Artist Ronnie van Hout’s work encompasses sculpture, painting, photography, video and embroidery to critique art history and artists. His shamelessly personal work often incorporating images and documents relating to himself as an artist, using a dark twisted wit to bring the absurdity of our existence into keen focus.

Here, Van Hout inserts his work within a bigger historical narrative; his
studio photograph of a yellow-skied landscape aping the inescapable influence of Colin McCahon, who painted Six days in Nelson and Canterbury in 1950.
Colin McCahon is such an outstanding figure in New Zealand twentieth century art that many successive artists have had to negotiate his legacy. Rather than a homage, Van Hout’s work reduces McCahon’s spiritual, intense landscapes to a studio model set, creating New Zealand art's bad sequel in a gesture of classic art anxiety, undermining the original to make you think that there was nothing to be overwhelmed by in the first place.

Ronnie van Hout (born 1962 Christchurch), majored in film at the School of Fine Arts at Canterbury University. Since the early 1980s van Hout has exhibited regularly in New Zealand and Australia and has been included in several group shows in the USA and Europe. His works and Quasi graced Christchurch city post-earthquake with Quasi then installed on City Gallery Wellington’s roof as Te Ngakau Civic Square buildings were under construction post-earthquake. Van Hout lives and works in Melbourne.