In an urban environment many people are engaged in intense mental activity yet remain physically passive while surrounded by teams of mechanical slaves toiling with vigour.

There is a sense of complicity between the human and the mechanical. An uneasy truce exists in the intimate relationships formed with these potentially dangerous possessions which expend their ferocious energy in our service.Many of us are in awe of the fearful complexity of computers and the mystery of video recorders, or are terrified by the manic intensity of a hissing coffee machine. And not without good cause as more people are injured when changing light bulbs or opening cans than are hurt climbing mountains. The comforts of a civilised society can be viewed as a fragile skin stretched over chaos where danger lurks.

Our objects can have a disconcerting otherness. Many of our familiar foods and possessions are produced using the labour and resources of distant lands.Little depicted in these paintings occurs naturally in New Zealand and indeed the poultry and pineapples , fruits and vegetables scarcely resemble their wild forebears. Once people hunted, collected, made or grew everything they used, owned or consumed but now most of us have only a vague notion of the source or manufacture of the mundane but marvellous stuff that owns us.

Sylvia Siddell
20.02.2002