LAST RIDE IN A HOT AIR BALLOON
The Fourth Auckland Triennial, ‘Last Ride in a Hot Air Balloon’ sets out to investigate themes of risk-taking and adventure. Curator Natasha Conland has selected a mix of local and international artists whose practices offer diverse investigations into the idea of risk. Approaches range from an explicit engagement with the politics of our current financial recession to examining historic risk-taking exploits, interrogating the romance of cultural difference or simply exploring various material conditions.
Michael Stevenson’s On How Things Behave in itself explores many of these approaches. His first foray into film is a series of intermingled narratives tracing historical trajectories including the 1720 financial collapse of the British South Sea Company, the 1987 New Zealand stock market crash and the somewhat mystical story of a hermit figure named Man. Beautiful tracking shots of a concrete seawall painted with circular motifs signal a preoccupation with circulation, economic ‘bubbles’ and recurrent financial histories. Stevenson implicitly suggests links between the tragic fate of Man, who perished due to an oil spill off the Galician coast, and international economic upheavals. The film furthers the artist’s strategy of excavating and connecting obscure or seemingly unconnected events, teasing out the very tangible consequences of fiscal abstractions.
Last Ride in a Hot Air Balloon functions in a similar way to Stevenson’s film in that it obliquely relates abstract ideas to the concrete effects they have on people or societies. Conland has skillfully developed a concept of risk that moves between theoretical platform and material outcome, offering multiple permutations on the theme. This gives rise to some absorbing works, notably Tino Sehgal’s choreography, interpreted individually by six dancers, Rob Hood’s petrochemical assemblage of disused crumpled car parts, and Alex... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline