Seven monitors in a darkened room light up periodically with candy-coloured vignettes starring pink-cheeked urchins and their beleaguered dad in a variety of ridiculous costumes and scenarios. Daddy vacuums his face. Esther sits in a lime-green highchair stuffing fistfuls of a giant nuclear-orange cake into her mouth. Daddy chews a mouthful of plastic toys. Sadie models a monster costume made of leftovers—bread crust mask with eyeholes, carrot ears and banana skin helmet. Daddy is attacked in slow-motion by a face-hugging cuddly toy. Daddy and Sadie pretend they are Mexican wrestlers—they have a rematch every six months, but Sadie wins every time. If you did not know Bryce Galloway or his work, you would wonder what was going on—child exploitation for the sake of art? Ritual self-abasement? Domestic masochism of the artist-as-dad? Whatever it is, Galloway was mixing these faux-innocent motifs into his practice long before he became a father.
In the early ’90s, Galloway and fellow Elam School of Fine Arts student Daniel Powell started the art rock band Wendyhouse. Armed with little more than a Casiotone, some warped lyrics, and a post-apocalyptic play-pen aesthetic, Wendyhouse won a select core of fans and continued to make music long after art school faded into halcyon memory. Actually, Wendyhouse refused to die, despite both bachelors settling down to become fathers-of-two, albeit in different countries (Powell now resides in a German hamlet, while Galloway lives next to Peter Jackson’s Weta empire in Miramar, Wellington). Galloway and Powell continued their collaboration long distance, sending each other song tracks composed to a set title and length, which they mixed together, regardless of the ensuing cacophony.
Witnessing Wendyhouse’s reunion in Auckland a couple of years ago