Tony Bishop @ Southland Museum & Art Gallery, 2014 (Introduction)

The introduction from the catalogue essay for Tony Bishop's exhibition 22nd August - 2nd November, 2014.  For full catalogue essay please contact Southland Museum & Art Gallery.

Tony Bishop, 'Settle Down in a Quiet Little Town', 2002

Over the past thirteen years and throughout this body of work Tony Bishop has persistently examined Southland in an utterly unique and personal way. The narratives within his works are often autobiographical and others are carefully selected tales coming together to create feelings of unease, detachment and desolation. His works are abundant with contradictions and open debates about the land and the people who live in it. His paintings offer the viewer his perspective in order to challenge their own.

Jenna Packer - South Seas Idol @ Milford Galleries Dunedin, 2015

South Seas Idol is an important and thought-provoking exhibition of significant works by painter Jenna Packer. Her graceful, delicate and captivating paintings present worlds of possibilities, complex narratives and constructed histories. She explores the social, political and economic structures that shape the world we live in today, looking locally, nationally and globally. Through her personal vision and rich visual language she paints parallel, post-modern, time-less and time-filled landscapes that expose the ideologies and myths that underpin our belief systems.

In her cinematic scenes, Jenna Packer re-interprets and re-contextualizes historical events, and generates new and alternative narratives and possible futures. Looking regionally, she gives the viewer a flash of what could be and poses universal questions: What happens when the oil runs out? What happens when the environment is no longer sustainable? What happens when the social structures that our contemporary lives are built around, collapse and fail? Will we take what we have learnt from the past, to build a better future?

There is an ongoing interplay between the micro and the macro, the local and the global, the masses and the individual, country and community. In South Seas Idol there are pockets of activity, crowds of people and detailed architecture, juxtaposed with the vast, ongoing sky and atmospheric mountain ranges. 

Compositionally, expressive horizontal landscapes move the viewer’s eye across the work in Votive, while the large central monument acts as a visual guide drawing the viewer into the work and thus revealing important detailed subject matter.

Jenna Packer’s unique and well-developed symbolic language is loaded with metaphor and message. Throughout the exhibition we see statues as the purveyors of myth and representations of dominant culture. The sacred head of the bull appropriated from Merrill Lynch’s corporate logo and a symbol of Capitalism, is hoisted upon a Jesus-like figure in Superstructure, while Big Time shows working class figures wading up the Waitaki Valley - a monument to New Zealand’s proud agricultural tradition?As well as using figurative elements to tell the story, her unique and highly skilled painting technique deepens her narrative. The luminous use of transparent washes allows the white of the canvas to shine through and harks back to Italian fresco techniques of the 14th Century. There is also a clear connection to New Zealand early landscape watercolourists such as Alfred Sharpe, reinforcing that these works are as much about looking at the history of New Zealand as documenting a possible future.

Enchanting yet stirring, representational yet allegorical and observational yet deeply reflective, Jenna Packer’s painting practice is unlike any other artist active in New Zealand. Looking regionally but within a global context, Jenna explores how politics, power and economy, affects contemporary society.

This is the exhibition text for Jenna Packer's exhibition South Seas Idol at Milford Galleries Dunedin 2015. For more information follow link.

Wild Game: Hamish Jones @ Gallery 33

Hamish Jones’s hides boldly, playfully and powerfully pop from the gallery walls. A glimpse into a child’s mind, of exotic places and imagined adventures but also a symbol of mans’ dominance over his fellow animal.

On first glance the pop art pieces seem like paintings on a uniquely shaped canvas however on closer inspection one realises the works of art are actually made up of many smaller pieces (or inlays). Each piece, carefully links to the next creating a complex wooden puzzle similar to those young children complete. And like a child proudly displaying his completed puzzle Jones elevates the trophy onto the wall for all to see.

From a child’s view the works colourfully tell stories of hunting wild, exotic animals in far off places. Some animals have a sense of imagination and fantasy such as ‘Macaque flamisus’ a monkey with distinctive patterning and ‘Opakia jonestoni’, a giraffe like animal with markings of a zebra only found in The Democratic of Congo.

