Fleshly Worn

ASA Gallery, Auckland

24 November - 14 December 1995

Fleshly Worn
Richard McWhannell
Monique Redmond
Louise Bourgeois
Giovanni Intra
Peter Madden
Yuk King Tan
Darren Glass
Lucy Harvey
CITY GROUP

Esther Leigh
Robert Jahnke
James Charlton
Patricia Piccinini
John Puhiatau Pule
Christopher Braddock
Lesley Kaiser & John Barnett
Catalogue essay by Vanya Kovach
Co-ordinated by Christopher Braddock

Fleshly Worn is supported by:

ASA Bachelor of Visual Arts Programme, School of Art & Design,

Auckland Institute of Technology
ASA Gallery, Auckland Society of Arts
ti Apple Computer

This catalogue is published on the occasion of Fleshly Worn at the ASA

Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand, 24 November -14December1995 in
association with the University of Auckland Symposium Bodies in
Question, 23 - 26November1995.

This catalogue was made possible by the generous assistance of:

Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland
Gregory Flint Gallery, Auckland
James Wallace Charitable Arts Trust, Auckland
Aberhart North Gallery, Auckland
Grierson Consultants: Art & Education, Auckland

Christopher Braddock wishes to thank the artists and Vanya Kovach for
their enthusiastic involvement in Fleshly Worn.
Thanks are also due to Elaine Mayer, Gallery Manager at the ASA
Gallery, for her support.

ISBN 0 - 473 - 03562 - 6

ASA Gallery, the artists and Vanya Kovach, 1995

Acknowledging and Resisting the Divided Self

A philosophical response to Fleshly Worn
Vanya Kovach
1. The Self Contained. Here is something that can be said - we wear
our flesh. Our body is presented to us through the eyes of others, and
by our own uses of it, as raiment, as apparel. To the eyes of eighteenth
century Europeans, the flesh of Pacific Islanders was the costume of the
Pacific; expressive, representative, acceptable and thereby available to
the eye. And for all of culture that has stemmed from Europe, from the
decisive split between body and mind carved by Descartes, our self is
the self contained and clothed in the body.
The increasingly visual bias of twentieth century culture has made us
even more distanced from our outer selves. We are_all, and women
most, sights to each other. Some claim that the history of consciousness
is just the story of how we learn to feel other than ourselves and other
from the present. If this is true, then the most obvious and powerfully
intimate contrast to the transcendent self is the body.
Using and Losing the Body. We wear our bodies and we use them.
Using and experiencing the body as a tool both cuts across our distance
from it, and adds to it. The action of my body is an extension of myself.
For John Locke, our right to our bodies allows us to also make claim to,
to make possessions of, those things that we mix our bodies wit!}, the
fruits of our labour. We write upon the world with our bodies, leave our
especial mark which makes the world our own.
But the products of our bodies can stand in opposition to us, deny our
involvement, our belonging. When no personal mark is left on a
product, it stands alone. We are left with the task of remaking a
relationship, trying to forge a tie between the thing and its origin,
between our self and the work of our body or the bodies of others.

Inscribing the Flesh. We work and write upon the world - and the
world writes on us. The inscription of experience on the body connects
and disconnects us to it. It disconnects most where we experience
ourselves as a sight, most particularly, a sight for others, the wearing of
our body a performance or betrayal.
But the body is also an objective record; it cites the past to us in readable
terms, life made flesh. In this way the body is a text. This fashionable
statement is dangerous, since it can seduce us too wholly into the
reflective and distanced state that divides us into body and self, and
makes other people more other. A body in pain or exhilaration is only
text if it is someone else's.
What Cannot be Said. Sh all we reject dualism, reject the separation of
self and body? To do this we must make claim to the identity of a
unified self - we must say "I am my body". But within th e net of
language, this cannot be said.
Take this from Wittgenstein. The solipsist attempts to say that she or he
is the single real entity in existence and that which constitutes all
experience. But to say this, to say "the world is my world" is to grant the
independent existence of the world with those words. The position of
the solipsist cannot be said.
So it is with the claim to be identical to the body. When I say "I am my
body", th e "my" commits me to assigning to my bod y the status of a
possession, or at most a mere part of a whole. I cannot say that I and my
body are a whole and self-identical thing. Language separates us.
2. What follows from this is not that my body and self cannot indeed be
identical; ontology may follow language, but it may not. I need not
conclude about what is real from how I am forced to speak. But even
though what is may not flow from language, self conceptions do, and in
enunciating our relation to the body (see again how speaking parts us)
we are placed in a position of alienation from it.

