Psycho

Psycho

  • Artist

    Ronnie van Hout

  • Production Date

    1999

  • 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)

  • Size

    1180 x 1840 x 615 mm

  • Credit

    Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 2001

  • Accession Number

    C2001/1/9/1-6

  • Accession Date

    07 Mar 2001

  • Department

    New Zealand Art

  • Classification

    Object

  • Collection

    Chartwell

  • Subjects

    popular culture, film (performing arts), models (representations), childhood, houses, video, found objects, landscapes (representations)

  • 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.

Exhibition history