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Tony Conrad discovers more than just kitsch in the exuberant trash art of Laura Kikauka
I remember very dearly that this lady was clad in velvet and fur...She took me by the hand and we passed through several rooms; then she opened the door of a chamber where an extraordinary and truly fairy like spectacle met my gaze. The walls were literally invisible, so covered were they with toys. The ceiling had vanished behind an efflorescence of toys which hung from it like marvelous stalactites. On the floor was hardly a narrow catwalk to place one's feet upon. It was a whole world of toys. [1]
As in Baudelaire's early recollection of his encounter with the strikingly dressed woman, there is a kind of simple magic that greets a visitor to a Laura Kikauka installation: the frosty frisson of late modernism is supplanted by a playfulness so universally engaging that it throws the sophisticate, while it charms the child. Follow me into Exactly the Same, but Completely Different, Kikauka's 2002 installation at the Power Plant, in Toronto.
Other people are laughing involuntarily as they enter, laughing at the shoes on the wall with lamps in them; there is something to see with wonder everywhere. A small child enters the exhibition, accompanied by her mother. It is patently clear from the get-go which one of them is driving their pathway through the show. The daughter is transported from the first moment by a tumbling succession of quirky and colourful teases:
a pipe-cleaner doll with googly eyes
a cascading fringe of nylon stockings
a pair of slippers, each containing a large plastic ear
everywhere an impasto of feathers, baubles, beads, bangles, sequins
lamps made of a pair of shoes with Halloween fingers protruding through the open toes, where candelabra bulbs flicker
a tiny pair of sandals, also lamps, with bulbs protruding where legs should be
packages upon packages of nylon stockings, tights and pantyhose, with advertising images of ladies in states of undress posing, waving their legs
a sign reading COME IN, WE ARE CLOSED
a row of suspended plush animals
an acupuncture chart for feet
a fuzzy pink lamp, formed of pink gloves and pink shoes
a queen-of-the-fairies doll
a plastic ice-cream cone
a toy...