‘Don’t you see,’ implores Sergeant Neil Howie as he is led to the sacrificial bonfire in The Wicker Man (dir. Robin Hardy, 1973), ‘that killing me is not going to bring back your apples?’. In this classic folk horror film, the modern worldview clashes violently with fertility rituals, human sacrifice, and ancient superstitions.
Eerie Pageantry draws out this dark sensibility in the work of contemporary Australian artist Julia Robinson (b.1981) and Don Driver (1930—2011), one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most important artists of the late 20th century. Scythes, sickles, smocks, and other agricultural implements are assembled in exquisite formal compositions that hint toward the dark underbelly of rural life and human existence. Both artists refuse the doomed policeman’s plea to see reason; to view these objects merely as benign utilitarian tools. Through Driver and Robinson’s acts of artistic transformation, rusted steel and cotton dresses are impregnated with a potent sense of mystery, magic, and horror.
Despite the remarkable parallels between the work of Robinson and Driver, the pair were born half a century apart on different sides of the Tasman Sea, both completely unaware of the other. Eerie Pageantry brings together their work for the first time, as kindred practices that reach out to each other across time and geography through the visual and symbolic languages of folk horror. Together, they offer a cornucopia of folk horror and art played out through a ritualistic meeting of made and modified materials, textures, colours, tools, bodies, and nightmares. Robinson and Driver’s assemblages and sculpture come together to form an elaborate ceremonial procession in the gallery space—an eerie pageantry of the Antipodean Gothic.
Eerie Pageantry is curated by Dr Chelsea Nichols and Aaron Lister, as part of their collaboration Curator of Screams—a series of projects examining the shadowy realms between art and horror films.
Eerie Pageantry, City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi, 28 October 2023–25 February 2024
AARON LISTER 