Ronnie van Hout: I've Abandoned Me
Ronnie van Hout: I've Abandoned Me
29 August – 28 November 2004
I’ve Abandoned Me samples the diverse practice of one of New Zealand’s liveliest and most irreverent artists: Ronnie van Hout. With scepticism and humour, van Hout engages with one of the central themes of contemporary art – ‘the construction of identity’.
A touring exhibition from the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, I’ve Abandoned Me explores van Hout’s career-long reckoning with self-portraiture. Since art school, van Hout has been making works that ask ‘What does it mean to be yourself?’, and using doppelgangers, stand-ins, sly substitutions and sight-gags in his investigation of this question. As exhibition curator Justin Paton says, “Ronnie van Hout is making an exhibition of himself.”
With work included in major New Zealand exhibitions including City Gallery Wellington's own Telecom Prospect 2004: New Art New Zealand, Ronnie van Hout is now consolidating his international profile. He is currently working in Berlin on a Creative New Zealand international residency programme at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien.
I’ve Abandoned Me brings together works from the full extent of van Hout’s practice: sculpture, photography, moving image, model-making and even the odd embroidery. There are paintings that mimic corny t-shirts, silver suits for extra-terrestrials, miniature model families, and everywhere the image of the artist – latex casts of van Hout’s head, video projections of his face, and manifestations of his alter-egos, Sculp D. Dog and Monkey Madness. Don’t miss this chance to meet Ronnie van Hout (or at least someone who looks like him ….)
Presented by 
Exhibition initiated and toured by Dunedin Public Art Gallery.