Terry Urbahn Selected Works 1994 - 2008

Terry Urbahn - Selected Works 1994 - 2008 reveals the artist–as–archaeologist, sifting through the traces of New Zealand’s sub-cultures that ferment in the museum, the public bar and the dosshouse.

Consisting of video, sculpture, diorama and photography the exhibition collects a body of work created during the artist’s years living and working in Wellington. The show exhibits daily in both the gallery and the cinema, where Urbahn has installed his most ambitious video work to date, The Sacred Hart (2008). The inclusion of this work has been made possible by special arrangement with Auckland Festival 2009.

For The Sacred Hart Urbahn threw a lavish banquet in the Public Bar of the White Hart Hotel in New Plymouth prior to the Hotel’s (impending) closure. The guests were local personalities who, like himself, had various connections with the Hotel. While they enjoyed a meal of several courses and endless liquid refreshments, Urbahn filmed the guest’s reminiscing conversations. If at first the video is a slightly uncomfortable meeting of disparate people (including motorcycle enthusiasts, the former and current owners of the hotel, an art gallery director, musicians and artists) what emerges is the shared sense of history created by a small town’s communal watering hole. The installation is completed by the dramatic presence of a life-sized statue of a stag. The stag is modelled from the original which sits on the roof of the White Hart Hotel, and as the video plays the stag slowly rotates atop a revolving plinth mimicking the tracking of the camera. These slow (if not disconcerting) movements are complimented by the fragmented surround soundtrack.

In the gallery is a variety of work created in Wellington from 1994 that led to the making of The Sacred Hart in 2008.

The three part installation Tracey’s World (1995) documents Urbahn’s engagement with the Columbia Hotel on Cuba Street for the site-specific installation Pretty Vacant (commissioned for Te Papa’s 1994 exhibition Art Now). The video features the artist conducting a guided tour of the derelict hotel in the style of a stalker/reality T.V. video. The building is an orgy of destruction and discontent. Furniture is smashed, rubbish strewn across floor and personal effects lay abandoned. Urbahn creeps through the corridors, an outstretched hand pushing open doors to reveal the remnants of a life left by the former inhabitants. Alongside this video work, Urbahn presents a series of large plastic sleeves containing 'artefacts’ left by residents including notes, letters and miscellaneous objects as well as three portable museum dioramas from the former National Museum Education Service outreach programme. Urbahn cribbed together “stories” from “Tracey’s” (a hotel resident) personal diary and overlaid them on the cases ethnographic text and miniature models.

As well as being a practicing artist Terry Urbahn maintains a career as an exhibitions project manager. Based in Sydney, he is currently coordinating Australia’s representation at the 2009 Venice Biennale. He will be returning to Wellington for the opening of his show.

Event listed by Film Archive

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