Cat Auburn’s herd of deer flock in clusters around the gallery. Made from expanding foam and with the seams left showing, Auburn is not attempting to create convincing replicas or elaborate trickery. Rather, the creatures represent lightly sketched out forms, which, although simple, conjure up the lithe movements of fawns in mid-flight. Brought up in the country where she rode horses competitively, Auburn’s work is invested with her childhood sense of how animals communicate with and react to each other. She is interested in the way we humanise animals so that they become, ‘an interface into which people relate to each other’. The exhibition’s title, Training Aids, alludes to the elaborate set of blinkers worn by each deer, a reference to the disciplinary aids used in the training of animals, particularly horses; such as bridles, whips and spurs. The artist’s use of blinkers, although highly decorative, suggests underlying measures of control and restraint. Auburn says she is concerned with social constructs, or the numerous invisible systems by which humans are “trained up to participate in society; or the pressure to look a certain way”.
Emma Bugden, The Dowse Art Museum, 2012
Work from this series has shown in the following exhibitions: 2012, Solo, The Dowse Art Museum (NZ); 2015, All That Glitters is Not Gold, The Vivian, Matakana (NZ); 2013, The Auckland Art Fair (NZ).
Cat Auburn (2012). Training Aids. leather, expanding foam. photo credit: The Dowse Art Museum
Cat Auburn (2012). Training Aids (Paintings by Matt Hunt in the background). photo credit: Cat Auburn
Cat Auburn (2012). Training Aids. leather, expanding foam. photo credit: The Dowse Art Museum
Cat Auburn (2012). Training Aids. (Ceramics by Len Castle in the background) photo credit: The Dowse Art Museum
Cat Auburn (2013). Training Aids 2. mixed media. photo credit: Cat Auburn
