art writings – Bice Grace Lapin

The Weird Fiction of Robert Scott

Or should I say, ‘that is Robert Scott’

Weird Fiction in Art: Robert M. Scott’s Unique Expression

Who is Robert Scott? Well, a famous Robert Scott is, of course, Captain Robert Falcon Scott, the doomed Antarctic explorer. A personality so steeped in legend that the man himself is buried somewhere within mysterious tales of adventure, heroism, and madness.

The Robert M. Scott of Dunedin, (Ōtepoti, Aotearoa), who came to my partner’s David Lynch themed 40th as a convincing Twin Peaks character – the FBI Gordon Cole, carrying a selection of Lynch soundtracks on cassette tapes, is, among certain circles, also steeped in legend.

Weird fiction is usually associated with literature and more recently, video games. Here however, I lay the term over Robert M Scott’s paintings and visual art. Keeping it local, lets reference Chris Lam’s 2024 University of Otago’s Master of Arts thesis titled The Simulated Weird, Video Games, Weird Fiction, and Gothic Horror.

My essay is written in celebration of Robert’s exhibition.

Read on

⏰ 6 minutes

Walking the Absurd

Exploring cultural identity and feminism using the body in art with a focus on Angela Tiatia’s 2014 video artwork, Walking the Wall.

Is your body your own? Within it you experience; through it you express. Yet our bodies are surveilled and are regulated, both from without and from within ourselves. More than we often realise. Think Foucault.

Angela Tiatia uses her body to express the contradictions that push and pull on bodies. My essay draws upon thinkers in this sphere including Olu Oguibe and Brendan Hokowhitu, and a feminist art heritage.

Angela Tiatia, Walking the Wall, 2014 essay by Bice Grace Lapin

In Walking the Wall Angela Tiatia uses her body to assert and explore female indigenous heritage and identity in a society annexed by Western culture. Of Pacific Island heritage Tiatia is aware of the changing world in which we live. She has concerns about how globalisation does, and will affect people. Layered on this is both her particular connection with neo-colonialism and feminist views – these she believes, “sits on the body”. In her actions in this artwork she is presenting the ‘absurdity’ of these conflicting ideals placed on women within the indigenous milieu.

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⏰ 20-25 minutes

Tiatia's new work The Dark Current (2023) is presently on exhibition at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery to 27 April 2025.

Potion

Essay on the occasion of the Anita DeSoto exhibition, Potion at Eastern Southland Gallery, Gore, Aotearoa-New Zealand, 30 March – 12 May 2024

“The work of artists who insist that this earthly realm is not all there is embodies the idea of possibility – surely, an offshoot of joy.” – Jennifer Higgie from The Other Side, A Journey into Women, Art and the Spiritual World

In both history and narrative, women, and their knowledge have been murdered, silenced, forgotten, their stories minimised, even romanticised. Anita’s Potion seeks to aid in redressing this injustice and draw attention to patriarchal threats that still loom, that frighteningly in some spheres are presently gaining force.

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⏰ 5-6 minutes

Anita DeSoto

FIGHTINGFIT

New Lands. exhibition 20 October – 17 November 2023

_{Yay for ARIs! What? Artist Run Initiatives. Oh, cool 🙂}

_{Haere mai ‘New Lands.’ gallery and project space Grown out of ‘The Heat’ in Tāmaki Makaurau, now in the historic Carnegie Center in Ōtepoti, and extra special as a registered Safe Space, being safe spaces for LGBTQI+ communities worldwide.}

We’ve survived and are living life. This is how I face the world, some days Stretched Thin, some days Jaded. I write ‘living life’ because Brighton draws with paint, stick figures into being. This is not casual mark making, there is manipulated intention. Each figure is animatedly on the move, we have to catch their voice before they move off frame. They’re us, they’re our friends. I want to take them home.

FIGHTINGFIT exhibition by Gareth Brighton

On the floor space and leaning on walls are sculptures of found materials, given a new life with shape, form and connection – including the space they occupy. We are unable to resist taking time to question these sculptures, to make our own narratives around them from serious to whimsical.

Materialism laid bare but as people we are FIGHTINGFIT.

REad on

New Lands. gallery and project space

Working with stone

Oamaru stone relief sculptures with soul – or rather the Māori word m auri is a closer characterisation.

Traditional tā moko or tattooing involves dialogue between the artist and the person. In short, artists should have some knowledge of the person before making marks.

Each of my stones are unique – designed and carved for the individual, family or place where it will be situated. At times with care and forethought I use these marks on my stonework breathing mauri into the stone giving it life, vitality, essence and emotion. The stone will then work with me, interacting with every touch while I remain constantly mindful of the person or people or place the stone is destined for.