were many good pieces but the word risk doesn't really seem too applicable. From the gallery I will write about 'The Room with a Bird' by Bundith Phunsombatlert and 'Singing Cloud' by Shilpa Gupta.



'The Room with a Bird' was my favourite exhibit in the gallery, set in a narrow hallway it was quite a standout from the other exhibits because of the use of space. The exhibit to look at is simply a hallway full of bird perches suspended from the ceiling, the real beauty of the piece is when you weave your way through the perches your motion is sensed by the installation and you begin to hear the 'bird.' The bird in the installation's title isn't anywhere to be found but as you move through the space you hear bird sounds moving from location to location overhead.
I like the untamable, unattainable nature of this installation, it has a very clean, minimalistic aesthetic to the whole thing but the sound of the unseen bird is very unrestrained and free. While moving through this exhibit you can't keep yourself from looking upwards to see if you can catch a glimpse of the bird that isn't there.

I think the thing I liked the most about this piece is I havn't experienced much like it before by way of art, I liked the simplicity of walking through and enjoying and thus indirectly confronting you with the work rather than having you view a static image on a white gallery wall that you may or may not feel like you get.



The piece that greets you when you first walk up the stairs is 'Singing Cloud,' this is a piece I had seen photographs of before coming to the gallery so it was interesting to see how the work compared in actuality. Firstly a brief criticism of traditional gallery space, with regard to the fact that a space like this is set up to be adapted with every new exhibition, I think gallery space is utterly dull and comes with a great many rules making it for me at least a moderately uncomfortable environment to be in.

When I first viewed 'Singing Cloud' I was confused as to whether the flap board was part of the same installation or not, having read the exhibition guide we discovered that the two were in fact parts of a whole but as you can see in the above photo there is so much space between the two that I lost any sense of continuity walking between one and the other for a closer look. I liked how Gupta has subverted the usual use of microphones from something to amplify your voice and get yourself heard, to a string of whispered words from unheard voices, the zany messages on the clapper board was also quite a nice touch. The whole thing was slightly reminiscent of an airport, with the board and so many anonymous voices and messages; constructed in the wake of the Bombay Bombings the unheard voices that whisper and the board that makes no sense in its original purpose become quite eerie.