From an adult view the works talk of the desire to do the same - hunting, capturing and claiming rare and exotic animals. ‘ Panthera tigris’ and ‘Panthera tigris tigris’ display the skin of the white and orange Bengal tiger, some of the most sought after skins in the world.

Childrens’ stories and movies are alluded to throughout the works. ‘Giraffe cameloparadalis’ has a comical feel and could be seen on Tarzan swinging through the jungle while ‘Panthera paradus’ may remind the viewer of The Flinstones pre-historic outfits. The undesirables of The Lion King are triumphed over as ‘Hyaenidac’ (the stripped hyena) is captured and displayed.

Bold, colourful and skilfully made, Joneses pieces speak to the child and hunter in us all.

Smoke and Mirrors: Contemporary Art Practices (Introduction)

Exhibition Review of Smoke and Mirrors featuring Peter Cleverley, Michael Greaves and Anya Sinclair. For the full and complete essay, please visit SCOPE: Contemporary Research Topics, Kaupapa Kai Tahu 1, November 2011

Michael Greaves, “Smoke and Mirrors” (2010), installation shot.

As a self-confessed ‘painting lover,’ it is quite a joy to experience a show entirely devoted to the practice of painting and find that three artists’ works are contemporary, relevant and challenging; addressing multiplicity and tackling issues of representation that can only be resolved in paint. “Smoke and Mirrors” (a direct reference to the role of painting as a contemporary practice) showcases three Dunedin-based artists working primarily in the medium of paint: Peter Cleverley, Michael Greaves and Anya Sinclair.1

CONTEMPORARY PAINTING

Painting has been heavily criticized as the production of bourgeois commodity, useless when confronted with the need for revolutionary change of society. Its death was announced innumerable times, but it always survived, revitalized by its disciples who believe that it is a useful tool to depict nothing less than the human thinking process.2

So, how does painting continue to operate as significant in the contemporary art environment? An environment that is pungent with a history that is impossible to ignore. A history that has suggested painting is dead, not just because ‘it’s all been done before,’ but also because photography has surpassed the role of painting – why depict something in paint, when one can photograph it? A history that through modernism opened an awareness – a painting is an object in itself, not just an object solely representing or illustrating subject matter.3

No longer can a painting only be about something other than itself, it must be conscious that it is first a painting; it is ‘smoke and mirrors,’ a constructed illusion made from pigment on surface. Barry Schwabsky writes in his essay “Painting in the Interrogative Mode,” from Vitamin P: New Perspectives in Painting that “artistic positions are now themselves received aesthetically more than in terms of some kind of truth claim … artistic positions are now recognized as fictions, though perhaps necessary ones – as enabling devices.”4

Contemporary painters must consciously explore and reveal in their practice that a “painting is not only a painting but also the representation about painting.”5 And in order to do this it seems that anything and everything goes. Style, subject matter, materials, techniques, conventions and influences are up for grabs. As a viewer, one is invited to indulge in the plethora of traditions and references (more than one person could possibly know or even imagine), homing in on historical signifiers, constructing a reality from the illusion and experiencing the work as text.6

Together, the paintings in “Smoke And Mirrors” offer a diversity that could almost see the works split into three entirely separate exhibitions. However, as a group of works, “Smoke and Mirrors” offers a viewer a direct experience of contemporary painting, a relevant practice that continues to push the boundaries of perception and culture. In my own experience of the artworks, I can only offer a glance, but hope to suggest ways in which each practice stands strong in the field of contemporary painting, tackling issues of today by using pigment on surface.

1. “Smoke and Mirrors: Painting, Isolation and Tradition” at Dunedin School of Art Gallery, 15 September –1 October 2010, is an exhibition that showcased three individual and in-depth practices, generating questions, definitions and meaning, exploring the role of painting today and contributing to the ever-evolving practice that is contemporary painting.

