Exhibitions
Events
On display
The In Kahoots Symposium
Judy Darragh and Sean Kerr In Kahoots (installation view) 2019. Multi media installation, sound projected image Realtime 3D LED, mirror wall. Courtesy of the artists and Two Rooms, Auckland. With thanks to The University of Auckland Te Whare Wānanga o Tāmaki Makaurau. Photo: Sam Harnett
Event
Past event
Meet in the exhibition
Free
Join our special discussion of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, an idea that underpins Judy Darragh and Sean Kerr’s video installation In Kahoots.
Artist Judy Darragh will be joined by writer-academic Jess Maclean (Ngāti Kahu, Ngāti Hine) and philosophy teacher Brent Silby. Anticipated topics of conversation include reality and illusion, contemporary image culture and communication technology, AI and representation, sense and nonsense, fact and fiction, regimes of vision and binary thinking.
(This event differs slightly from what has been previously advertised: artist Sean Kerr will be unavailable to attend)
Judy Darragh and Sean Kerr are artists living in Tāmaki Auckland, and their In Kahoots project debuted at Two Rooms in Auckland 2019. Judy Darragh ONZM is an organising committee member of Art Makers Kāhui Ringatoi Aotearoa, and an editor of Femisphere magazine. Dr Sean Kerr teaches at the Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland, and has produced two books, Bruce is in the garden, so someone is in the garden, and Pop.
Jess Maclean is a lecturer at the Aotahi School of Māori and Indigenous Studies at the University of Canterbury. She has recently published work in Landfall and Hamster.
Brent Silby teaches philosophy at Ao Tawhiti Unlimited Discovery in central Ōtautahi. He has published papers in various journals, and has self-published a wide range of articles of philosophical interest, DJs, and has worked as a game designer.
Related
Exhibition
Judy Darragh and Sean Kerr: In Kahoots
21 February 2021
This mesmerising and immersive project is colour-drenched and chaotic fun.
Collection
Judy Darragh Evolution
Known as the ‘Queen of Kitsch’, Darragh creates flamboyant sculptures that celebrate the commonplace and popular culture. She uses garden ornaments, toys, religious knick-knacks and souvenirs to challenge and subvert conventional standards of high art and good taste. From the German word ‘kitsch’, it refers to the low art (and often mass-produced) objects of everyday life. Like an amateur hobbyist or collector, Darragh takes pride in recovering items overlooked by other artists. Here, a part-fish, part-human creature with a futuristic silvery finish reverses the usual notion of evolutionary progress, while the small plinth and name plate suggest the pretensions of grandeur often seen in minor trophies. Judy Darragh graduated with a Diploma in Visual Communication and Design from Wellington Polytechnic in 1978. Since then she has exhibited widely in group and solo exhibitions. In 2004 a major exhibition of her work ‘So… you made it?’ was held at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.
Collection
Judy Darragh Cats and Dogs
Since the 1970s, Judy Darragh has explored the tensions between high and low art, and the difference between what is tasteful or tacky. In the early 2000s, she turned her focus to the cheap plastic ware that had become ubiquitous in New Zealand. “Where once there was a second-hand shop, there is now a two-dollar shop – the 2-minute high from the $2.00 spend.” Here, that overwhelming artificial deluge is paralleled by another – a quivering shower of fluorescent objects raining down ‘like cats and dogs’.
(We do this, 12 May 2018 - 26 May 2019)
Collection
Judy Darragh Rug
Judy Darragh repurposes familiar everyday materials with humour and irony, creating new objects alive with possibility. She often uses discarded items, but this gravity-defying work was made from something new and mass produced – a cheap, synthetic Persian-style rug. Poised at the point of take-off, it’s a cut-rate magic carpet that both applauds and lampoons the potential of ‘great’ art to transport us into unknown realms.
(We do this, 12 May 2018 - 26 May 2019)
Commentary
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