Psycho
Psycho
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Artist
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Production Date
1999
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Medium
house model, cardboard, paint, found object (table), video sender, colour television, video cassette recorder, video (single channel, standard definition, 4:3, colour, stereo sound)
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Size
1180 x 1840 x 615 mm
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Credit
Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 2001
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Accession Number
C2001/1/9/1-6
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Accession Date
07 Mar 2001
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Department
New Zealand Art
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Classification
Object
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Collection
Chartwell
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Subjects
popular culture, film (performing arts), models (representations), childhood, houses, video, found objects, landscapes (representations)
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Description
Ronnie van Hout’s Psycho is a self-portrait with a case of pre-millennial anxiety. Riffing off Alfred Hitchcock’s film about identity disastrously undone, van Hout’s work is a send-up of the tortured artist of popular mythology. Rather than the sombre figure of Colin McCahon, striding across the New Zealand
landscape and thundering apocalyptic proclamations, van Hout gives us a fanatical hobbyist trapped in the cage of his bedroom. Simultaneously playing the roles of obsessive fan and unrecognised creative genius, the artist constructs a hall of mirrors.
