rear window
Artist and role
van Hout, Ronnie (New Zealand, b.1962)
Date
2001
See full details
About this work
In 1995 Ronnie van Hout paid himself a visit, but nobody seemed to be home. In the short Super 8 film called Back-Door Man, the artist is first seen peering through the back door of his parents’ home, and knocking to be let in. He disappears, re-emerges on our side of the camera, opens the door and peers out. Nobody there.
It is a chase that takes place time and again in van Hout’s art. The artist goes looking for himself, but ends up chasing an unpredictable shadow. In a career that has encompassed just about every available medium, from skits performed on video to embroideries that prick the pretensions of painting, van Hout has offered many variations on the self-portrait. The alter egos who populate his art include extra-terrestrials, men on the moon, Elvis impersonators and little monkeys. One of the latter turns up in Rear Window, briefly taking the place of the artist, who spends most of his time behaving like James Stewart’s camera-toting voyeur in Hitchcock’s film of the same name.
Originally made for the Dunedin Public Art Gallery’s Moray Place outdoor exhibition space, Rear Window enacts van Hout’s vision of galleries as ‘dangerous places because they contain things that aren’t good for us’. Depending on his expression (it flickers from scorn to curiosity) and the location of the work (it has been built into both inside and outside walls of the Dunedin Public Art Gallery), van Hout can seem to be staring out from the institutional vault or peering into it. Either way, he has us firmly in his sights.
It is a chase that takes place time and again in van Hout’s art. The artist goes looking for himself, but ends up chasing an unpredictable shadow. In a career that has encompassed just about every available medium, from skits performed on video to embroideries that prick the pretensions of painting, van Hout has offered many variations on the self-portrait. The alter egos who populate his art include extra-terrestrials, men on the moon, Elvis impersonators and little monkeys. One of the latter turns up in Rear Window, briefly taking the place of the artist, who spends most of his time behaving like James Stewart’s camera-toting voyeur in Hitchcock’s film of the same name.
Originally made for the Dunedin Public Art Gallery’s Moray Place outdoor exhibition space, Rear Window enacts van Hout’s vision of galleries as ‘dangerous places because they contain things that aren’t good for us’. Depending on his expression (it flickers from scorn to curiosity) and the location of the work (it has been built into both inside and outside walls of the Dunedin Public Art Gallery), van Hout can seem to be staring out from the institutional vault or peering into it. Either way, he has us firmly in his sights.
Measurements
variable
Artist
Credit
Collection of the Dunedin Public Art Gallery. Purchased 2001 with funds from the Dunedin Public Art Gallery Society.
Accession number
7-2001
