Rainy McMaster : Every Man a Rembrandt

Illott Green, Wellington, October 25th - November 6th 2004

Rainy McMaster collides private worlds and public space with her Art Box installation, Every Man a Rembrandt, a scenic museum-style diorama. The work translates a personal conversation about paint-by-numbers kits into a text-based installation work, where, as McMaster says, “elements of the personal are moulded into a narrative for public consumption”.

Every Man a Rembrandt expands the conversation by alluding to the art discourse that is generated at the interstice of perceived divisions between artists and non-artists, hobby art and the difficulty of art. As a public artwork, Every Man a Rembrandt reiterates the potential for the site of an artwork to become a social space for dialogue and exchange.

Every Man a Rembrandt is a borrowed slogan, being the promise printed on the box tops of the first paint-by-numbers kits sold in the USA in 1951.

Rainy McMaster is a Dunedin-based text installation artist and photographer. In the last couple of years McMaster has shown at the Blue Oyster gallery, Introspect contemporary art space and has worked collaboratively with another Dunedin artist, Kathryn Mitchell, on numerous public art projects including poster works and the recent Gesamkunstwerk for the Dunedin Fringe festival.