Beating the machine in Wellington

Beating the machine in Wellington

Most people don’t know the word ‘stereopsis’ but have probably experienced it nonetheless: it means seeing in 3D. The concept exploded in the ‘90s with ‘Magic Eye’ and has further developed with blockbuster movies like Avatar.

Machines have always been responsible for making 3D illusions, but in an exhibition opening on 22 June at Page Blackie Gallery in Wellington, artist Sarah Munro wrenches the power back from computers by creating (by hand) two-dimensional artworks that appear to leap off the wall in 3D.

Page Blackie Gallery Director James Blackie says, “it’s difficult to limit Sarah’s works to a particular meaning. They become many things to different people. For example, each work might look like part of an architectural structure, or an alien hieroglyph, or a rectilinear microscopic organism…or perhaps something from an ‘80s computer game”.

The battle between the human hand of the artist and the machine is a hundred years old now. Andy Warhol created a factory that made art without him laying a finger to the process, and Marcel Duchamp had his ‘ready-mades’ – putting every day, machine made objects, into an art gallery.

Sarah Munro turns this concept on its head, by painstakingly creating beautiful shapes by hand, carefully spray painting them with automotive paint and eventually hand polishing them. The result is something that looks machine-made and three-dimensional, as though components for a fantastic robot.

Sarah Munro will be in Wellington to open her exhibition, Pictorial Space, at Page Blackie Gallery from 5:30pm on Tuesday 22 June.

Munro completed her Doctorate in Fine Art at the University of Auckland in 2005 and immediately following was the recipient of the prestigious Frances Hodgkins Fellowship at the University of Otago in 2006. She has exhibited extensively, both privately and publicly throughout New Zealand, including a recent exhibition at Te Tuhi Gallery in Auckland.

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