More than 140 of Trusttum's pictures (mostly paintings, but including some drawings, prints and works in other media) are included, most of them striking for their vivid colour and robust design.
Trusttum is prolific and hard to pin down to a single style. He is reminiscent of Picasso in this respect - one of the many influences he has assimilated - and also like him in the lightly self-edited plethora of his compendious output.
Perhaps that is why Trusttum is less well-known than artists like Walters, Hanly or Hammond with an easily identifiable signature style. Many of his pieces have their origin in some everyday object or occasion - falling off a horse, ironing a shirt, mowing the lawns, playing tennis - but these originating germs are subjected to violent transformation in colour, perspective and design, so that without the titles it would often be difficult to infer the generating circumstance.
Robin Woodward provides helpful notes (which double as labels in the exhibition) on many of the works. She is especially helpful in explaining some unusual features of Trusttum's technique, such as his liking for "blind drawing" in which an outline is made with eyes closed, then modified or elaborated later.
Another technique she explains is his painting initially on to newspaper, then pressing and rubbing the painted paper on to the canvas or board support.
Trusttum is a superb colourist and endlessly inventive in the discovery of new textures and patterns. This book will greatly assist readers and viewers in starting to make sense of his prodigious achievement.
Ack and other Abdications by Peter Robinson
(Artspace/Clouds $49.95)
Reviewed by Peter Simpson
Ack started life as a sculptural installation at Artspace in Auckland in 2006. All three rooms were filled with gleaming white chunks, loops and worms of polystyrene, crudely fashioned with a chainsaw, out of which protruded various bright blue extensions. A couple of years later, the whole work was reinstalled at Auckland Art Gallery as a finalist for the 2008 Walters Prize, which Robinson won.
About half this book is taken up with photographic documentation, mostly by Jennifer French, of Ack in its two locations. A third polystyrene work is documented as Post-Ack (2009). Multiple and ambiguous in connotation, these constructions are endlessly fascinating to contemplate.
In a middle section are written contributions by Laura Preston, Matt Crookes, Gwynneth Porter, Dan Arps, Fiona Gillmore and John Ward-Knox, most of whom are far too cool to address their subject directly, preferring a radical obliquity of perspective which effectively absolves them of the responsibility to say anything sensible or meaningful.
Admittedly, Laura Preston does attempt seriously to place Ack within the context of Robinson's other work, and the others offer occasional glimmers of enlightenment.
At the back of the book are more than 50 pages of reproductions of unexhibited paintings and drawings by Robinson from 2006 to 2010, which offer the reader the possibility of making connections between the two-dimensional and three-dimensional works.
For some reason unclear to me, these works are presented without information as to title, size or medium.
Three of the pages are reproductions of a large triptych drawing recently acquired by the University of Auckland art collection, while another makes an appearance in Dick Frizzell's book, It's All About the Image, where its title, date, size and medium are given.
Call me old-fashioned, but I would have valued similar information about the other 50-plus works reproduced.
Peter Simpson is an Auckland reviewer.
