Caution: Artist at Play
In 1942, for the vernissage of First Papers of Surrealism in New York, Marcel Duchamp installed his Sixteen Miles of String. Stretching between ceiling, floor and walls, Duchamp’s intricate web complicated attendees’ ability to view the other works in the exhibition; they were further hindered by groups of children throwing balls and playing hopscotch and skipping games.
In 1998 Maureen Lander’s String Games, commissioned for the launch of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, referenced both traditional Maori string games or whai and Duchamp’s provocative opening gambit. Suspended at the centre of her twine, light and video installation was a glow-green replica of an item from Te Papa’s collection: Duchamp’s Boîte-en-valise.
Twenty years later Michael Parekowhai picks up the baton. Duchamp has been a key figure in Parekowhai’s thinking since art school and his work informs many aspects of Détour. Instead of a cat’s cradle of string Parekowhai has constructed a maze of scaffolding, its uprights sheathed in clear plastic ‘tree trunks’, forming a forest of sorts. It is inhabited by monkeys and an elephant so perhaps it is a jungle; or maybe a jungle gym, a place for (mental) exercise and play.
It is also a framing device, a structure within which to present what looks at first like a hodgepodge of wildly differing elements but turns out to be an artfully. Here you will find (the real one), a portable mini museum containing reproductions of the works Duchamp considered his most significant, including , and .
