The Exhibition is open until the February 27, in Civic Square. Housed in two conjoined cargo containers, cleverly fitted out with gallery-style white-painted walls and halogen downlights, it’s worth a look just to see how much innovation the guys at Weta have used to put the exhibit together.
Greg Broadmore has created some amazing artworks for Dodgy Slips, using the limited palette available on the Nintendo DS, and has exercised both his sense of humour, and a genuinely expressed love of the female form.
The naked ladies in Dodgy Slips are portrayed in all the luminous variety of womanhood—I’ve seen a lot of porn depictions of women, artificially displayed to appeal to the male gaze, to create desire and longing, and this selection of images was completely the opposite—natural variations in the forms of women, amazingly apt facial expressions, and more poses than I ever saw in gymnastic competitions. I could almost accuse Broadmore of having a feminist subtext, if I didn’t know better.
Christian Pearce’s contribution to the project, Deadly Sleds, is another dose of clever use of design limitations, and in-jokes abound for anyone familiar with the vernacular of chop-shops and drag racers. I discovered, eavesdropping on other participants at the opening night drinks, there are some drawings based on real, half-finished classic cars owned by other Weta staffers. There are some real cute spray-jobs in there, too.
There are 99 pictures by each artist (the number of slots Nintendo DS holds in memory at once), and originals are for sale, as well as the books of prints, at the site—all items priced at $99, eftpos on site and all sold items can be collected at the end of the exhibition period. The production standards on the books are excellent, a truly worthy effort to cater for those who may not be able to afford a block of the grouped prints. As a “side project,” unrelated to current production at Weta Workshops, the exhibition has full support from Richard Taylor to his artistic protégés. The exhibition is staffed by a rotation of volunteers, who are all local artists.Dodgy Slips, Deadly Sleds