Niki Hastings-McFall - Have a Little Faith @ Milford Galleries Dunedin, 2009

Wall works reflect and objects glow in Niki Hasting-McFall’s exhibition ‘Have a Little Faith’ at Milford Galleries Dunedin. Hasting-McFall explores and plays upon the fleeting nature of life and the inevitability of death. Her two and the three dimensional artworks are intrinsically interrelated. Connections and relationships become apparent within the symbols of her work.

Symbols accessed from a variety of sources (from early European painting to folk tales, from biblical imagery to modern technologies), speak across culture and history. Inspired by the Vanitas tradition of painting, Niki Hastings-McFall questions the validity of faith and delves into her own encounters with mortality.

‘Adam and Maiden’ stand distraught in the Garden of Eden. Hastings-McFall has fashioned a detailed and intricate light-box work that brings a well-known story into a contemporary sphere while addressing traditional and historic influences of paintings history. Skeletons, a snake, a monkey, a tree, and Niki Hasting-McFall’s unique use of ‘fake’ flora all take part in a complex relationship between elements and symbols.

‘Swansong’ explores the transition from life to death, transformation, metamorphosis, changing form and reincarnation. Life is as fleeting as is music and inevitably we will all have to take the journey from life into death. A swan floats ready to transport a soul across the mirrored water as a skeleton angel figure plays a conch shell, summoning the spirits.

The journey of life is a common element within this show and Niki Hastings-McFall. Road signs help us navigate through our everyday urban environments and Niki Hastings-McFall cleverly uses the road side vinyl to remind us that we are on a journey everyday. Her vinyl works glow and flicker, are they warning us or protecting us?

‘Flock’ shows a group of airplanes, like a flock of birds that make a pattern reflective of Polynesian breast plates (used for protection). A waterfall of shimmering vinyl is revealed in the studies ‘Papase’ea 1 & 2’. Papase’ea a waterfall in Samoa is visited as a site to jump off and plunge into the pool below. This work symbolises a ‘leap of faith’ or taking the steps towards a positive way forward.

Niki Hastings-McFall skilfully creates a common aesthetic that is distinctively her own; transforming known symbols, meanings and art practices into an individual and accessible visual language. She confidently plays with materials, media, light, symbolism and space, providing us with a variety of works that together and individually address issues that are often so difficult to fathom; the journey of life, faith in the world and the inevitability of death.

This was written as text for Niki Hastings-McFall's exhibition 'Have a Little Faith' at Milford Galleries Dunedin, 2009. For more information follow link.

Garry Currin - Inland @ Milford Galleries Dunedin, 2009

Garry Currin is producing some of the most memorable and important artworks in New Zealand’s painting history. His unique and emotive works are critically acclaimed and his recent win of the BMW painting awards further solidifies his place as a significant New Zealand painter.

Garry Currin’s exhibition ‘Inland’ offers the viewer a silent world to enter and contemplate within, yet speaks so loudly once engaged with. His atmospheric and mystical paintings are visually and mentally stimulating. They reveal subtle narratives and relationships between natural and constructed environments, showing the juxtaposition of manmade elements against moody landscapes.

Currin’s paintings speak of the future and the present. There is an overwhelming sense of imminence and melodrama, nothing is fixed or as it seems. There is flux and change. Both event and time collapse together. The paintings almost become portents. An apocalyptic sky burns and sparks in ‘Gate of a Dream’ and a glimpse of light or hope emits from the hills of ‘Age of Gold’.

‘This Distance’ shows a landscape bathed in a luminous and golden light, the water glows, the darkness evaporates and structures float in and out of existence as if they are a mirage. What has happened in this place? Structural elements give way to the natural environment in ‘Trojan’. This work demonstrates remarkable confidence and compelling drawing marks. Areas have been scratched away to reveal underlying structures, or built up with layers of oil paint giving an impression of afternoon haze. There is a physicality to this work; not only in it’s size but in Currin’s use of illusionary space. One feels they can walk into the canvas and experience this place.

In paintings such as ‘Inland I’ and ‘Inland II’ the natural landscape seems to emerge from a veneer of mist or fog, or maybe from behind a curtain, fogged up window or screen. Currin creates a visual barrier between the viewer and the painting that forces one to look beyond the surface.

Currin reveals and conceals. In spending time with the work, new images and forms start to emerge. The large patches of smudgy black paint in ‘The Magi’ merge into tar pits, or bellowing smoke from industrial machines- what does lie within those dark shadows?

