October 8 - November 2, 2024
installation view - front gallery
installation view - front gallery
installation view - front gallery
installation view - front gallery
installation view - front gallery
installation view - front gallery
installation view - front gallery
installation view - front gallery
installation view - back gallery
installation view - back gallery
installation view - back gallery
installation view - back gallery
installation view - back gallery
Chris Heaphy’s new exhibition is full of sentient beings – birds and heads, eyes left, patient and waiting. Colours are rich and sonorous – sponged, poured and squeegeed behind vessels and feathers poised in a painterly ground.
One painting is cool and dark, but titled with a gentle yearning, You’re Somehow Always Here. Heaphy is part Ngai-Tahu, and this painting with its Maori head, emerald greens and striations of teal, speaks of the flowing glacial rivers of Te Wai Pounamu the South Island. This feels like a pounamu painting, with whakapapa to Waitaha and Arahura. It is also a contemporary history painting layered with paint sometimes quiet, but more often turbulent and almost seismic in its rhythms and agitation. The greens and blacks are hauntingly and achingly beautiful. The head could be blindfolded but there is company – Heaphy’s familiar lexicon including a female figure in dress, a piano, a dog and others. Guardians these (spiritual, floral and animal) to a future. Like the whakatauki “ka mua, ka muri”, Heaphy’s paintings suggest a looking backwards into the future, with eyes fixed on the past.
JS
You’re Somehow Always Here, 1300 x 1600mm
And in this Light, 1350 x 1100mm
That Part of Me Shines, 1050 x 900mm
Distance Now and Then, 1050 x 900mm
Silence in the Noise, 1050 x 900mm
Sparkle that Shines, 600 x 500mm
From All Around Us, 600 x 500mm
This is the Way Home for Everything, 600 x 500mm
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| Above and Beyond, 300 x 250mm | Perfect Thing to Say, 300 x 250mm |
2024
acrylic on Belgian linen
1050 x 900mm
Exhibited in
Bird Life
2024
acrylic on Belgian linen
1050 x 900mm
Exhibited in
Bird Life
2024
acrylic on Belgian linen
1050 x 900mm
Exhibited in
Bird Life
2024
acrylic on Belgian linen
1350 x 1100mm
Exhibited in
Bird Life
2024
acrylic on Belgian linen
600 x 500mm
Exhibited in
Bird Life
2024
acrylic on Belgian linen
600 x 500mm
Exhibited in
Bird Life
2024
acrylic on Belgian linen
600 x 500mm
Exhibited in
Bird Life
2024
acrylic on Belgian linen
1300 x 1600mm
Exhibited in
Bird Life
2024
acrylic on Belgian linen
300 x 250mm
Exhibited in
Bird Life
2024
acrylic on Belgian linen
300 x 250mm
Exhibited in
Bird Life