Jack Tame: Artists are brilliant

Of the many, many, many things I’m bad at... perhaps in no department am I more lacking than in artistic talent. I am a truly appalling artist. I have no vision. I have no voice. I can’t sculpt. I can’t mould. I can’t paint. I have the sketching ability of a lesser-developed primate but without the novelty factor. I am a terrible artist.  

And so it was curious series of events this summer that led me to find myself with a head torch and overalls, dragging myself through the dank, dark, crawl space below the floorboards of one of New Zealand’s premier art galleries.   

My friend, Mike, was preparing for a show. And with his centrepiece installation in mind, he needed volunteers to drag themselves on their knees and their bellies, as he worked to reinforce the gallery floor.   

I’ve never really watched an artist at work. But Mike’s work makes him a bit unique. His studied engineering and worked as an engineer, before following his artistic passion to Columbia University. We met in New York. Now he uses his engineering skills and artistic talents to make big, bold, sometimes provocative public works. His most recent big work was a playground in Melbourne’s Southbank featuring huge boulders perched precariously on tiny little trollies. He reverse engineered a rubber compound to look just like the bluestone slabs which pave much of Melbourne’s city. When you look at the playground, you see rocks on wheels on concrete. But it’s all an illusion. A playground which looks dangerous, but isn’t.  

I remember Mike explaining to me the initial concept for his new show. I remember him developing it, tweaking it as he went. Watching him prepare meant bearing witness to a man repeatedly solving the kind of problems most of us would never even conceive of.  

How do you get a thin sheet of extremely rare, extremely expensive marble from Australia to New Zealand in one piece? How do you suspend hundreds of kilograms of steel in the air in a building with very few structural components? How do you get a giant palm tree through a not-very-giant door?  

Mike’s show opened last night.  

It features a series of crazy drinking fountain sculptures, with what Mike insisted had to be chilled, filtered water. Room temperature? Puh-lease. There’s a space with a table placed below a continuous drip from the gallery ceiling, some ten metres up. The drip falls down to a yellow dish cloth, which over time leaks a thin stream of water, feeding a plant. It’s very clever.   

And the piece de resistance of sorts: In the centre of the gallery is an 8 metre-high real, living palm tree with an NBA regulation basketball hoop. The backboard is a stunning piece of blue marble which looks like the sky. The hoop is entirely functional. You can dunk it, if you’re athletic enough. You can swing from it. At the show’s opening, people took shots and played pickup.   

As I studied Mike’s creations, I felt a weird mix of bewilderment, admiration, and envy.   

They were brilliant. Fantastic, in the true sense of that word. But not only could I not build any of the works, I simply couldn’t conceive of them in the first place. I’ll tell you what though, for those of us bereft of any artistic skills, it is one of life’s great pleasures to see and appreciate in a friend a talent you admire.   

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