2. Leonhard Emmerling, PX: A Purposeless Production/ A Necessary Praxis, 2007, http://www.aut.ac.nz/study-at-aut/study-areas/art-design/learning-environment/st-paul-street-gallery/exhibition-2007/september/px---a-purposeless-production-a-necessary-praxis.

3. “Clement Greenberg, the theoretician of Abstract Expressionism, once noted that ‘one tends to see what is in an Old Master before seeing it as a picture,’ whereas ‘one sees a Modernist painting as a picture first.’” Barry Schwabsky, “Painting in the Interrogative Mode,” in his Vitamin P: New Perspectives in Painting (New York: Phaidon, 2003), 5.

4. David Altmejd, Hernan Bas, Peter Doig and Kaye Donachie, Ideal Worlds: New Romanticism in Contemporary Art (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2005)..

5 Ibid.

Hamish Jones: A Room Full of Toys

Hamish Jones presents A Room Full Of Toys. Larger than life-size, his toys enter an adult world and explore the games grown-ups play. As large-scale toys, the works generate conversations surrounding consumer culture, mass-production and capitalist society. They are objects to be bought, collected and consumed.

Black Sheep, White Sheep talks of the manufacturing of New Zealand products and culture. The hand-carved, heavy, black Rimu sheep stands alongside his copy - shiny, pristine and glowing white. Issues surrounding genetic engineering and cloning are prevalent, conversations about New Zealand’s rural commodities are also alluded to.

Fashion, fun and the collectable nature of mass-produced toys are explored in Block Colour (Green, Blue, Red). Cut from the same mould, each work is changed slightly (but is essentially the same). Why take one when you can collect them all? A pun on the fashion term ‘block colour’, the figures wear the same colours you find in childrens’ Duplo blocks.

Ironically a tree made from sustainable pine stands in the work Deconstruction/Reconstruction. The work reminds the viewer of the commodity value of wood and the decline of the world’s natural resources, yet also celebrates its natural beauty.

Standing on display as if part of a museum collection, Jones’ dinosaurs are contemporary fossils, bringing to light the commodification of nature. Today fossils are sold, collected, and consumed, found in gift shops alongside dinosaur puzzles and souvenir tea towels.

A Room Full Of Toys shows the everyday and familiar in a new light, taking toys from the child’s bedroom into a contemporary adult world.

Hamish Jones lives in Dunedin. He has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Otago School of Art. His works have been in a number of shows in public galleries including The Blue Oyster. Earlier this year his work was exhibited in Sculpture In Central Otago at Rippon Vinyard, Wanaka. Jones is represented by Gallery 33 in Wanaka.

Laura Marsh: Becoming Pakeha

Laura Marsh left Dunedin, a ‘normal’, Southern, girl and now she returns as a Pakeha. Her perception has changed and it took moving to the North to realise that she isn’t the norm, but part of a distinct culture. The Trouble With Being A Proud Pakeha celebrates the unique place that is the South Island and its people.

Often traveling back and forth between the North and South Islands Marsh continually changes her position and perspective, always looking at her surroundings from the view of an outsider. She is a nomad, a mix of the North and the South. This idea is revealed in her work Home Away From Home, where images of Auckland trees have found their way onto an old family camping tarp.

Many of her works explore symbols, motifs and signifiers of the South Island. She takes everyday objects and turns them into Southern icons, such as the monumental Mount Aspiring in her work natureculturenation surrounded by lupins, which are often seen at the side of the road throughout Central Otago.

In her work The Republic of Aramoana Marsh creates souvenir collector cards that demonstrate pride of place. The cards capture Aramoana as it is today but reflects upon an important event in its history when the greater community rallied together to protest a proposed aluminum smelter.

Marsh often uses the flag in her work as a powerful sign, generating conversations about claiming a place or a presence. This is prevalent in her work Monumental where large pieces of fabric stand tall, objects of community and Nation, creating a sense of belonging.

The Trouble With Being A Proud Pakeha is that in order to truly appreciate the South from the perspective of the outsider, one has to leave.

