April 2022
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Matrilineal
1 April - 4 May 2022 Street Front Gallery Tui Emma Gillies, Sulieti Fieme'a Burrows & Aroha Heilala Gillies 'Uhila Nai Jalaina Hitchen Loleni Selesele Salle Tamatoa & Tunaga Funaki Across Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, the Great Ocean of Kiwa or Pacific Ocean*, intergenerational knowledge-sharing is central to the art forms sustained and activated by women. Matrilineal is an opening for artists who inhabit spaces created by their female ancestors, whether through the inheritance of weaving techniques and visual histories, the collective practice of making ngatu (Tongan tapa cloth), or expressions of feminine empowerment. Featuring taonga made across a variety of media, each artform in this space embodies narratives which span ancient and immediate links to the women of previous generations. *Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan named these waters the Pacific Ocean in 1520. |
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Denis Bourke Paintings
2 - 20 April 2022 Feature wall and Central Gallery This exhibition covers areas of interest that have been at work concurrently over several decades in Denis Bourke’s long-standing practice. Bourke has travelled widely across Aotearoa New Zealand, and is a longtime illustrator and recorder of land features. Reflecting his reaction to and engagement with the land, some works depict actual locations, mainly in Taranaki and Hawkes Bay. Also included are several works in which landform processes such as river action, volcanism–the discharge of magma onto the Earth’s surface–and tectonic activity are depicted in simplified forms with a diagrammatic quality. Another thread includes paintings based on non-art images, borrowed from the sciences of geomorphology and cartography. Some are large scale coloured renderings of actual diagrams (e.g. Geomorph) and maps (Green Section, Red Section), while others are imaginary compositions (Eight Views, A,B,C & D). The introduction of visual systems from disciplines removed from the traditional NZ landscape painting genre adds new layers of meaning and association. Outlining, borders, grids and encyclopedia or atlas colours are some of the borrowed techniques which emphasise two-dimensional flatness and provide a contemporary feel. A recent development is the idea of physical evolution and change over time extended to include the transformation of land and terrain by different cultural land uses. Aotearoa New Zealand’s earliest land patterns have been largely obliterated by successive human cultures, with modern land management informing the dominant visual patterns we observe. These cultural patterns can overlay earlier traces of land use, and all human-driven change can overlay the original geomorphology. The result is a palimpsest landscape, where only remnants of earlier forms can be discerned. Some of the paintings which demonstrate this are expansive oblique vistas of actual regions such as Taranaki and Waikato, while others are imaginary or based on memory. Ultimately, Bourke seeks to blend the relationship between layered mark making and paint washes with the concept of layered physical and cultural patterns in the land. |
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Bobbie Gray - Insignificant Other
2 - 22 April 2022 Feature Wall Insignificant Other brings everyday life into art through magnifying borer ‘galleries’ found in the native timber floors of the artist’s home. Selected sections of chewed-out floorboards are magnified and presented as individual compositions, generating a language all of their own. They could be mistaken for words or symbols of some foreign or ancient language - the hieroglyphs of New Zealand’s heritage homes and buildings. Each work is meticulously finished with a precise colour palette, creating an aesthetic of contemporary design while portraying a feature common only to places of the past. Poised between sculpture and painting, these hand-routed, human-scale engravings are traces of the vast, yet complex realities that lie beneath the surface of our own existence. The works read as abstract paintings, yet the mark making delves beneath the surface, revealing physical depth. The lines left are evidence of life lived, in parallel with our own. Exploring perspective of self, Insignificant Other plays on the concept of sonder: the realisation that each random passer-by is living a life as complex as your own. Through this new lens we are able to see ourselves as merely a tiny part of something infinitely bigger, allowing our day to day troubles to fade away. |