The artworks in ‘EDGELAND’ often feel like a sea of words, with Eggleton’s poems written liberally onto some of the canvasses. This oceanic aspect of the show is extended through its title: the act of referring to the edge of land brings to mind coastlines and the isolation of island, of the idea of living on the periphery. This taps into the rich found of New Zealand art history, albeit one that might seem somewhat passé in its shameless romanticism and links to the cultural nationalist era (an era when poetry and painting has much fruitful collaboration).
The oceanic is also present in the materials themselves, which are stitched or glued onto the canvas. For example, the largest work A language older than words features shells, driftwood, stones and other detritus, which are harshly sanded back in places to flatten and reveal the inner workings of these resources. The seashells in particular then divulge an intricate pattern of cells that are replicated by the use of string, nails, cotton lace, velvet, knotted denim, hessian sack, a doll’s head, metal zips and other miscellaneous debris in other areas. ‘A language older that words’ hangs down in 72 sections reminiscent of flayed flesh, with the canvas also burnt here and there, hinting at an essential struggle inherent to the process of creation.

Exhibition features: Philippa Blair, Nigel Buxton, Katharina Jaeger, Maurice Lye, Richard McWhannell, Andrew Ross

Exhibition until 6 November

Joanna Braithwaite: Noisier Than Ever

Grant Banbury reviews Joanna Braithwaite‘s latest exhibition Hullaballoo at Martin Browne Contemporary, Sydney.

As ringmaster, Braithwaite (out of sight in this series but that’s not always the case), calls her performers to attention, marching them head-long in the same direction. Taking aboard the artist’s ever-growing cache of the strange and curious—human, animal, birds, fish, or any hybrid combination—no previous exhibition feels as jubilant and celebratory as Hullabaloo. Colour is richer, brighter, stronger. The volume is turned up to fever pitch.

Read more: http://eyecontactsite.com/2020/09/joanna-braithwaite-noisier-than-ever#ixzz6WqF5KuEz
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution Non-Commercial

12 January – 19 February
Rotating Summer Show
Recent works and old favourites viewable throughout the gallery.
Julia Holden, Richard McWhannell, Marian Maguire, W.D Hammond, Euan Macleod, James Robinson, Vivienne Murchison, Tony Bond, Ralph Hotere, Terry Stringer, Katharina Jaeger, John Reynolds, Donna-Marie Patterson, Philippa Blair, Nigel Buxton, Andrew Ross, Aiko Robinson, Rebecca Harris, Grant Takle, Maurice Lye and Darryn George

23 Febraury – 19 March
Opening Tues 23 Feb, 5.30pm
Janneth Gil & Viv Kepes
Darkness into Light

23 March – 9 April
Opening Tues 23 March, 5.30pm
Simon Ogden and Kate Thomas

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Monday 31 August, 5:30pm – Free entry – all welcome 

James Robinson’s splendid exhibition EDGELAND (…the unsayable being said over and over)
is a response to David Eggleton’s latest poetry volume.

(EDGELAND exhibition ends 14 August – don’t miss it!)

Writer and poet David Eggleton will be reading a sequence of six sonnets from his last poetry volume ‘Edgeland and other poems’ – which will be available for sale from Monday.David wrote these in response to a number of works, shown as the Anthropocene and Asylum series, that James created during his Dunmoochin artist residency in Melbourne, Australia in 2015.
David will also be reading from other poems to which James Robinson  has responded to in his current exhibition EDGELAND.

David Eggleton edited Landfall  and Landfall Review Online between 2010 and 2018. He is a recent recipient of a Janet Frame Literary Trust Award, an Ockham New Zealand Book Award for Poetry, and the Prime Minister’s Award for Poetry. He has had nine collections of poetry published, and a New and Selected Poems is forthcoming. His most recent poetry publication, Edgeland and other poems, was published by Otago University Press in 2018. He is the Aotearoa New Zealand Poet Laureate 2019 – 2021.

