Bill Riley: WK:422
16 April 2011 - 12 June 2011
Auckland based artist Bill Riley has created an expansive installation that considers the adaptive potential of abstract painting. WK:4221 consists of hand painted recycled cardboard arranged in undulating stacks that take over Te Tuhi's foyer entrance. As a vibrant undulating matrix of colour and rectangular form the cardboard stacks boldly intervene into the given space. The randomly stacked composition is reminiscent of cityscapes, bar graphs or computer generated data visualisations. Given the adaptable nature of the installation, the work could hold numerous other associations depending on the location and context. WK:422 could also be understood simply as a rhetorical abstract gesture. In this sense, the installation might also hold political and ecological significance due to the artist's tireless labour and mass of recycled materials.
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1. WK:422 is the airline number of the cheapest flight from Kyoto to Copenhagen.