Author: gallery
Simon Kerr Discusses ‘Cuba Maul’
TABLE OF CONTENTS – Ilya Volykhine
‘Light’ Alicja Gear
‘Adage’ – Eric Desiles
As a circus trained acrobat himself, French sculptor Eric Desiles has an intimate knowledge of the human body, form and movement. He was inspired to capture split seconds of motion and emotion, using his experience as a performance artist to create timeless figures in bronze. Exhibition opening Thursday 23rd February 5-7pm
Mervin Singham Exhibition Opening
Reverence – 11th August – 3rd September
These hard times are but a bitter medicine for humanity. I have always believed that the best antidote to despair is action. My paintings are my action. This collection reflects reverence for people and the environment. It is my way of honouring the profound goodness that lies in each of us no matter how flawed we are, and in the damaged environment that will heal us despite.
Perspective – 17 Artists
Perspective
- the art of representing three-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional surface so as to give the right impression of their height, width, depth, and position in relation to each other. “the theory and practice of perspective”
- a particular attitude towards or way of regarding something; a point of view.
“most guidebook history is written from the editor’s perspective”
Alicja Gear Exhibition
“Permanent Green’
Alicja is a local artist who is responding to a sense of atmosphere and play of light across the landscape with her expressive oil paintings. Capturing those moments of delight at the way the light dances across the landscape. The combination of the large gestural marks and bold use of colour leads you on a journey into the landscape whilst still exploring the nature of the medium. Handling the paint, the selection and laying it on, a cumulation of single marks which coalesce into a whole.
Working on large mural like unstretched canvas allows for a freedom of mark making that would otherwise be hindered by allowing more pressure to be applied to the canvas. This allows for marks to be drawn as well as painted
Alicja often works within a series, starting with a reference point. She then works to capture the essence of the landscape and the feelings it engenders in her, particularly the way the light affects the environment. “Working within a series becomes a cohesive story for me as the artist on a journey and hopefully also for the viewer. It provides a framework to my focus attention.”
As one series is completed Alicja finds it leads on to the next series of paintings, taking her new learnings into the next body of work. This way Alicja sees her painting growing and developing all the time. “One series becomes a warm-up for the personal development going into the next works.”
Brent Redding – Exhibition
I have always painted in more than one style, reflecting a broad set of reasons for picking up the brush. These vary from a desire to capture the colour and light of the world around me, to interests in pattern and design, sequences, capturing movement, and occasionally making social comment. This variety of objectives, combined with variation of medium and technique, has created quite an eclectic body of work. I also teach painting, and years of analysing and solving painting problems of students seems to have extended my own interests and capabilities, further encouraging this eclecticism.
Kate Beatty – ‘Vanitas – self reflection’
These depicted objects have been collected and composed with symbolic importance. They convey a narrative through their symbolism. These works are meant to highlight the fragility and transience of human life, depicting versions of mortality and femininity, as well having emphasis on the emptiness and meaninglessness of worldly possessions.
Job Klijn – ‘All that is rushing through me’
Klijn’s paintings are emotional and atmospheric, smouldering even, with an underlying sense of danger and darkness, while remarkably retaining a sense of light or shelter – a calm region for his figures and the viewer to inhabit.
Job often alludes to an underlying fear and insecurity ruling his work due to his lack of formal training in painting, but also recognises that this plays to the style and final look of his pieces.
Job states that he “starts his paintings by trying to create a ‘background’, a rough sky, a portrait of ‘weather’ that reflects a mood or sense of moodiness that eventually leads to a more specific idea in what direction to take it”.
“I use as much recycled material as I can and my process involves a lot of adding and subtracting of layers, texture, soil, thinning, scraping, burning, swiping etc, until there is a feeling of emotive ‘rightness’. The result often being a multitude of trial and errors”.
This penchant for brooding turbulence and turmoil as a subject, is in the end, tempered by a residual warmth and richness achieved by the process of the art making. Attentive labour and restoration, building complex layers and beauty.
Sometimes, depending on the works ‘idea’, Job will add a figure.
“I sketch endlessly from collected images that show poses I like to achieve, often mathematically re calculating the proportions of limbs and bodies to marry them together in one final sketch”.
Not all of the ‘moodscapes’ include a human form but most do. Job’s figures exude purposefulness, not seeming overwhelmed in their surrounds. They are clean cut, well dressed, stylish even, clearly comfortable and in control in their environs.
Materials from another past with a promising future!
Paul Vincent ‘In The Style of Mose’
Exhibition 27th Jan – 19th Feb 2022
I first listened to Mose Allison at the Wellington Public Library. I remember being seemingly transported into his mind.Ironic but without any nasty, lessons on how to live and be. But with no sense of “LOOK, (Look at Me) AT ME. Being washed, clean, without water, without “I have the Answers”. When I get lost , jaded or blue I turn to Mose.
Paul revels in the spontaneity and randomness of everyday life. “Painting for me,” he states, “is the cat’s tail flicking around the corner.”
Happiest in “the heat of battle, overcoming obstacles and challenges – battling on until all the forces that disrupt completion of a painting are overcome”, resulting in something beautiful, but perhaps just as significantly, a byproduct of his experience.
Unencumbered, believing that ‘real art’, does not need a message, Paul creates by arranging lines, shapes, and patterns of words. Underpinning ‘the quirk’, Paul’s work comprises of what appears initially to be a restrained colour palette, but reveals on closer inspection, a myriad of tonal nuances.
More than just a purveyor of the absurd, Paul’s thoughtful use of colour, form and space creates balance and abstraction culminating in the sublime.
‘When art does not know its own name, when it does not have to be anything at all – it is free!’
Alistair McDonald ‘In The Style of Hiroshige’ (Sydney and Melbourne)
Exhibition 27th Jan – 19th Feb 2022
‘I got hooked on the ukiyo-e (woodblock prints) style through an exhibition of Ando Hiroshige’s fans at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London – bold flat expressive colours, clean line drawings and stories of another era and culture. I have tried to imagine how Hiroshige (1797-1858) and his contemporary Hokusai may have shown views of modern Wellington, Auckland, Queenstown, Wanaka, and Taranaki if they were alive today’. – Alistair McDonald
enquiries: [email protected]
Nejat Kavvas – Pacific Long Nose Dolphin
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