An Unauthorised Biography

May 14 - June 12, 2010

Anton Parsons

Casual but calculated is the arrangement of Anton Parsons' exhibition, An Unauthorised Biography, scattered across the front room floor of Jonathan Smart Gallery. One might need a calculator too, for there are 70 blocks covered in numbers, all beautifully finished and begging re-arrangement, available singly or in groups of play. Each richly coloured block denotes a year between 1925 and 1994.

All works are lacquer and vinyl on aluminium, from 2010, and measure 300 x 300 x 150mm.

Back Room Sectional Earth Office Pathology

May 14 - June 12, 2010

Robert Hood

It's called Back Room Sectional Earth Office Pathology. Rob Hood has taken the opportunity of liberating the hallway and back room at Jonathan Smart Gallery of stock, and placing it in the centre and around the walls of the back gallery. The installation has Hood's Prime TV Gladiators lined up opposite Michael Parekowhai's larger-than-life Disney dolls in a marvellous stand-off of warriors of popular culture proportions.

And from whence the Gallery stock came, Hood has installed further work of his own. There is for example, an eye-catching re-configuration of Wrecked Kilometre - Hood's re-appraisal of Walter de Maria's 1979 work, The Broken Kilometer, permanently installed at 393 West Broadway, New York City.

It's not every day that an artist enjoys the last exhibition in a space. Hood has done the occasion proud. And it is exactly what he has called it: a simple section through a back room that exposes a quirky sort of office pathology.

Postscript: After a period of pack-out and re-fit, Jonathan Smart Gallery will be re-opening at 50 Salisbury St in early September, 2010.