Living Room 2011: Dragon Head

Ujino’s Dragon Head sculpture takes the form of an automotive taniwha, a mechanical dragon for the modern age, which will occupy Aotea Square, above the Civic Carpark. It will watch over tides of traffic on Queen Street, Auckland’s most iconic road, which was once a stream. The dragon is a creature common in mythology. The image of the dragon came to Japan from China but this was pre-dated by a belief in river gods, visible in rippling water currents, much like the Māori taniwha. With his latest work, Ujino substitutes river currents for the flow of vehicles, a contemporary beast that epitomises the last half-century of globalisation. Like the dragon, international car culture, a primary source of worldwide tension, appears in different forms and meanings in each society, where it has its own history and cultural background, although the technology remains constant. Ujino’s dragon is built from abandoned cars, everyday appliances and local street paraphernalia, taking the detritus of contemporary consumer society and turning it into a giant, celebratory beat-box.

About Living Room 2011:
Living Room, Auckland Council’s annual 10-day public art event, kicks off again in April and will feature artists from all over the world, as well as some well known local faces branching out.

Living Room 2011: Metropolis Dreaming runs from 8-17 April in various public places in Auckland’s CBD. There will be a mix of installations, performances, sound art, video projections and a poster project. Acknowledging that the city is both a cultural and technological hub, the programme will include social projects that highlight the human dynamics of urban life.

This year’s theme, Metropolis Dreaming, encourages people to expand their reality through a celebration of post-industrial urban life. The Italian Futurist movement and their excitement about the clamour and bustle of the machine age inspired the theme chosen by guest curator Andrew Clifford. Metropolis Dreaming projects will spotlight the actual mechanics of the city’s systems, transforming its functional, everyday structures from a routine backdrop into imaginative possibilities.

Event listed by Rebecca Lawson

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