Mass and Pattern
October 7 - November 12, 2016
It is a big show this, 29 works in all, and the 54th group show conjured, cobbled and put together since my beginning as a gallerist in March 1988. But for all that, and for relationships around the room - like the intricate coral patterns in Marie Le Lievre's glazed oil paintings and Fiona Pardington's Sanguine Unicorn for example, or the playful linear aspects of Julia Morison's Wayzgoose beside Rob Hood's re-constructed contour maps, the 'bad maps' of Otira - there is one pairing I want to dwell on a little longer. These are the two works either side a corner in the back gallery, Gibbston, Central Otago by Peter Peryer, and Salt of the Earth by Melissa Macleod.
Both are works on paper: one a colour photograph by the delightfully willful senior pro Peryer, and the other a biggish drawing in graphite by Macleod, an Ilam graduate in sculpture under Andrew Drummond, now working again after committing to family for more than a decade.
Both works exude a not inconsiderable sense of mass, and both pay serious attention to detail within that mass. Peryer's photograph is the top of a big rock roadside in Gibbston, with a glimpse of the Crown Range and a brilliant blue sky behind. Doesn't sound much, and maybe it isn't. But the textures, the different veins of colour, and the lichens on the rock are quite something, whilst the light, one facet bright and the other in half light, enhances the slightly odd angularity of this rock. Also unexpected are the twin tips of the rock, and the fact that they seem almost to touch tufts of white cloud above. (Might this reference Double Cone, the very top of the mighty Remarkables, out of shot but just behind?) Then on the right as we look at it, the junction of this rock with its background is seamless. The curve of its shoulder meets the distant horizon easily and gracefully against the sky. This is landscape poised, beautiful and sensate. Ideas of size, scale and distance are being toyed with, but things feel simply wonderful at the same time.
The uncanny and the enigmatic also inhabit Macleod's drawing. Formally it resembles a big black wedge, but like Peryer's rock it is angled strangely and asymmetrically within its composition. The shallow steps along its upper edge seem really to go neither up nor down. This is a drawing towards a temporary work, an ephemeral mountain of sand. But the way Macleod has worked the graphite onto the paper lends real weight to this 'proposal'. The mark-making is layered with heft. The graphite grain (sometimes dry looking, and sometimes much darker and more rich) is tamped in different directions, suggesting the compacted layers within this potentially massive construction (a bit like Peryer's variegated rock). Both these works are simple yet direct. Both combine the intimate with the grand. I couldn't resist such effect and such sureness of touch across the back corner of #54.
JS
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Kristin Hollis
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Pauline Rhodes
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Neil Dawson
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Heather Straka
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Marie Le Lievre
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Fiona Pardington
Rob Hood
Julia Morison
Zina Swanson
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Peter Peryer
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Anton Parsons
List of works:
Kristin Hollis
Dog Park 1, 2016
Dog Park 3, 2016
Dog Park 2, 2016
charcoal & acrylic on 250gsm Hotpress Fabriano, 1090 x 680mm
Pauline Rhodes
Concept Drawings for Robert McDougall Gallery Intensum Project, 1982
Space under Light - Space into Light
iron oxide stained monoprints overdrawn, 280 x 380mm
Land Drawings, 1985
crayon on paper, 270 x 375mm
Concept Drawings for Sarjeant Gallery Wanganui Project, 1979
mixed media on paper, 270 x 365mm
Breathing (from the series Cones of Possibilities), 2015
316 marine quality stainless steel, 700 x 900 (height x diameter)
Neil Dawson
Murmuration 12, 2016
painted steel, 1100 x 1100 x 120mm
Heather Straka
Street Parade 1, 2016
Street Parade 2, 2016
oil on cotton coated board, 600 x 500mm framed
Marie Le Lievre
Coasting (Tome), 2015
oil on canvas, 1675 x 1520mm
West Coast (Tome), 2015
oil on canvas, 1670 x 1520mm
Fiona Pardington
Sanguine_Unicorn, 2016
C-type print, 2 of 10, 1090 x 810mm image size, 1400 x 1120mm framed
Rob Hood
Bad Mapping #1, 2016
Bad Mapping #2, 2016
framed collage, 790 x 1040mm
Julia Morison
Wayzgoose (Set), 2009
lithographic prints, edition 1 of 5, 770 x 530mm (x 5)
Zina Swanson
Untitled, 2014
Air Aura, 2011
In Luck, 2015
Plot 1, 2014
Tropical Shower, 2015
watercolour on paper, 345 x 275mm framed
Peter Peryer
Gibbston, Central Otago, 2008
colour digital print, edition 3/10, 810 x 1050mm framed
Umbrellas, Fiji, 2015
colour digital print, edition 4/10, 290 x 370mm framed
Anton Parsons
Olfaction, 2016
stainless steel, 1840 x 910 x 160mm
Melissa Macleod
Salt of the Earth, 2016
charcoal on paper, 1400 x 2000mm