Lot 1: Ronnie Van Hout Dead Artists pegasus print 3/20

Ronnie Van Hout Dead Artists pegasus print 3/20 signed circa 1992 and dated 1993 and inscribed Angus, McCahan (sic), Lusk 475mm x 705mm Illustrated: Ronnie Van Hout, I've Abandoned Me Catalogue, Dunedin Public Art Gallery pp26 Ronnie van Hout is the self-proclaimed Elvis of the Artworld. This makes him a performer. It also makes him an impersonator - or an impostor. No stranger to the disillusionment of humanity's impulse to fame, the artist concerns himself with his navel as he regurgitates iconography from the art-world and other realms of celebrity into a bumbling jumble of name dropping and self-abasement. Hollywood is calling in Dead Artists with the gigantean letters that amble over the familiar New Zealand hillsides. This time, however, the letters spell out ghostly heavyweights of New Zealand landscape painting - raised from the dead like tombstones. It is a creepy, purpley, blurred image with the names fighting in the small space to mark their turf on the ridge. Gloomy, depressed, confused, hilarious this scene is a parody of the macabre-New-Zealand-artist topograph. As Anthony Byrt mentions in his article about van Hout's show, I've Abandoned Me: "...van Hout rightly proclaims that identity is fluid, fictional and above all, funny. And the reason identity is funny is because people are funny, except, somewhat paradoxically, a lot of identity artists..." (Anthony Byrt, Who's There? Ronnie van Hout and the Anti-Hero Aesthetic, Art New Zealand No.108, Spring 2003). Ronnie Van Hout is represented by Ivan Anthony, Auckland and Hamish McKay, Wellington. Imogen Kerr