Mahon to give artwork ‘muscles’
Artist and water activist Sam Mahon has politician Nick Smith in his sights once again. He talks to Charlie Gates about Banksy, Te Papa and Boston Legal.
In 2009, just a few days after artist and water activist Sam Mahon had unveiled a sculpture of environment minister Nick Smith made out of cow dung, he was having lunch with his subject.
‘‘I said something I didn’t mean. I said: ‘Nick, that sculpture is just politics. I wasn’t intending to hurt your feelings’. That’s not true,’’ says Mahon with a mischievous grin. ‘‘He paused and then said: ‘Sam there is absolutely nothing that you could do that would hurt my feelings’.
‘‘That is the premise of this new work.’’
Eight years later, the Canterbury artist and water activist has embarked on a followup artwork.
It is a monumental sculpture of Smith squatting, with his trousers around his ankles, to do his business in a glass of water.
It’s a pungent image and it’s meant to be.
‘‘The only tool I have is art,’’ says Mahon.
‘‘I can create images. The public is an animal that sees the world in pictures.
‘‘If you give the public GDP or numbers, they don’t get it. Nick Smith is very good at telling stories to the public. A good politician always uses metaphors.
‘‘This sculpture is a story and a metaphor. It’s an image that I want to stick in people’s heads.
‘‘When Nick Smith starts talking I want people to see the image I have made. I want it to jump into their heads.’’
Mahon is currently carving the head and hands for the large sculpture. When it is complete, he will put it on his trailer and take it to the Beehive, stopping in rural towns along the way.
‘‘You know how in Afghanistan you have convoys of utes with a whole bunch of people with guns? I thought it would be cool to have a whole convoy of people...‘‘
Smith responded to the new sculpture in a written statement to Stuff, detailing how he has made freshwater issues ‘‘a high priority’’.
‘‘Mr Mahon chooses to specialise in offensive art when it is quite possible to make your point without being crude,’’ he wrote.
‘‘We have made more progress than any previous government in tightening how freshwater is managed.’’
The new sculpture is the latest salvo in Mahon’s long-running battle over water quality in New Zealand.
In 1980, Mahon returned to New Zealand from a year in Paris and moved into a small cottage in Waikari, a small town in North Canterbury.
He lived a simple life, occasionally taking his motorbike down to a tributary of the Hurunui River to fish.
But he slowly started to become concerned about the impact of intensive farming and irrigation on water quality and river levels as he watched the waterways around him change.
He became part of a political movement that got three councillors elected to the regional council, Environment Canterbury (ECan), in 2007 on a promise to protect Canterbury water.
In 2009, Mahon created a bust of Smith made of cow dung mixed with epoxy resin. It was called Nick Smith in the S ....
The next year, Smith sacked the elected ECan council and replaced them with Government-appointed commissioners. Seven years later, the council comprises seven elected members and six Government-appointed members.
The new artwork is made of horse dung.
‘‘I decided quite a while ago that if you are going to try to engage people you use humour like chocolate around the razor blade.’’
He reaches for an unexpected cultural reference when describing his approach – television show Boston Legal.
‘‘This was a programme full of sexual tension and pretty people. It would run four stories through the programme. Three would be entertaining, but one would be deadly serious. It would deal with death row or Iraq. That is when art has muscles.’’
The new sculpture is a departure for Mahon. He wants to create Smith in hyper-real detail, like a waxwork or a Ron Mueck sculpture.
‘‘Hyper-realism didn’t attract me at all. But in this case, if I do a cartoon or a sketch, it’s like hitting him with a cream pie. But if I do this realistically I think it will go to his heart. I think he has got one.’’
The change in style was prompted by Peter Jackson’s exhibition about World War I at Te Papa in Wellington. The exhibition featured hyper-real sculptures of WWI soldiers on a monumental scale.
‘‘I thought it was going to be crap and a glorification of war.
‘‘I wander in and, against my best wishes, I was struck dumb by them. These sculptures did something. My first impulse was to caricature Nick Smith like everybody does. But caricatures are a waste of time because that is what politicians feed on. They love it.
‘‘What if I did it hyperrealistically and capture this man in an absurd act, but with the hair, the eyebrows, the crinkles in his lips and the flesh tones? What would happen?’’
He thought he would give the concept a test drive, so made a hyper-real sculpture of himself reading a book and drinking a cup of coffee and installed it in a public space in Diamond Harbour.
‘‘I want these pieces in the public. Otherwise it is just a waste of time. Banksy and Ai Wei Wei are the guys. They put their work into the public and it is on the streets.’’
He used crowd-funding to finance the Nick Smith project, raising about $9000 of the $12,000 budget from public donations.
‘‘It’s very hard to speak the truth without impoverishing your family.
‘‘We don’t need anything here to live. Our outgoings are so low. We spend half the year doing formal art and we have commissions. But when we do political work, they take time if you want to do a good job. For the Nick Smith one, I knew it would take a few months’ work to do a good job.’’
He said there was still a lot of work to be done on the new sculpture. ’’There will be a moment where I will have to carve his testicles. He’s going to have the whole gear.’’