Whole Days Inside

This work is from an exhibition at Auckland gallery Hopkinson Cundy which was connected with the artist's summer residency at the McCahon House. For this exhibition, titled 'On or within a scenario', Ruth Buchanan reflected upon the relationship between material surface and ‘modes of display’. The project began with a broader reflection on how structures, materials and information from otherwise domestic environments might be borrowed, or abstracted within an exhibition environment which heightens their materials for display only purpose.

The artist utilised for her research a piece of television footage from the 1980s in which a school group visited the Dowse Museum, Lower Hutt, and were encouraged to explore the museum artefacts through touch.

All works in this project whatever the medium explore the separation, or relationship, between looking and touching, between sensory experience and mental or intellectual examination.

She uses colour and language to sumptuous effect in order to demonstrate both the compulsion towards touch and its prohibition within a gallery/museum environment which requires other form of communication and understanding.

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