Location of the Body. The body is the central site of experience. The
consciousness of this is what is missing from our picture of body as
clothing, tool, text, externality, other. Our flesh locates us as selves,
provides an index against which spatial and temporal relations are
created. The body is the here and the now. Its mere physical presence,
rather than its character, gives us the most primary and the most
minimal identity. It is the aspect of self that gives quantitative, and not
qualitative difference. It makes us what we are, not who. It is what
makes us this thing in the world, and not another, for all our
resemblances to everything else.
The complexities of self-reflexive, hyper-conscious identifications of self
fall away from the plain being of the body located as itself.
The Integrity of the Senses. If reflection can separate us from the body,
then action and sensation can make us whole. The senses make body
and self continuous: a responsive unit. They place us, distinct but
engaged, in the world.

David Hurne maintained that the self did not exist, because it could not
be found . Everywhere we look inside our selves, he said, all we see are
thoughts, memories, desires, beliefs, sensations. The self is nowhere,
and is not. We are nothing but bundles of d isparate bits.
What holds us together then? Obviously, the body. And the senses, the
means by which the body is in the world, give what we choose to call
the self its integrity. We find ourselves most whole, not when we
introspect, when we turn inwards, but when we are flooded with the
world through the senses, in sex or skydiving or the unthinking sensual
life of the infant. There the experience of embodied self through the
senses is our original condition, our sincerity.

Richard McWhannell was born in Akaroa, Banks Peninsula. He completed a Diploma of

Fine Arts at Canterbury University in 1972 and has been living in Auckland since 1977. In
1982 he travelled to Europe on a QEII Arts Council grant and in 1985 began working full
time as a painter-sculptor.

Female Nude 1995, oil on canvas on board

courtesy of Aberhart North Gallery
Monique Redmond has been working as a sculptor since 1991. She has exhibited
extensively in group exhibitions including: Space Fictions; Cross Pollination; Home Made
Home; Vogue/Vague - New Sculptors, New Sculpture; and in the Auckland City Art Gallery
Window (1992). Adam was no fool at the Fisher Gallery in 1994 incorporated traditional
techniques and processes in an installation of seven tapestry stools. This was followed by In
the Night Kitchen at New Work Studio, Wellington in June 1995. Monique Redmond lives in
Auckland.

The Magician's Nephew 1995, appletons tapestry wool, 7 to the inch canvas and rimu
Louise Bourgeois was born in Paris in 1911 and lives in New York.

For over fifty years Louise Bourgeois has been giving shape to memory. Her childhood is the source of
much of her imagery and all of her motivation. Robert Storr,Dislocations, 1992
Untitled 1947, ink on paper
Untitled i948, ink on paper
Giovanni Intra was born in May, 1968, and graduated with an MFA degree from the
University of Auckland in 1993. He is a founding member of TESTSTRIP, Auckland, and is
.the New Zealand correspondent for Art & Text, Sydney. 1995 exhibitions include: No More
Hospitals, at the Manawatu Art Gallery; Notes On The Future of Vandalism, at TESTSTRIP;
Support Terroism, at the Galerie Dessford Vogel; and Ray, at Hamish McKay Gallery. Recent
articles: The Poetics of Modern Reverie (Teststrip Micrographs); Discourse on the Paucity of
Clinical Reality (Midwest); and A Syringe Pencil (Minge).

Not titled 1995, engraved plastic sign, edition of three

courtesy of TESTSTRIP

Peter Madden was born in 1966 and completed a BVA at the ASA School of Art, Auckland
Institute of Technology in 1994. Adopts a chameleon 1996. Feels insecure about security.
People let him show the things he calls Art*. Decides he will keep making these things until
at some time later when there is no need reinvents the word love (for himself) and decides
to do it to every thing.
*The biggest small word he knows
Imminent Fields and Absent Places 1995, bubbles, carnivalesque mirror, ice and mixed media

Yuk King Tan is an artist whose practise articulates personal explorations into the
continuous process of translation and integration. By manipulating ready-made, found and
bought objects, Tan's work is an intimate analysis of the preoccupations about identity,
exploring notions of multiple perspectives from dual-cultural heritage to national psyche.
Untitled 1995, tiger bairn and mixed media

Darren Glass is an Aucklan d based photographer who finished a BFA at Elam in 1993. He
recently exhibited in Currency: Contemporary Photography at the Auckland Museum. His
work is exclusively black and white and since 1992 he has experimented with multi-aperture
pin-hole cameras. The camera employed to produce Bed/Settee, Volcanic Street September uses
two pinholes separated at approximately the same distance as h u man eyes, simulating
binocular vision.
Bed/Settee, Volcanic Street September 1995, gelatine silver print

Lucy Harvey was born in England in 1967 and lived in New Zealand from 1979-1995. She
gradua ted from the ASA School of Art, Auckland In stitute of Technology in 1994. She is
currently living in London.
The Constancy Of My Longing Unnerves And Depletes Me 1995, paper constructed installation
with pen drawing

