B.
Night light
Behind the scenes
Ronnie van Hout's latest film, The creation of the world, is a nocturnal highlight on Worcester Boulevard at present.
Ronnie Van Hout The creation of the world 2011. Digital video. Collection of the artist, Melbourne, Australia
Ronnie Van Hout The creation of the world 2011. Digital video. Collection of the artist, Melbourne, Australia
Located directly across from the Gallery in an upstairs window in an all-but-abandoned house, it's well worth a visit if you are in town after dark.
I love the venue for this work – the domestic nature of the house appears disconcertingly out of place against the monolithic Civic Offices that rise directly beyond. It's a jarring sense of scale that mirrors the large Ronnie spewing forth a mini version of the artist. Some of Ronnie's earliest films were made here in Christchurch when he produced band videos during the early 1980s; videos for some of New Zealand's legendary post-punk bands including the Gordons, the Clean and the Pin Group.
Related
Exhibition
Ronnie van Hout: The creation of the world
7 August 2012
A haunting video projection by Ronnie van Hout in the window of the old house opposite the Gallery on Worcester Boulevard.
Collection
Ronnie van Hout House and School
Ronnie van Hout’s installation recreates his childhood home in Aranui, a suburb of eastern Christchurch, and his primary school in nearby Wainoni. A looped video replays his daily bike ride between the two locations. Together, these elements present the story of van Hout’s beginnings.
Familiar architectural structures, however, are taken beyond the ordinary by the presence of a hovering, makeshift UFO, whose surveillance results appear on a nearby monitor. Can we read this as a picture of suburban childhood experience as an alien might see it, or as the artist’s memorial to the need for imaginative survival and escape? (Above ground, 2015)