Second chance

Image supplied by Pataka Museum of Arts and Cultures

EVERYDAY DEBRIS: Eve Armstrong, Run Off, 2007, Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery, Toi o Tamaki.

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I missed this exhibition at its first showing in Pataka, the Museum of Arts and Culture at Porirua, so stumbling across it at the Sarjeant Gallery in Whanganui, where it runs over the summer until March 28, is my second chance at Second Life.

Second Life isn't an exhibition of computer-digitalised landscapes where avatars fight heroic deeds. Rather, it is the pun title of an exhibition of five artists' projects who work in recycled materials. This is clever because this trendy and contemporary term fits with work that is also these things, not the simple tack that re-used materials can often end up as presenting, but a modern souped-up version, "upcycled" rather than recycled, to use the jargon.

The exhibition was put together by Pataka, the Museum of Arts and Culture in Porirua, another smaller gallery that seems to punch above its weight. The exhibition is touring, and has moved to the Sarjeant in Whanganui.

These are exactly the sorts of exhibitions I really enjoy; five artists who have common thread but are very different in other regards. Five, a number to give you a good mix, you aren't swamped as you can be with a big group exhibition, each with room enough to give you a proper taste, and five means this reviewer has a chance to squeeze in a few lines on each.

Judy Darragh, first up as longstanding proponent, once labelled the Queen of Kitsch, as if with a new haircut and shoes she has been updated and revamped into a new era. Her jumbled concoctions are now replaced with contemporary installations. Here a wall of records, titled Dawn to Dusk, make up a hit parade mural using fluoro-paint; beads oozing in what looks like a sticky goo and a jumble of bottles on small coffee tables all painted in silver spray with balls and splashes of fluoro (literally), create a moonscape, like a budget science-fi. This one, playful and fun, has the title Plonk, evoking both the cheap booze of the bottles and the haphazard method by which the ingredients are arranged.

Eve Armstrong, using everyday debris, creates much quieter environments. Mixing the texture of castaways, she intuitively composes giant collages. Plastic rubbish bins and cardboard, old metal shelving and clothes racks are collected together. An open file makes a repeated horizontal line, a plastic bag a wispy soft drape amid the geometry – for these are giant artworks using the same formalist principles as more conventional media.

Joanna Langford uses everyday materials to create magical storybook dream-worlds. Wooden skewers made into ladders and scaffolding, plastic bag clouds, computer keyboards lit into cities of mini-Manhattans at night... these Lilliputian lands are deliberately low-tech with glue gun attachments with an intended clumsy quality.

A cascade of Pacific colour, using artificial leis, creates a waterfall in the work by Niki Hastings-McFall. And using a host of materials that now might be surplus to requirements (a Crown Lynn vase, gold watchstrap, plastic beads, sequins, and dice among it), she makes up small, gaudy statuettes.

Peter Madden makes collage from small cutouts. This is not ham-fisted but cleverly done, with small animals and images (National Geographic magazines are a favourite source) mounted on small pins. There are hundreds in The Leaving, arranged around a perfect clean circle. Some smaller works have the feel of Duchamp, "assisted ready-mades", one with butterflies spouting from an old shoe.

A witty exhibition, DIY art, but with artists who are well versed in contemporary art with a good understanding of aesthetics.

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