Vault
Installation image
Courtesy John Perry Collection
Installation image
Courtesy John Perry Collection
Crusoe on Mars
Materials: poster
Courtesy John Perry Collection
Installation image
Courtesy John Perry Collection
Robinson Crusoe Cup
Maker: John Perry
Courtesy John Perry Collection
Robinson Crusoe Syndrome
14 December 2005 - 28 January 2006
This curious Collection of material has been assembled over the last twenty years. The primary inspiration for this particular collecting tangent was precipitated by my limited association in the mid 1970's with a one Ralph F. Bodle of Kaukapakapa who was an amazing man who sought refuge in the wilderness the backblocks afforded him. During Ralph Bodle's life-time he amassed a significant collection of Children's books and an extremely important collection of "THE SWISS FAMLIY ROBINSON".Ralph Bodle was acknowledged as a leading world authority on this book and its many facets. My own collection of Robinson Crusoe started when I was presented by my mother late in life with a distressed copy but a family heirloom of Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" with my great grandfather's name, Alfred Perry written on the endpapers with the date 1860.
Since then, in a rather haphazard way I have built up a collection primarily of books but also ceramic & ephemera that relates to the theme of desert island life. I trust that this small assemblage allows you the spectator to revisit "The Child in the self" and celebrate an important work from "an age of innocence."