Artwork Information

Ronnie van Hout’s Psycho is a self-portrait with a case of pre-millennial anxiety. Riffing off Alfred Hitchcock’s film about identity disastrously undone, van Hout’s work is a send-up of the tortured artist of popular mythology. Rather than the sombre figure of Colin McCahon, striding across the New Zealand

landscape and thundering apocalyptic proclamations, van Hout gives us a fanatical hobbyist trapped in the cage of his bedroom. Simultaneously playing the roles of obsessive fan and unrecognised creative genius, the artist constructs a hall of mirrors.