Gut feeling
Louise Menzies >

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Continuing her exploration of forms of vernacular communication, Louise Menzies’ Gut Feeling presents a version of the kind of structure used for electioneering as sculpture, to display a phrase originally read as a newspaper headline.

Tuning into the humour, absurdity and strange profundity of such sound-bite announcements that are designed daily to catch our attention, Menzies’ onsite installation evokes the potential headlines have to mislead and to motivate: the original form of mass media, newspapers still attempt to reach out to the greatest number of people at once. In the foyer of the General Library, Menzies’ headline becomes impossible to ignore.

As well as inhabiting Window's Onsite space, Gut Feeling spills into the Library itself, encouraging us perhaps to keep reading. Situating itself in the Arts Reference Area - where weeks' worth of local and international newspapers offer themselves for re-interpretation with the benefit of hindsight - Menzies' installation provides space for a proliferation of new readings and continued dispersion.

Louise Menzies is currently based in Auckland where she works at the Elam School of Fine Arts. Her recent shows include Break: Towards a Public Realm, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth; Talking while Swimming, Gambia Castle, Auckland and Landwars, Te Tuhi, Auckland.