The Apparent Path

Tom Tuke is an artist, radio broadcaster, teacher and puppeteer from Tāmaki Makaurau.

In this new series of works, Tuke presents drawings which are ruminations on leisure, death, cycles, metaphor, relationships, money, memory, time, balance, worship, art, and the ability/inability to change direction once there is momentum. Represented are allusory recreations of events in the artist's life, as well as dreams and feelings converted into scenes. Highways, imperial architecture and ideologies, manners and expectations, are all stirred together to determine where the scene is going. The various subjects are on compromised and infeasible paths. Will the horses escape the stadium? Will the driver complete a u-turn? How to break from the trajectory?

The drawings are frottages, made by rubbing graphite over household objects and textures. The process allows for the direct borrowing of surface from cutlery, crockery, coins, tools, shells, fabric and leaves, which Tuke has used to make these works without any single freely-formed line.