It's all in the Title

Christchurch. September 2009. Ajr

I photographed this work last week in The Kiosk, that terrific little miniature exhibition space that stands amid pedestrian walkways at the juncture of High, Manchester and Lichfield Streets in central Christchurch. It’s gone now. I’m not sorry. The rather amorphous looking, glazed (ceramic?) mass had me scratching my head. Apart from its rather pleasing colour, nothing about it ‘sung out to me;’ I could make no associations to anything in the interior filing cabinet of my visual storehouse. Then I went around the other side of The Kiosk and saw ‘Adam Willetts: Sludge Beast from the Cosmic Nostril,’ written across the top of the glazed box. Quite frankly, the title and the reflections of the city beyond grabbed my attention far more than the work itself – which, if I’m at my cynical best, looks like a studio accident that the artist then decided to use anyway, christening it with the first title he could think of that somehow described it. I’m looking forward to a more arresting Kiosk placement next time round - it is after all, one of my favourite ‘gallery’ spaces. And if you'd like to see other works that have been displayed in The Kiosk, click on Kiosk or Physics Room in the label line below this post. The Physics Room website also has a comprehensive list (with photos) of all recent exhibitors. www.physicsroom.org.nz