CITY GROUP have produced photo and video installations for more than a decade. The
results of these projects have been exhibited both nationally and internationally.
CITY GROUP's art is distinctive in the way it combines a strongly intellectual or conceptual form
with highly sensuous, physical details ... Roger Horrocks
Original Sin 1995, video installation (for Gregor Nicholas)

Esther Leigh lives and works in Auckland. She completed her BFA at Elam School of Fine
Arts in 1989. After travelling abroad for some months, she returned to Elam and completed
an MFA (First Class Honours) in 1992. The following year she was awarded a Q u een
Elizabeth II Arts Council grant to conduct research in the United States. She has been named
the Olivia Spencer Bower fellow for 1996. Her present imagery involves residual traces of
forms and surfaces in a process akin to that of frottage.
Lock 1995, graphite and enamel on board.

courtesy of Anna Bibby Gallery.

Robert Jahnke Te Whanau a Rakairoa, Ngati Porou, is an artist whose work addresses the
dynamics of ownership and habitation on the body of the land. He has completed an MFA
at both Elam School of Fine Arts and the Californian Institute of the Arts. Jahnke currently
lectures at Massey University.
Transplanted Culture 1995, steel, wood, synthetic grass, ready lawn, weed killer

courtesy of Fox Gallery

James Charlton was born in England and immigrated to New Zealand in 1973. He
completed a BFA at Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland in 1982. In 1984 he was awarded a
Fulbright -Hays Travel Grant to undertake postgraduate studies at the State University of
New York, Albany ( 1984-86). After graduating with an MFA Charlton took up lecturing
positions in sculpture at the University of New Hampshire, Durham, and Montserrat
College _of Art, Boston. Returning to New Zealand in 1991 he has continued to exhibit in
New Zealand and the USA and curren tly shows with Aberhart North Gallery, Auckland.
Mixer 1995, M.D.F and paint, 32 individual units

Patricia Piccinini is an artist based in Melbourne, Australia. H er work is mainly concerned

with the changing nature of the body as it is seen via the medical and technological gaze. The
Mutant Genome Project (TMGP) is an ongoing work that examines these issues, focusing on
genetic research and consumer medicine. TMGP has been exhibited in four components to
date. Patricia Piccinini is the co-ordinator of an artist run exhibition space in Melbourne
called The Basement Gallery where two of the components have been shown. The third is
part of a travelling exhibition currently touring Asia called Alternative Realities, and the
fourth was exhibited at the New Media Network, Melbourne.
The Mutant Genome Project -CMS Genetic Manipulation Simulator 1994-5, CD ROM and
digiprint

John Puhiatau Pule is a Niue artist living in Auckland. He is the author of the first Niuean
novel entitled Ko e Mago Ne Kai e La (The Shark that Ate the Sun). The suit exhibited in
Fleshly Worn was purchased by Pule's father for his baptism by American Mormons in
Papatoetoe, Auckland.
Pacific Holiday 1995, performance at the opening of Fleshly Worn
Does This Suit You? 1995, suit and hanger

courtesy of Gow Langsford Gallery

Christopher Braddock is a sculptor whose work primarily focuses on the body and is
mainly concerned with issues of sexual representation and politics. Between 1986 and 1992
he studied and worked in Europe. In 1993 he was the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner
Foundation grant and in 1994 his work was included in Station to Station: the way of the Cross
at the Auckland City Art Gallery. Braddock is a lecturer in Art History & Theory on the BVA
Programme, School of Art & Design, Auckland Institute of Technology.
Midmost 1995, customwood and paint

courtesy of Gow Langsford Gallery

Lesley Kaiser and John Barnett have worked together since 1991. Their projects include:
Like They Are Now, an exhibition of artwork texts that they curated and displayed on
electronic signs in Auckland and Wellington (1991); page works in a number of publications,
for instance, Art New Zealand and Landfall (both 1992); several editions of textworks on
self-adhesive labels distributed with magazines and on supermarket rollouts; and You Saw
It On TV, an exhibition of artwork texts shown on TV3 (1993). Kaiser and Barnett's
publications include:Like Wrecks of a Dissolving Dream (1993); The River Sticks and Post Art
(both 1994); and Where We Are Now (1995). John Barnett and Lesley Kaiser live in Auckland.
Burn Time 199S, cibachrome prints mounted on black perspex.
Burn Time 1995, cibachrome prints mounted on black perspex.

courtesy of the Gregory Flint Gallery

Vanya Kovach is a working class girl from the west who got a free education and a Ph.D. in
Philosophy. Now at large in Auckland as a philosopher for hire; works with undergraduates
(University of Auckland), artists (ASA/ AIT), teachers, professionals and children of all
sizes. Committed to making conceptual thinking both useful and delightful, and to
achieving the best possible combination of clarity and complexity in all her thought.

all works courtesy of the artists unless otherwise indicated.

ASA Gallery

ISBN 0 - 473 - 03562 - 6