The Happy Place

After decades of scientific and technological development hurtling us ever faster forward, we know that science fiction can be close to science fact.

Science fiction scenarios are often played out by way of horror stories that become engrained in the popular consciousness. Childhood nightmares from reading The Day of the Triffids or 1984, for example, remain with us as adults in the shadows, warning of the dangers that come with genetic modification or surveillance by unseen forces.

Playing with these shadows, Brit Bunkley’s art explores the tension between nature and culture – something increasingly mediated through computers. Working digitally, Bunkley plays unsettlingly with the quicksand material that is nature manipulated, altered and industrialised. He gives nature a shunting, mechanistic sheen: things aren’t quite right; there is a ghost in the machine. There is also the sense that nature just might bite back: take for example, the giant computer-rendered Avondale Spider to be found rampaging through an industrial zone, as if in a B-Horror movie, in his video installation The Huntsman.

In Bunkley’s work you sense an apocalyptic raincloud hanging over the New Zealand landscape. As an apparition it is like a modern memento mori – the grim reaper in the shape of a fighter plane. And yet Bunkley doesn’t just evoke horror or protest environmental degradation. There is beauty and wit. He celebrates our landscapes and popular culture as much as he tunnels down under their heavily marketed, glossy surfaces. The gnomes and angels that sometimes appear in his work remind us of the preciousness of nature and humanity, and the delicate fabric that holds the human, natural and spiritual worlds in balance. Like the shimmying shadows of dancers in Bunkley’s Downbreak on 1, Upbeat on 2there is beauty in the push and pull of nature and culture’s dance.

Whether video, public object or a drawing of a 3D wireframe model, Bunkley’s work is all in essence sculpture: how material and the shapes it might take express our relationship to the world. Natural or synthetic, he is concerned with the construction of things, how a material’s potential might be extended, and how everything is ultimately made from a series of building blocks or pixels.

Bunkley’s background has bearing on the distinctiveness of his practice. He moved from the United States to Whanganui in 1995, bringing with him a rich public sculpture practice just as the digital revolution was upon us. Now surrounded by green, undulating chemically-altered farmland, Bunkley had shifted contexts dramatically, but this step away provides him a keen eye on militaristic attitudes towards our environment.

Bunkley’s work seems to suggest that the way we engage with our environment here in New Zealand might not be so different in its aggression to the way his former homeland engages as a superpower within the world. On the other hand, in his study of insects and landscapes, Bunkley is also celebrating the combative resistance nature itself asserts.

With this much drama embedded in our landscape, who needs horror movies?

Essay by Mark Amery

BIOGRAPHY

Born: 1955, New York, USA

Lives: Whanganui

Education: Master of Fine Arts, Hunter College, New York, USA; Bachelor of Fine Arts, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Minnesota, USA

Awards/Distinctions: EVA (Experimental Video Architecture) – Special Mention, Best Idea Category (2013); The Wallace Art Awards – Finalist (2013); Now&After ’12, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Russian Federation – Third Prize (2012); Sculpture Whanganui Award – Winner (2011); Connell’s Bay Sculpture Park Temporary Installation Project, Auckland (2008); Wallace Arts Trust Grant (2005); Rome Prize Fellowship, American Academy, Rome (1985-86); New York State Council on the Arts Project Grant (1983-84); New York State Council on the Arts Artist's Fellowship Grant, Creative Artist's Program Service (1983); National Endowment for the Arts Artist's Fellowship (1980-81)

Collections: Whanganui District Council (Hear My Train a’ Comin’ Commission); Sarjeant Gallery, Whanganui; The James Wallace Arts Trust, Auckland; The New Zealand Film Archive, Wellington; Minnesota Percent for Art in Public Places, Minnesota History Center, USA; New York City College, USA; Bay Shore Train Station (N.Y.M.T.A., New York Arts for Transit Commission), USA

Public Exhibitions (selected):FILE 2015; Fiesp Cultural Center, Sao Paulo, Brazil (2015),International short- and longfilm videodays 2015,G.A.S-station gallery, Berlin,Germany (2015);View Finder,Auckland Central Library (2014); 3D Printing and the Arts: What Things May Come, The Etter-Harbin Center, University of Texas, USA (2014); CologneOFF X, Videoart Festival Miden, Kalamata, Greece (2014); Digital Graffiti, Alys Beach, Florida, USA (2014); Odd Peer Nexus, The Young, Wellington (2014); The 10th Berlin International Directors Lounge, Berlin, Germany (2014); Festival Images Contre Nature 2013, Théâtre des Chartreux, Marseille, France (2013); Paradox of Plenty, Pah Homestead, TSB Bank Wallace Arts Centre, Auckland (2013); Oslo Screen Festival, Oslo Central Station, Norway (2013); Rosebank Artwalk/Sitework, Auckland Arts Festival (2013); White Night, Auckland Arts Festival (2013); Now&After ’12, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Russian Federation (2012); CologneOFF 8, Budapest International Shortfilm Festival, Hungry, ExTeresa Arte Actual, Mexico City (2012); O:4W Film Festival, Cardiff, Wales (2012); Dio-noia (Dioramas of Paranoia), The Suter Te Aratoi o Whakatu, Nelson (2011); E4C, Electronic Gallery, Seattle, USA (2011); Sanctioned Array-Other2 Specify, WHITE BOX, New York, USA (2010); Hybrids, Media and Interdisciplinary Arts Centre, Auckland (2010); Rencontres Internationales Madrid/Berlin/Paris, Reina Sofia National Museum, Madrid, Spain,The Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany, The Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2010); Urban Screens Melbourne 08, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne, Australia (2008); Slow Train a’ Comin’, The New Zealand Film Archive Pelorus Trust Mediagallery, Wellington (2007); 404 Festival: 4th Edition, Trieste, Rome, Vienna, Hasselt, Europe (2007); Rural Vignettes, The New Zealand Film Archive Gallery, Wellington (2006) 

Publications/Articles: ‘Thinking well outside the box’ by Mark Amery, The Dominion Post, Feb 2014; ‘Return of the spider man’ by Linda Herrick, The New Zealand Herald, Sept 2013; ‘Train of Thought’, Art News New Zealand, Winter 2012, pg 24; Artsville, TVNZ, 2011 (Documentary); Marshall, John (ed), Perimeters, Boundaries and Borders, Lancaster, UK: Fast-uk, 2008, pp 40-41; Fleming, Ronald Lee, The Art of Placemaking: Interpreting Community Through Public Art and Urban Design, London: Merrell Publishing, 2008, pp 84 -85; Bloodworth, Sandra and William Ayres, Along the Way: MTA Arts for Transit, Celebrating 20 Years of Public Art, New York: Monacelli Press, 2006