PREVIEW: Mon 17 August, 5.30pm
James Robinson will be attending

ARTIST TALK: Tues 18 Aug, 12 noon

For a glimpse of James Robinson’s exhibition see this youtube Video Clip
Exhibition on until 11 September

With his exhibition In the street l was lost… John Reynolds extends his ‘Lost Hours’ series, which began by pondering the Colin McCahon’s disappearance in Sydney on the eve of his Biennale retrospective in 1984.

Reynolds traverses a parallel landscape across a magnificent panoramic painting. He becomes the wanderer, leaving a trail of silver lines which track and map through a drifting entanglement of location, time and memory. Viewers easily slips into similar meanderings, losing themselves in their own meditative journeying.

Reynolds paints, draws and writes with a light touch. Each gesture is fresh and the work is open-ended. Amongst text, written in pencil directly on the wall, Reynolds quotes Francis Bacon: ‘The job of the artist is to deepen the mystery.’
Through a series of works on paper Reynolds quotes John Gribbin who, in his introduction to quantum physics, ‘Six Impossible Things’, wrote that we might understand the mysteriousness of our world with six fundamental ‘solaces’, beginning with: The world does not exist unless you look at it.
John Reynolds is a skilled artist. This visually rich exhibition has depth without weight and is well worth the immersive viewing a visit to the gallery would afford.

 We hope you have all been safe and well through this very strange time.
Thank you so much for your messages of support.

We are delighted to be able to get back into the gallery now that restrictions ease a little. During Level 3 it will be possible for us to ship artworks to you and for contactless pickup by arrangement.

You can find most of the artwork we hold on this website and if you have any questions please email us at pggallery192@nullgmail.com
or ring Polly or Marian on 03 366 8487
During Level 3 one of us will be here Tuesdays to Fridays, 11-4pm

The John Reynolds exhibition ‘In the street I was lost…’ will be on for an extended period and we hope you will get in to see in once we move to Level 2 – it’s a very good show.

Stay well! – Marian, Nigel and Polly.

Vivienne’s current exhibition ‘Go Beyond‘ at PG Gallery192 features in Warren Feeney’s article of top 10 exhibitions you must see in March.

Is it possible for abstract painting to be devoid of any recognisable subject? Murchison’s enigmatic watercolours have a colour-field personality that cannot be separated from the world around us, and the titles of the paintings in Go Beyond make references to their subjects tangible.  Yet, although demarcating particular places, (Golden Bay), in the ebb and flow of their light and colour, Murchison’s images are impossible to pin down.
-Warren Feeney

‘Go Beyond’ runs until 20 March.

NEWS:

– In other news, one of Marian’s lithographs from her 2011 Titokowaru’s Dilemma series is to be included in the major exhibition Troy: myth and reality at the British Museum, 21 Nov – 8 March, 2020.

Andy’s current exhibition ‘Dispersed Humanoids‘ at PG Gallery192 features in Warren Feeney’s article of top 10 exhibitions you must see in November.

“Samoan-New Zealand artist Andy Leleisi’uao’s title for his current exhibition may suggest a world in which the human race is a scattered population, yet the more time spent with these new paintings, the more conversations and companionships become apparent. The artist’s silhouetted figures are like a jigsaw puzzle (almost literally), one resolved by the busyness and attention they accord to, and share with, one another.”
-Warren Feeney

‘Dispersed Humanoids’ runs until 29 November.

For more information on Julia Holden‘s exhibtion ‘Newly Formed‘, click here.

Julia Holden, Self Portrait (Mark and Paul Rayner), 2019, Archival pigment print, 1750 x 1412mm

The Wallace Arts Trust Vermont Award
Julia Holden receives a three-month residency at the Vermont Studio Centre in Vermont, USA.
Judges’ comment: “The arresting use of the portrait and figure in this work stood out to the judges and made them keep looking. It combined sculpture, performance and photography into a diptych that captured personality and the human condition. It fused meaning and context in a probing way and asks us to examine the subject, the self and the viewer. The work is unsettling and curious – it gets under your skin.”

