Dark art finds wide audience

THOUGHT-PROVOKING: Kopuaranga artist Brendon Wilkinson's 2006 sculpture Meat Dust is on display at Aratoi museum as part of the ex-Rathkeale College student's Hexon Cusp Decade exhibition. Aratoi director Marcus Boroughs (pictured) said Meat Dust had travelled to Sao Paulo in Brazil and back for exhibition and was now part of a Hamilton-based private collection. Meat Dust is topographically mounted on the artist's old bed and Mr Boroughs said he interpreted the work as a statement on the artist ''being consumed by his own thought'', presumably represented by the decaying, mummified male lying sideways in the background. However, Mr Boroughs said Wilkinson was loathe to explain the symbolism in his art _ instead urging his audience to reclaim the lost art of finding symbolism in art by ''putting their own story on it''. Hexon Cusp Decade features 21 paintings and models including an intricate scale miniature of Auckland's Mt Eden prison, including a cut portion of the notorious motorway offramp from where couriers would throw drugs to inmates in the yard below. Wilkinson's work stands in several private collections as well as the Auckland City Gallery, Te Papa and the Wallace Collection. The exhibition runs until March 23. PICTURE / LYNDA FERINGA