Martin Basher's exhibition High Class Boner Meds / Paradise Sale follows his three-month residency at the Colin McCahon House. You can see our earlier post on the residency here.
Taking his cue from internet spam emails selling Viagra, Martin Basher's exhibition uses iconic everyday images and objects to ask questions about what our consumer society wants and believes in. His work features exquisite photorealist paintings of beaches and hands, collages, cryptic placards and signs, and sculptural assemblages featuring a variety of consumer goods and fluorescent lights. His work plies the ocean of contemporary culture and the backwaters of spiritual deficit, focusing specifically on the way that desire (material, sexual and spiritual) is bound with consumerism belief and politics. Piling images and icons together in what look almost like haphazard arrangements, Basher's work destabilises straight hierarchies of taste, quality and class. Material goods are plentiful, lifestyle is easy, interest is low, but gratification is elusive. From the Lopdell House Gallery website
High Class Boner Meds / Paradise Sale runs at Auckland's Lopdell House Gallery until 6 September 2010
Image: Martin Basher's studio, Colin McCahon House, Titirangi, Auckland, 2010
