Stereo

A conversation across and between positions - is that not the notion of stereo? A bridging of polarities. An acknowledgement, affirmation or suggestion even, of difference with that which can be interwoven…

Chris Heaphy's strips of white, his apertures of light, are pathways through darkness, through fields of beautifully painted flat black. And where black touches white along the different lengths of each stripe, a wonderful buzz is encountered. Things begin to tremble. That which is flat and still begins to vibrate. And though together, black begins to pull away from white. Or is it white, pulling back from black. (Please don't tell Don Brash.) There are also resonances of Walters and McCahon: the considered proportions of Walters; alongside the tau cross of McCahon. And that's appropriate - we're thinking stereophonically here.

For it's the mix that's important. Since "Stereo (Tohu and TeWhiti)", (Chris Heaphy's large commissioned work for the Parihaka show, City Gallery, Wellingon, 2000), his elegantly crafted painting (brushed this way and that, horizontally and vertically) has offered the

Selected works