Scott Eady

Posy Pony
2002
Chartwell Collection

Scott Eady’s bright red tractor, photographed here at Ivan Anthony Gallery, Auckland, NZ, looking like a tight fitting ship in a bottle ( 'how did it get in and how will it come back out?') was eventually parked in the Auckland Art Gallery’s New Gallery foyer in 2002 for Chartwell’s Big Bang Theory exhibition. It is a good example of an artist subverting original useage and transforming objects with new meanings.

Eady has taken a ready made object, in this case an old farm tractor, out of its usual context and re- presented it in a new light. The artist found the tractor that eventually became Posy Pony covered in mud but with the original tyres still in good shape, on a tractor enthusiast’s farm. He carefully restored it but he did more than that - he added chrome fittings, racy exhaust pipes, gave it a Ferrari red paint job, and added a mascot to the bonnet- a child’s toy pony, indeed a cute Posy Pony, cast in metal.

The tractor taps into a fanatical, culturally charged expression of masculinity revealed by reference to hotrods, souped up engines and personalised modifications. In this way, it relates to the perception of modern New Zealand male culture, epitomised by the Waikato Farmer’s Field Days, the Museum of Trade and Technology (MOTAT) collections in Auckland, A& P (agricultural and produce) shows, the building site and roaring down the main street of Auckland as a Boy Racer. Yet it also refers to something deeply entrenched in New Zealand art - the study of the landscape and the romantic notions associated with working on the land. And how DID he get it in and out of the small gallery at Ivan Anthony's? He dismantled and reassembled it completely each time.