Currin describes ‘Inland’ as ‘a series of works painted around the parameters of silence.’ (Garry Currin/June 2009). He offers works that ask us to contemplate our own environment; what has happened, what will happen and what power do we have over this reality?

This is the exhibition text for Garry Currin's exhibition 'Inland' at Milford Galleries Duendin, 2009. For more information follow link.

Gary Waldrom - New Works @ Milford Galleries Dunedin, 2009

The unique, dramatic and magical paintings exhibited at Milford Galleries Dunedin in Gary Waldrom’s show ‘New Works’, demonstrate why he is one of New Zealand’s significant painters. His provocative dreamscapes entice the viewer into an imagined world where one has an active involvement in unravelling the relationships, narratives and symbols within the work.

Gary Waldrom has a distinctive yet varied painting style; from his tightly and skilfully rendered application in ‘Girl with Horse I (Second Series) (2008-2009)’ to his expressive and gestural brush work in ‘Blind Girl Dance (2008-2009)’ to the almost drawing like quality of ‘Bench Seat Conversation (2008-2009)’ where shadows of previous marks are still visible.

Characters and figures play an important role in Gary Waldrom’s works and their unrevealing yet inquisitive expressions are familiar and at times unsettling. In the work ‘Three Girls Watching II (2007–2009)’ both the viewer and the girls within the work take the position of onlooker.

His works elude an atmospheric glow; this could be due to the regional light of both Gary and his characters. The hills and grasses are instantly recognisable in Gary Waldrom’s work ‘Swamp Wader (2008-2009)’ and the architecture of ‘Jack-Hammer Jimmy and his Daughter Dolores (On Sunday) (2008)’ reflects a rural New Zealand town, once thriving with industry and now almost ghost-like.

It is difficult if not near impossible to liken Gary Waldrom’s works to that of any other painter. His intuitive scenes are highly individual yet at the same time they are strangely familiar. The power of his work is evident in its physical and psychological impact; in experiencing Gary Waldrom’s alternate realities one takes part in the drama unravelling before them, an exploration that is unforgettable.

This is the exhibition text for Gary Waldrom's exhibition 'New Works' at Milford Galleries Dunedin 2009. For more information follow link.

Peata Larkin - Tuhourangi Revival @ Milford Galleries Dunedin, 2009

With their colourful, sculptural and visually dynamic surfaces, Peata Larkin’s paintings stimulate associations with traditional weaving patterns, the movement of light and colour over water and landscape and visual elements of the present day such as digital computer pixels and DNA strands. Pioneering a distinctive and individual way of working Larkin pushes small beads of paint through a mesh to reveal abstracted compositions, resulting in visually and technically unique paintings that ripple with colour, and have a very real physical presence.

The exhibition ‘Tuhourangi Revival’ at Milford Galleries Dunedin celebrates and explores the ongoing history and knowledge surrounding Tuhourangi with a particular reference to the building of a Marae this year on Lake Tarawera. Of Tuhourangi and Tuwharetoa decent, Larkin focuses on the area surrounding Lakes Tarawera and Rotomahana, her ancestral home. The Tuhourangi tribe resided here before the eruption of Mt Tarawera in 1886 which destroyed villages, now buried along with the Pink and White Terraces.

In ‘Tuhourangi Portrait’ colours and pattern reference the Pink and White Terraces “a powerful metaphor for cultural identity, loss and revival”.1 The stepped poutama (stairway to heaven) composition revealed in this work and also in the Tarawera Poutama compositions “is similar to the geometric patterns in woven tukutuku panels in Maori meeting houses and represents the acquisition of knowledge”.2

The organic and distorted forms of the ‘Rotomahana’ and ‘Tarawera’ works, suggest movement, energy, fluidity and rhythm. Associations with the changing light and colours of the landscape are easily made while engaging with the mixing and melding of form and colour.

Peata Larkin continues to push the boundaries of structured space; opening possibilities and the potential for change and movement within the confinements of the grid. Visual codes and systems are ways in which to pass information in both the ancient and modern world, and Larkin creates her own language that calls to mind multiple associations with Maori tukutuku and Patiki patterns, binary systems, digital pixels, maps and diagrams. Between traditional and contemporary, organic and rigid, macro and micro, Peata Larkin’s paintings open up a space where ideas, knowledge, culture and history is ever
present.

1 Virginia Were ‘Stairway To Heaven’ Art News, Winter 2009 pg 51
2 ibid

This is the exhibition text for Peata Larkin's exhibition 'Tuhourangi Revival' at Milford Galleries Dunedin 2009. For more information follow link.