Amazing Installation at Art Gallery NSW

We had a meeting at the Art Gallery of NSW on Tuesday. While there, we had a peek at an installation exhibition that is out the front of the gallery. It totally blew our minds. For anyone even remotely interested in creative thought, this installation is an absolute must-see.

To each side of the gallery's portico stand enormous bronze statues of figures on horses titled 'War' and 'Peace'.

Currently they are ensconced in scaffolding and what appears to be a temporary room built around them. At first, I assumed it was for restoration or cleaning. But it is the work of Japanese artist Tatzu Nishi.

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SPOILER ALERT!
For those who will take my advice and visit the gallery, read no further.
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If you are unable to attend or a complete unculturati, then amuse yourself with my poor description and photos.

Visitors walk up the scaffolding ramp to enter the structures and find a perfect replica of a home interior with the statues now inside the room. It was wisely recommended to us that we enter the left-hand structure first and then the right.

In the left is a small lounge room with chairs, coffee table and small cupboard. The coffee table appears to have a large bust placed on top, but it is in fact the top of the giant figure of the statue protruding through the table top. And opening the cupboard reveals the horse's enormous head, artfully concealed. Not only has the room been built around the statue, but the coffee table and floor rug have been seamlessly constructed around the sculpture. It's not simply a matter of cutting a hole in the base of items and dropping them over the top, but carefully piecing each item in parts around the sculpture without appearing to have done so.

After the initial surprise and humour, we went to the other installation.

Much larger than the first, we were awestruck upon entering. This room, a bedroom, completely encased the whole horse and rider so that the horse was stepping upon two dishevelled beds, the pillows cast aside and the doona sprawled beneath it's gargantuan bronze hooves. The rider, high amongst the room's chandelier, reached for the ceiling with his staff. Over 20' high, the rider and steed appeared to have simply trampled into the house and set up watch over the bric-a-brac.

A Bachelor of the Arts, I've been a semi-regular attendee of AGNSW, and have been to the Guggenheim, Louvre, d'Orsay, Tate Britain and National Gallery of London, amongst many other smaller galleries here and in Paris, London, and Italy. In all those halls in all that time, I have only had a handful of experiences that left me feeling as inspired yet also as creatively inferior as Tatzu Nishi has left me.

Thank you Art Gallery NSW. Thank you Tatzu Nishi.