Portrait of the Nation as a Young Man - Courtesy of The Dominion Post 28-04-06
By Mark Amery

There's an interesting tension between artist and public art gallery today. It used to be simpler: an artist entrusted a gallery with their work hoping it would be hung in an orderly manner. These days, with the gallery space sometimes treated as conceptual architecture, it can be as much about the artist taking on the gallery as the gallery taking on the artist.

Image: Daniel du Bern Protection - Artist talk at City Gallery Wellington, May 11th 6pm.Portrait of the Nation as a Young Man - Courtesy of The Dominion Post 28-04-06
By Mark Amery

There's an interesting tension between artist and public art gallery today. It used to be simpler: an artist entrusted a gallery with their work hoping it would be hung in an orderly manner. These days, with the gallery space sometimes treated as conceptual architecture, it can be as much about the artist taking on the gallery as the gallery taking on the artist.

Image: Daniel du Bern Protection - Artist talk at City Gallery Wellington, May 11th 6pm.When you turn up for an opening of an emerging artist at a public gallery you're interested to see how much that artist - having managed to get inside the castle walls - has managed to get away with.

Daniel du Bern's done well indeed. He's staged a coup, in every sense. For his exhibition Protection this young Wellington artist has commandeered the flagpoles above City Gallery and hoisted black flags (the poles normally used for public commemorative business). Then, as you enter, the artist is seen dressed in black on a video monitor bundled up in a corner of a white empty gallery, head in his hands- like some militant who now doesn't know what to do with themselves. Turn into the Michael Hirschfeld Gallery and Du Bern assaults you with the widest variety of media and direct art tactics possible to hammer his ideas home.

The many-threaded work together cleverly explores how we as a nation and as individuals adopt different black and white uniform for protection (and by black and white I mean colours as well as positions). It's self portrait as well as portrait of a nation, exploring the contradictions inherent in how we talk of being subversive and individual, yet hide collectively behind design.

Exposing the emptiness of this self-righteousness, there's the young person hiding in a hoodie (in a photograph of the artist), an anarchist with black flag and a stock brand of heavy metal (references to punk outfit Minor Threat abound - their name telling us so much); and a country proud of both being prepared to invade the pitch to protest against apartheid and its 100% pure brand. Then there's the artist himself, shielding himself with art brands and hiding behind a maze of smart appropriations.

The conceptual layers are most elegantly expressed with the black flags: it's the anarchist flag, the art crowd dressed for an opening, our colour as a sporting nation, an evocation of Team New Zealand's call to be 'loyal', and a smart reference to the permanent Hotere and Culbert work 'Fault' below across the front of the building - itself a reference to Hotere's black paintings, Gordon Walters, Malevich, Mondrian and the whole formalist art shebang. I entered the building wondering what we should all be in mourning for.

Du Bern's interest in conceptual based formalism and the tensions surrounding nationalism and self portraiture remind me of the equally bold Julian Dashper. As self-portrait, du Bern's exhibition is homage to his influences, be they artists or in one corner a blacked out family tree. Really however this self-portraiture is a carefully constructed shield serving the exhibition's end. I'm reminded of a teenage boy in his bedroom - happiest in rebellion wearing headphones and chanting, decorating his satchel with a black felt-tip, with stickers and posters covering every available surface.

Sonic Youth's great hymn 'Teenage Riot' also celebrated the young punk spirit (a "teenage riot in a public station, gonna fight and tear it up in a hypernation") while exposing dual ambivalence and anger. Du Bern also plays with the push and pull between the individual's projected attitude and their reality, leaving young people looking like that artist curled up in a corner. Protection suggests it's a stasis we also risk as a nation.

Full of bratty bombast, du Bern undoubtedly tries too hard (the flag and a few items in the gallery would have been enough). He spells things out loudly through numerous strategies as if he doesn't trust us. Yet arguably this itself is yet another strategy in keeping with his concept. When in the wall text for a collection of work here he acknowledges the copyright of gallery director Paula Savage, Michael Joseph Savage and the artist Savage (from Dawn Raid Entertainment) he's being too clever, and yet also hits all of his targets beautifully. As 'portrait of the artist as a young man' the work's precociousness and indulgence is equal parts admirable and exasperating.

For all the work's calculated cleverness, conscious lack of fresh ideas and subsequent lack of mystery, there's a frisson between its layers that engages. It's like a great DJ mixtape, working hard and smart to tease out a variety of threads which relate vitally to our culture in the here and now.

Protection, Daniel Du Bern, Michael Hirschfeld Gallery, City Gallery Wellington, until May 21

Artist's Talk: Daniel du Bern - Protection

Thursday May 11, 6pm

Join Wellington-based artist Daniel du Bern for a look at his solo exhibition PROTECTION. Expanding out from the Michael Hirschfeld Gallery to colonise other parts of City Gallery (including the SQUARE2 video monitors in the gallery entrance and the flagpoles on top of the building), PROTECTION has been described as a 'portrait of the artist and a portrait of the nation'. Alongside a self-portrait and items of personal significance, the exhibition contains objects and images that more broadly relate to New Zealand's visual culture.