Simon Cuming
13 - 31 March
Expanded Cinema Performance
Saturday 27 March 2pm
Artist Talk #curatorsofcuba
Sunday 28 March 2pm
Pōneke based artist Simon Cuming investigates the ambiguity that occurs between the delivery and reception of information in his new exhibition at Toi Pōneke Gallery.
Cuming constructs elaborate sonic devices, optic paintings and prints based on analogue information systems and technology including radios, records, tapes and books. He explores how information can be recorded and altered through filters like sound and pattern, reminding us of the multiple ways meaning can be manipulated or shift through translation.
A video and sound work shows a hand-painted record spinning to a distorted audio transcription of a famous hypnotist’s advice on self-improvement. Large paintings combine paint with printmaking techniques in a repeated matrix to create optical patterns that play with visual perceptions of space. A small tethered plane carrying a painted banner flies in circles around the gallery.
Cuming also creates a sound work using a radio transmitter which records sounds from the street outside the gallery, then processes them through a hand-built modulation unit – once again filtering how information is delivered and understood.
As with any approach to art-making, perception can be ambiguous.
As part of the exhibition, a sound performance will take place during the Cuba Dupa Festival. Cuming’s musical experimentation will include improvised forms and hallucinatory musical scores in an expanded cinema performance with “clunky, psychedelic” visual manipulation by Wellington artist Mike Heynes.