Laura Marsh lives in Auckland and works as a full time artist. She completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Ilam and in 2010 gained a Masters in Visual Arts from AUT. Marsh has had her work included in a number of public exhibitions including shows at St Paul Street Gallery. She has also been a finalist in the Wallace Awards.

Marc Blake: Recent Works

“What History, our History, allows us today is merely to slide, to vary, to exceed, to repudiate”. Barthes. (Harrison & Wood: 265)

Marc Blake’s paintings already exist before they are painted. Every element is part of another reality, from the landscape on wood grain to a horse and girl, air balloons and rainbows, they’ve all been seen before. Some objects are recognisable. References to art and artists; Jeff Koon’s ‘Balloon Dog’ and Hokusai’s wave are carefully placed in an ‘all over’ composition giving the effect of flattened space, a strategy used by historical Japanese painters and printmakers. The trees also appear to have a Japanese influence, yet often pohutakawa is in bloom. Maybe the eastern feel is in the way they have literally been stunted, a bonsai on the surface of the board. Yet in the illusionary space of the painting they are life-size and stand like figures, signalling across the painting to each other. Objects of consumption and popular culture can be found alongside historical elements. Bungie jumpers and yellow-eyed penguins have come to signify a contemporary New Zealand culture, cars and guns, a world we see often in the media. A historical sailing ship seems almost as an apparition coming out of the misty sea, or is it land? Has time and space merged together?

There appears to be some indication of time passed yet the exact time can’t be placed. Maybe the works suggest the future, barren lands, red skies and a fragile environment where a gas mask is often seen. Memories of what was are left as shadows, rubbed out, scratched off, fuzzy and disappearing into the coloured wood grain. In areas the background becomes the foreground or the sea becomes the sky but all of the elements seem to work together, finding grounding in the grain of the wood. The illusion of three-dimensional space is only suggested by light stains in a natural grain or in the size of the specific elements in the work. Figures dressed in everyday contemporary clothing, seem to act out part of a narrative, floating on the surface in paint on wood yet grounded in the illusionary space. Men in corporate attire, sumo wrestlers in board shorts, girls in black singlets and jeans or dresses or underwear, stand alone, yet seem to be interacting with someone or something.

But what are these interactions taking place? And how do these various elements relate to each other? Blake places us in front of a painting, and we are compelled to read the image, to translate the history played out in the work- to work out what is or what is coming. But signifiers are switched, and common symbols are re-addressed. Koon’s ‘Balloon Dog’ becomes a self-referential sign of contemporary art and businessmen in suits now exist within a constructed world of wood. The yellow-eyed penguin walks alone, perhaps signifying isolation or extinction through a changing environment. The original meaning that these objects signify have shifted, “even one and the same sign … re-occupied, translated, re- historicized and read in a new way”. (von Bismark: 264) The story in the painting unfolds within each viewer’s translation. Seeing a black and white suit next to a girl with a gun takes one from Wall Street into a world of gangsters. There is no one reading, but a group of readings, a group of stories. The painting becomes a text of the moment that unfolds by the associations and relationships within the work. Blake asks us to readdress what we know as the everyday and historical. This contemporary world before us is constructed from the past and our history; who we are, where we are and what we know
effects how we read and analyse the stories he presents.

Blake has moved from Auckland, to Japan, back to Auckland and on to Sydney. The narratives and the journeys that unfold within his paintings reflect this global movement and the many influences seen and experienced in everyday life. Blake asks us to reflect on our history and consider our future; on what has been, what could be but also opening up the possibility of change. In reading and interpreting the text that is the painting, the viewer explores and develops their ideas, questioning stereotypes, and challenging the way signs are perceived in mass culture.

References:

Von Bismark, B. “Generating Space: Martha Rosler’s Representational Process”. MaSchube. Hannover, Sprengel Museum Hannover, 2005: 252 – 283.

Harrison, Charles & Paul Wood. “Roland Barthes (1915 – 1980) ‘From Work to Text’, Art in Theory 1900 – 2000- An Anthology of Changing Ideas, Blackwell Publishing: MA, Oxford, Victoria, 965 – 970.

For more information about Marc Blake, view his website.