Scott Eady
31 May 2011 - 17 July 2011
Drawing Rooms, Ballroom & Morning Room
…Something lost and something found in the work of Scott Eady. The Pah Homestead is proud to present an exhibition of Scott Eady’s work, both from the Collection and on loan, from 31 May – 17 July 2011.
Eady's large-scale sculptures predominantly challenge the New Zealand male stereotype, and more recently have focused on his dual role as a father and artist. His sculptures are playful, witty, insightful and often frustrating; with a sometimes ambiguous element of violence about them.
This exhibition brings together a wide range of Eady’s oeuvre, including early works such as the interrelated sculptures ‘Scotties’ (1998) and ‘The Desert Fox’ (1999) – the former a deckhouse and trailer that references the long tradition of men and their sheds in New Zealand, and the latter a fantastical and beautifully pink automobile complete with the chassis, suspension, and mechanics of a Mitsubishi L200.
For this exhibition, ‘The Desert Fox’ is towing ‘Scotties’ and has seemingly parked momentarily under the porte-cochère of The Pah Homestead, as if the owner is packing up for a weekend away.
Once inside the Arts Centre the visitor is greeted with a boy in heels to large for him towing a boat entirely knitted in red wool, leading guests into both the Ballroom and Drawing Rooms featuring works developed over the last decade.
Many of these sculptures including ‘Honeymoon On The Pigroot’ (2003), ‘She’s a Hard Road…’ (2003) and ‘Stupid Daddy’ (2010) demonstrate what fellow sculptor and writer Michele Beevers describes as “the search for an impossible masculine subjectivity”; specifically the conflicting multiple viewpoints that result in the search for the ‘perfect man’.
Intermingled with these works are sculptures inspired from the play and imagination of Scott Eady’s children, who have been the source of much of his work from the past decade, and the moral dilemma that this relationship entails. In other works such as ‘Money Train’ (2010) and ‘HANNAH’ (2010) frustration is employed in visual conundrums, while digs at our nationalism are found in ‘God’s Green Hair’ (2010) and ‘God’s Greener Hair’ (2010).
The exhibition ends in the Morning Room where one of Eady’s most recent works, ‘Booty’ (2011), is finally unearthed and put on display for those disgruntled visitors to the same work at the 2011 Headlands Sculpture on the Gulf. On that occasion they found only the promise of treasure with a bronze crossbone to mark the spot. On this occasion visitors will leave with more questions than answers. Something lost, something found in the work of Scott Eady…