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Adam
Art Gallery
29 May - 25 July 2004 |
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Curatorial
Statement | Artist's
Résumé
A twinkling landscape of gold and blue, Mark Curtis's work
Ultra Glister is a carpet made entirely of glitter.
Lush and extravagant, immaculately laid out in complex coloured
patterns, it conjures up comparisons as diverse as the painstaking
formality of a Tibetan sand mandala, the opulence of royal
decor and the camp luridity of a gay nightclub. As curator
John Hurrell has noted, it's a work which 'revels in its own
excessiveness'.
Redolent in its artifice, Ultra Glister delights in
its own 'spectacular sensuality', while at the same time laughing
at it. As abstract as this work may appear, it also makes
pointed reference to sexual politics. Glitter as a material
has long been embraced with fervour by the queer community,
its mercurial nature mirroring the floating instability of
notions of camp.
Following a stencilled pattern laid down on the gallery floor,
Ultra Glister takes Curtis and an assistant five days
to assemble, laying the work down section by glittering section.
A reworked version of a exhibition originally made for the
Waikato Museum of Art and History, Hamilton, Ultra Glister
is audacious in scale, completely filling the at times daunting
space of the lower Chartwell Gallery of the Adam Art Gallery.
Ultra Glister appears to almost hover in front of us,
shimmering expanses of colour which seduce and dazzle.
Emma Bugden
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