Julia Holden is a New Zealand artist based in Christchurch since 2012. Julia’s arts practice foregrounds
painting in multi-disciplinary projects combining painting with performance, photography, sound and film.
Consistently experimenting with modes of representation and presentation, she has developed innovative
relational painting practices employing strategies focused upon encouraging public interaction, community
connection and a wider social engagement. Julia Holden graduated BFA at Elam, School of Fine Arts,
Auckland, in 2007 and gained Master of Fine Arts by Research from Monash University, Melbourne, Australia,
in 2011. While in Australia Holden was a finalist in The Churchie, 2011, exhibited in SafARI 2012, and was a
finalist in The Doug Moran National Portrait Prize in 2011 and 2012.

“The Self-Portrait (Mark and Paul Rayner) diptych is part of an on-going series entitled I’m Your Fan, a project
originating in 2014. Using the whole body as the living ‘canvas’, I’m Your Fan considers the artist-self in relation
to an artist’s primary influences or artistic heroes. The photographic works highlight connections between
artists and artworks as past and present mentors, paying homage to the ways in which artists connect with
certain artworks in open-ended visual conversations. Continuing this body of work and adding a humorous
twist to the idea of the self-portraiture, the dual Self-Portraits are modelled on original ceramic works by Paul
and Mark Rayner respectively. The artists are well-known fixtures in the artistic fabric of Whanganui, and
proprietors of the Rayner Brothers Gallery on Glasgow Street. Their highly personal ceramic works have become entangled with Holden’s own practices to be reimagined as life-sized performance/sculpture-paintings.”

Jasmine Gallagher unpacks the curious and witty collection of Braithwaites latest oil paintings shown in May-June earlier this year.

As I look into the eyes of the peacock again I sense wounded accusation and pity, and I realise the greedy ‘Green Eyes’ are ours not theirs.

For more information on Tony Bond‘s exhibtion ‘Punt‘, click here.

English born, New Zealand raised and now Sydney-based, Joanna Braithwaite is recognised for her imaginative oil paintings which explore the interrelationships between humans and animals.

Congratulations to Joanna Braithwaite who has won a major Australian award, the Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize with the painting pictured.

We are proud to be hosting her exhibition ‘Warbler’ at PG gallery192 until 14 June, 2019.

Viv’s current exhibition ‘Remember Me, Rangitahua’s Treasure’ at PG Gallery192 features in Warren Feeney’s article of top 10 exhibitions you must see in February.

“In this new series of paintings, Kepes responds to specimens belonging to the pristine marine environment of the Kermadec Islands from the collection of ecologists, Dr David Aguirre and Dr Libby Liggins. Deemed similar to our coastal ecosystem prior to its settlement, in Kepes’ attention to both the small detail of her subjects and exquisite manipulation of paint, political commentary and still-life painting share new-found territory.”
-Warren Feeney

‘Remember Me, Rangitahua’s Treasure’ runs until 15 March.

Warren Feeney unpacks Robert McLeod’s exhibition ‘Balancing Act’ at PG Gallery192 in October 2018.

“Robert Mcleod’s Balancing Act at PGgallery192 was a welcome and unanticipated reminder that Expressionist painting remains as timely and applicable to the 21^st century as it was to Germany and Europe in the 1930s. Commenting on the paintings selected for exhibition, Mcleod positioned them within the current international climate of public expressions of blatant aggression toward people and communities considered as ‘other’ (particularly in the USA), as questionable and abnormal responses to fellow human beings…” For more of this review by Warren Feeney

As an artist of Japanese and New Zealand heritage, Aiko was lucky to be awarded the Monbukagakusho: MEXT scholarship, from the Government of Japan to enable foreign students to study at Japanese Universities. This has enabled Aiko to undertake her masters in printmaking at Tokyo University of the Arts.

