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.

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.

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.

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.

Kirstin Carlin and Krystie Wade @ Physics Room- February 2009

“One of the possible definitions of ‘realism’: a naïve belief that, behind the curtain of representation, some full, substantial reality actually exists... ‘Postrealism’ begins with a doubt as to the existence of this reality... i.e., with the foreboding that the very gesture of concealment creates what it pretends to conceal.” (Zizek, 1993: 103)

Speaking in Ramas brings the outdoors inside, transforming the gallery into an urban park, creating a space that confronts and immerses the viewer in a very real panoramic experience.

In an age where public spaces such as urban parks and gardens are often uninhabited, nomadic spaces passed through or looked at from a distance, Kirstin Carlin and Krystie Wade give us an opportunity to readdress how we experience our everyday landscapes.

Both Carlin and Wade create landscapes and environments that one can only explore through interaction with their painting. To experience their work is to be engulfed in an alternate reality. Their paintings do not reflect or represent a real place; they are a space in themselves. These works are far from ‘snapshots’ of reality, as they do not conceal or represent any reality beyond themselves, rather the meaning and significance of their reality lies in the viewer’s interpretation of that representation.

Carlin’s environments seem familiar yet are constructed from a variety of sources. When looking at her work one feels a slight disorientation. Perspective is a little warped, colours rather dream-like, and her all-too-familiar rivers, trees and mountains are merely on close inspection expressionistic brush strokes of opaque pastel colour or semi transparent washes.

Wade’s abstracted and fragmented works create a space for the viewer to imagine and construct one’s own landscape. One is challenged to negotiate the space of the painting by moving from the surface into the subtle depths and skewed perspectives of the forms within the work.

Shown together the artists’ works play off each other. The viewer’s perception of each work changes as the common symbols of the landscape are readdressed. When looking at the works alongside each other as panoramas, Carlin’s expressive grass areas give way to Wade’s painted forms that come to signify one and the same space. One interprets and transforms images as they read from painting to painting and a new and strange landscape is imagined in the viewer’s mind.

Together these painters challenge us to think about how we alone experience, construct and interpret space. What we once experienced as a very real tree in a park is now a very real tree in a painting. Through showing that every element of the landscape is transformed by interpretation, these artists open our eyes to the idea that “even one and the same sign can be re-occupied, translated, re-historicized and read in a new way” (von Bismark 2002: 264).

Devoid of human life, the only participants in the paintings are standing in front of them, making the whole experience a personal one. The viewer is placed within the panoramic space, turning the gallery into a landscape where exploration, interaction and meaning is made real.

Vanessa Eve Cook, 2009




Zizek, S. (1993). “On Radical Evil and Related Matters”. Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology. Durham, North Carolina, Duke University Press, 1996: 83-124.

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

Written as exhibition text/ catalogue writing for exhibition 'Speaking In Ramas' at the Physics Room in Christchurch, 2008. http://www.physicsroom.org.nz/gallery/2009/carlinwade/