Symbols of creative vision

MARTIN DE RUYTER

POSES: Hester Janssen with gift cards

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This year's exhibition by final-year art and design students at Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology includes one of the most diverse range of art media and the largest number of exhibitors to date. They all offer their take on the title of the exhibition Rebus: a representation of words in the form of pictures or symbols, often presented as a puzzle. Charles Anderson reports.

Walk into Tracy Duncan's studio and it feels like you have interrupted a very strange conversation and you don't belong. Duncan's life-size works are about representation, perception and the way we all construct identities for ourselves to fit into certain social situations. "By having all the pieces life-size it makes them more human. There is a sense of humanity there but it is also encroaching on our space. They are confrontational."

The figures confronting us range from a male model to bikini-clad cowgirl, from a crouching Japanese man to a Palestinian freedom fighter. Or are they? The point in Duncan's work is that any of these figures could be something or someone else. "You judge them based on what they are, you assume they are certain people based on our cultural conditioning."

On closer inspection, the freedom fighter could be a Halloween trick-or-treater, the Japanese man could be a Chinese woman. Duncan creates her characters from images in pop culture. The same way the viewer constructs their notion of the subject matter, the artist purposefully builds her pieces. "They are human, they are not perfect, they are malleable and created."

Many look unfinished, they all have unusually large feet, but their clothes are all impeccably rendered. Walk out of Duncan's studio and you are walking out on a conversation. "There is this crowd of people all looking at you. There is a vulnerability there, they are exposed to us all hung up on the wall and they can't get away, but then we feel exposed because they are surrounding us."

Gordon Da'ath says Tirau is a pretty small town. It is, strictly speaking, where he is from. But his art deals in something broader than merely a physical home. Da'ath is half-Maori (Ngapuhi) and half European. He says he has always felt a little bit between those two worlds, not quite understanding either. "I have a bit of a hybrid identity in New Zealand."

So he uses symbols from both his cultures and others to help rationalise that identity. "I think everyone feels a sense of not being satisfied, that there is something better out there. The Maori sense of belonging is related to environment, this is my mountain and my river. Europeans are more individual. We are in this world so let's make the most of it."

He creates realms. His realms look like bubbles housing symbols that mean something to him. There is a weka in one, Buddha in another. One is hard to make out, the picture is not clear. "That's me," he says. "I painted over them to make them a little unclear. People don't look if you make them too clear or too easy."

In the centre of his middle work is a benevolent tiki, what Da'ath calls an "enlightened being". The tiki knows all. It helps the artist understand his roots and how to grow with them. He says he feels more at peace after finishing his project. After this exhibition he is returning to the North Island to revisit something he felt he missed out on, growing up. He is going to learn about his whakapapa and his heritage. Art school has been a journey, he says.

Felicity Mountfort does not work in fashion, she works in clothing. These pieces are not meant to ebb and flow with the latest trends. Her one-off reversible jackets are meant to last, made from materials and processes which last.

"The environmental effects of the textiles industry are devastating so I created sustainable clothing through the use of synthetic and natural dyes."

Mountfort says her work is about the compromises you make when you create something beautiful. But for her there are no compromises. The fabric and dyes are all made from renewable resources. The fabric is wool, and all the water used for dye is either from the rain or the sea. "There is a lot of alchemy involved."

These are garments designed for longevity. You don't have to wash them all that often and they are comfortable. She has already sold three. Mountfort says she has sewn since she was 13. Her grandmother was a prolific weaver. She took her cue and ran with it.

"I took off with it and took it where I wanted to go."

While she has been studying, Mountfort has been working as a machinist but she wants to continue with her design. "So that's going to be a trade and this is going to be a sideline with it."

Hester Janssen says she felt a bit empty after working in retail for a couple of years. She needed a creative outlet – something a bit different.

She had always enjoyed art but was intrigued by the commercial side of the creative industry as well. So her degree blended both papers from visual arts and design and the graphics and multimedia programme.

"I started the visual arts course because I was really into painting and then I got to dabble in all these areas and I was like, `Ooh I like graphic design'," Janssen says. Her blend between the two take the form of 10 illustrative gift cards that mix her small obsession with fashion and her love of Nelson scenes.

"It's the idea that you too can be in the spotlight."

Janssen took images from magazines of celebrity models, took their poses and made them her own. Then she had a look through the photos taken over her years growing up in Nelson.

"I was remembering the places I liked, the places which did it for me and grabbed my attention and I know they are there so they are attainable."

So Rabbit Island is there, so is Rocks Rd and Tahunanui Beach. "It is about the unattainable female in the attainable location. And they all tell a story. People like narratives."

It is not often that you walk right into the middle of a graphic novel. That was Doti Young's idea, letting the viewer get up close and personal with the pages of her life. But in this case she found canvas pages weren't quite right. She needed a plan B.

Then along came plan X – making plastic dresses, with sewn-in snapshots of her life hung in formation from the ceiling.

"The idea came in one of the serendipitous moments, like they always do."

Plan X looks elaborate, but Young insists that it is only when all the 71 dresses are together that they look that way. Take them individually and they are all rather simple. The dresses have simple names as well, such as Cat in a Box, Lawnmower, Pants, Soles and Lone Tree. Each dress tells a small story, a snippet of her life. It is more a scrapbook than a novel, but moving through the dresses, the viewer can make up their own plot lines. Opposite her dancing angels are photos she took at night while a street light peeked through her studio window. The dresses look green. "They don't look like that to the naked eye." In her physical scrapbook there are dresses but no people, but in the photo there are not even any dresses, just shadows.

GRADUATE EXHIBITION

NMIT annual graduate exhibition at The Suter Art Gallery from Saturday to December 6. The artists and designers in the show are: Alice McIntyre, Susie Reid, Hester Janssen, Felicity Mountfort, Gordon D'Ath, Tracy Duncan, Doti Young, Stephanie Mackay, Sandra Mead, Helen Grant, Sue Hayde, Lisa White, Sandy Paterson, Max Van Susteren, Maree Corrin, Eric Huckle and Rebecca Davies.