Miranda Parkes
Slumper
Sometimes I think Miranda Parkes keeps her research work hidden on purpose. For years now she has been collecting and taking photos of trash. She has complete folios of small pieces of garbage, tucked away and scrupulously maintained in white books. Each piece is set up to reveal their arbitrary marks as an aesthetic field whose discreet, peculiar feel is a knowledge to be learnt from. Somewhere I even have a photograph of a garbage jumble on the back of which she has written 'I look for the frame in everything'. Of course such a statement is indicative of the post-structural and decentred tuitions she no doubt received, and though such sentiment has become quite commonplace the strength of Miranda Parkes' practice is that it still manages to keep that original, investigative impulse alive.
Parkes came on the scene by lifting her floor up off the ground and displaying it as a painting. This sounds every bit like the reinvestment of the found object but it's not. Rather, it was an articulating statement, a conscious decision to speak about the arbitrary marks that are everywhere about us. It was also an act that had everything to do with painting because it fore-grounded the formal processes that respond to aesthetic desire. It seems to me that even though Parkes' paintings are so overblown these days, they're still articulations of this impulse. She makes overblown, distended objects not as a rejection of painting, but as a continuation of the desire to paint in an overcrowded and oversaturated world.
Harold Grieves
This text is an excerpt from Harold Grieves' essay 'Slumper', Out of Erewhon online catalogue, Christchurch: Christchurch Art Gallery, 2006. Reproduced with the kind permission of Harold Grieves and the Christchurch Art Gallery.
Miranda Parkes artist bio:
Born Christchurch, 1977
Lives and works in Christchurch
Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours), University of Canterbury, Christchurch
Master of Fine Arts (with Distinction), University of Canterbury, Christchurch
Selected solo exhibitions include: 'Miranda Parkes', Southland Museum and Art Gallery, Invercargill (2007); 'Hummer Crasher Groover Slacker', 64zero3 Gallery, Christchurch (2006); 'Throw Your Arms Around Me Baby', 64zero3 Gallery, Christchurch (2005); 'Paintings', Starkwhite, Auckland (2005).
Selected group exhibitions include: 'Out of Erewhon: New Directions in Canterbury Art' (2006), Christchurch Art Gallery; 'Group Show', Vavasour Godkin Gallery, Auckland (2006); 'Wallace Art Award', Auckland (2005); 'One Take: short film screenings', Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth (2005).
Image captions:
Miranda Parkes
Crasher 2006
acrylic and enamel on canvas
Courtesy of 64zero3 Gallery, Christchurch and Vavasour Godkin Gallery, Auckland
Breaker 2006
acrylic and enamel on wood
Courtesy of 64zero3 Gallery, Christchurch and Vavasour Godkin Gallery, Auckland
Bathroom Wall 2006
DVD
duration: 45 secs
Courtesy of 64zero3 Gallery, Christchurch and Vavasour Godkin Gallery, Auckland