Ronnie van Hout
Aotearoa New Zealand, b.1962
End Doll
- Purchased, 2007
- Mixed media
- 581 x 153 x 220mm
- 2007/032.1-2
- 2007
Tags: artists (visual artists), boxes (containers), dolls, labels (identifying artifacts), men (male humans), miniature (size attribute), people (agents), portraits, self-portraits, stripes, suits (main garments), words
Related
Commentary
Hair Story
In drawing attention to the theatre of personal grooming, Bad Hair Day brings together portraiture and caricature with a variety of less readily classifiable works of art. The densely packed selection spans a vast historical range. And in putting bowl cuts and bushy beards alongside wayward wigs and whiskers, it highlights the sometimes comical aspects of hair, especially when styles are extreme. If wry intent is discernible throughout the exhibition, however, we shouldn’t let this fool us: hair is a topic that easily turns serious.
Artist interview
Not Quite Human
Lara Strongman: The title of your new work for the Gallery is Quasi. Why did you call it that?
Ronnie van Hout: Initially it was a working title. Because the work would be outside the Gallery, on the roof, I was thinking of Quasimodo, from Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. I was coming out of a show and research around the idea of the freak, the outsider and things that are rejected—thinking about how even things that are rejected have a relationship to whatever they’ve been rejected by. And I called it Quasi, because it’s a human form that’s not quite human as well. The idea of something that resembles a human but is not quite human.
Notes
Spooky
Maybe it's just a Halloween hangover, but there's something strange in the neighbourhood.
Notes
Christchurch-born artist Ronnie van Hout part of Populate!
Ronnie van Hout is the artist responsible for the mysterious figure pointing skywards that has appeared on the roof of a central city building.
Notes
But seriously
When it comes to contemporary painting, seriousness has a way of turning into solemnity, and solemn art is just asking for it.