justin paton's warren viscoe: life and limb
Publisher. Sarjeant Gallery/Te Whare O Rehua Whanganui RRP: $NZ 49.95
"I have a sense of empathy and admiration for people I see building, risking life and limbs pursuing something of a dream. " Warren Viscoe
This elegantly written and designed monograph examines three decades of sculpture and writings by and about New Zealand artist, Warren Viscoe, who emerges as a major contributor to contemporary, trans-Tasman art, as well as to New Zealand sculpture. Indeed, author Justin Paton, suggests Viscoe's work 'is as significant to this nation's art as the pohutakawa tree is to (the) natural landscape'. So why Viscoe is virtually unknown beyond New Zealand presents a conundrum, for Paten's 'Selected Bibliography' reveals that local critical reviews of his art are legion. In pondering this paradox of New Zealand 's 'best known unknown', two clues are given on the book's front cover: firstly, the image of a curved, carved forearm and open palm (Sylvan Age: Sawn/Sown) floating on a black background. Secondly, designer Aaron Richardson's overprinted title reads vertically- an unconventional format for both typography and image, presaging an unconventional biography.
Brawny, rough-hewn and wooden, the cover image suggests the grunt of construction and the gristly materiality of sculptural form; it speaks, in Paton's words, of 'an unshakeable conviction that matter matters', a position of exclusion from the cool, curatorial eighties and nineties where wood was-and remains-unfashionable. Nevertheless, the author argues that Viscoe's 'clunky' work, has, over thirty years, consistently and critically addressed issues of contemporary folly, landscape and the politics of indigenous culture-with gusto and guts. As New Zealand art's 'resident cultural carpenter', his sculptures 'are held together by comic grace (and) passionate anger'.
But far from invoking dumb sentiment or celebrating manual dexterity, the work is informed by