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City Gallery
30 May - 22 Aug 2004 |
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Curatorial
Statement | Artist's
Résumé
With Please keep us safe while we sleep by the fire Dick
Frizzell takes a trip down memory lane - or perhaps, more
accurately, a spin along Memory Highway - as he makes his
return from Auckland to Hawkes Bay. Along the road, Frizzell
has collected 'the usual ephemera and bumph': signs and logos,
postcards and newspapers, gimmicky advertising characters
and anthropomorphised machinery, all brought together into
a great glorious car crash of imagery in this painting.
It would be a mistake, however, to see this work as only a
smorgasbord of oddities that caught the artist's eye. Indeed,
it would be a mistake to describe Frizzell's practice as 'only'
anything. Over a lengthy career in painting, advertising and
illustration, Frizzell has collided high and low culture,
art for art's sake and commercial practices, moved between
the iconic Ches 'n' Dale ads and the equally iconic Grocer
with moko, all with an insouciant ease. This effortless
manoeuvrability means we might run the risk of forgetting
to consider these works as paintings. But as commentator Hamish
Keith has recently noted:
' The act of painting is central to what Frizzell is on about,
but it is an interest that goes far beyond mere aesthetics
or sensation - an interest that goes beyond play too ... What
at first sight might seem clumsy and direct turns out to be
compelling and subtle. There might be games and tricks here,
but they are art games and art tricks and art illusions ...
Please keep us safe while we sleep by the fire might
seem an essay on nostalgia and return. I suspect that it is
much more complicated and potent than that.'
Courtney Johnston
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