Thoughtform Shimmer

July 5 - August 10, 2024

Group show



installation view - front gallery



installation view - front gallery



installation view - front gallery



installation view - front gallery



installation view - works by Conor Clarke



installation view - front gallery



installation view - front gallery



installation view - front gallery


installation view - works by Mark Braunias


installation view - works by Kristin Stephenson



installation view - front gallery



installation view - front through to back gallery



installation view - works by Tyne Gordon



installation view - work by Judy Darragh



installation view - back gallery


installation view - works by L M presents


installation view - back gallery



installation view - works by Leigh Martin



installation view - back gallery



installation view - works by Steve Carr

 

Thoughtform Shimmer…the title of this group show is a simple conceit, for good art by its very nature offers material form to a decent idea; and who doesn’t enjoy a bit of shimmer, that vibration of heat or sparkle of light in painted and sculpted form?

We see it here in the tensile spheres of Steve Carr’s Smoke Bubbles, and the glass rods that suggest both excavation and strata in Andrew Drummond’s 1996 work Livery for Extraction.
Miranda Parkes’ desire for depth of field in her painting drives her canvases into three dimensions. Painted flat and when almost dry, she compresses, crumples and billows canvas of considerable surface area onto quite small stretchers. She loads them up, not just with the weight of paint but also with expectations of body, of movement, of freshness and vigour. Gilded and metallic textured surfaces literally shimmer, along with stripes, blobs and colour combinations that tingle with surprise and inevitably satisfy.

There are new collaborators in town, viz L M Presents. Kellie McNeill took photographs of the Ramsay Glacier and its outlet lake at the very top of the Rakaia, after a dusting of autumn snow. She printed, with plenty of silver, four images portrait in format. And her long-time friend Christchurch painter Marie Le Lievre, was invited to add and to intervene. Pours of oil paint, sometimes dense and sometimes transparent, reinforce and refine the attention we pay to the grandeur of these landscapes. The painted elements feel like portals or angels even, prescient and hovering in this majesty. It is a terrific debut, this suite of work.

There are quiet thoughtforms that shimmer here too. Tyne Gordon’s bespoke cast pewter frames help define the atmosphere and volatility of the surfaces within; the lick of smoke layers up dark dream-like fields in Stone Maka’s new paintings; and Conor Clarke’s command of photogram and thermal imaging processes manifest thoughtful and very beautiful images of Kaikoura titi, inland of the marae she whakapapas to at Mangamaunu.
JS

 

Selected works

Heather Straka


Sam Harrison


Andrew Drummond


Judy Darragh


Miranda Parkes


Miranda Parkes


Miranda Parkes


Stone Maka


Mark Braunias

 


Conor Clarke


L M presents

 

 

 Brenda Nightingale

 

Leigh Martin

 

 

 Kristin Stephenson

 

 

Images, media & dimensions of the more than 40 works by 15 artists exhibited in Thoughtform Shimmer are in the Details of works section below.  Included are 6 from the grid of 18 Untitled Studies by Leigh Martin.

  

 

Details of works