Terminator T-Rex by Gregor Kregar for SCAPE Public Art Season 2017

[image caption] Gregor Kregar Terminator T-Rex 2017. Image courtesy of the artist and Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland. Photo by Jade Cavalcante.

This mirror polished stainless steel T-Rex was both too small to be 1:1 scale and too large to be an actual toy. Its in-betweenness invited us to consider its symbolic potential, and how it came into being.

Dinosaurs, long extinct creatures, hold a prominent place in popular culture via advertising, movies, toys, gaming and museum displays. They are rife in the imaginations of children, but have also been used within corporate and political cultures to symbolise dominance, power and longevity. Auckland-based Kregar has long been captivated by how subtle changes in scale, form and materiality can influence our understanding of a sculptural object.

Kregar is also interested in the systems of production and distribution at play in our material world, and the political and economic infrastructures that drive them. Here, small plastic toy dinosaurs were enlarged and cast in stainless steel and mirror-polished, ensuring that the T-Rex reflected all of its current urban habitat. The reference to the Terminator series of films further complicated our understanding of time, given the films’ focus on a dystopian future, where messengers from the future are sent to warn humanity, and killer assassin robots are sent to stop them.