“Robinson’s new lithographs are the outcome of her current residency at Tokyo University of the Arts.  Drawing upon and reconsidering 17th century traditions of Japanese printmaking, in their titles, imagery and subtle irony, Robinson’s lithographs reaffirm the contemporary nature and relevance of printmaking in the 21st century.”
-Warren Feeney

‘Folding in Forests’ opening night: Monday 5 November 5:30pm & runs to November 30.

An exciting new platform for the arts in Canterbury!

Yesterday (2nd October, 2018), we celebrated Warren Feeney’s successful launch of Art Beat; Ōtautahi Christchurch and Canterbury’s first visual arts newspaper.

Art Beat is a monthly arts newspaper and website featuring news, reviews, commentary and a comprehensive listing of events, workshops and exhibitions in Canterbury.

Art Beat is committed to profiling all aspects of the visual arts with 12,000 copies each month. The vast majority of the copies are now in gallery spaces throughout Canterbury and in cafes, libraries, the Arts Centre of Christchurch, as well as; lawyers and accountants offices in the central city, and many more locations.

The next issue is due 1 November.

Robert Mcleod’s perverse ‘Disneyesque’ figures in Balancing Act are a response by the artist to the current state of prejudice and intolerance in the world.  Mcleod comments that he “grew up reading science fiction, thinking that aliens were from Mars.  [Now] America calls anyone they don’t want in their country an alien.  That’s odd language to use to describe other humans.”
-Warren Feeney

‘Balancing Act’ opening night: Monday 8 October 5:30pm & runs to November 2.

Wed 1 Aug, 12noon.

Marian will discuss the two current exhibitions – Darryn George’s Recent Painting and John Reynolds’ Psychogeographyblues
Free entry – all welcome

exhibitions on until 10 August, 2018

Located on the bottom floor of the Wynn Williams Building, the Pop-up featured a rotating display of artworks, all from our Bealey Avenue gallery stock.

Doc Ross (Montreal St side)
Marian Maguire (Hereford St side)

14 July – 30 July

PG Pop-Up
Wynn Williams Building
cnr Montreal & Hereford Streets, Christchurch
OPEN: most Wed, Thurs and Friday 11.30-2pm.

Enquiries and appointments:
03 366 8487 or pggallery192@nullgmail.com
Nigel: 027 756 5689

Join our email list, like us on FB or follow us on Instagram to receive notifications of exhibitions and events.

Marian Maguire will talk about her two exhibitions:
‘GODDESSES’
‘Boogie Woogie with Gordon Walters’

at PG gallery192
192 Bealey Avenue, Christchurch

PG is delighted to have a Pop-up Gallery in the central city until Christmas 2017!

Wynn Williams Building
cnr Montreal & Hereford Streets, Christchurch

OPEN: most Wed, Thurs and Friday 11.30-2pm.

To make an appointment:
03 366 8487 or pggallery192@nullgmail.com
Nigel: 027 756 5689

The art will change every couple of weeks.

Currently featured:
Philippa Blair, Fran Maguire, Andy Leleisi’uao, Darryn George, W.D. Hammond, Euan Macleod, John Reynolds, Sam Harrison, Nigel Buxton, Marian Maguire, Anya Sinclair

        .

Featured 21 Nov – 4 Dec:
Simon Ogden, Sam Harrison, Anya Sinclair, Aiko Robinson, Hamish Coleman

Featured 8 Nov – 20 Nov:
Darryn George, John Reynolds, Ralph Hotere

Featured 25 Oct – 7 Nov:
Nigel Buxton, Chris Pole, James Robinson, Grace Wright

Featured 10 Oct – 24 Oct:
Philippa Blair, Nigel Buxton, Hamish Coleman, W.D. Hammond, Sam Harrison,
Andy Leleisi’uao, Euan Macleod, Marian Maguire.

ROCK ACTION opens Mon 3 April, 5,30pm
exhibition closes 28 April, 5pm

Join  Bernadette Hall (poet), Jeffrey Paparoa Holman (poet),
 Gerard Smyth (film maker), Marian Maguire (artist) in a discussion about how words make pictures, pictures make words,
 and how both can tap memory and imagination through metaphor.

Thursday 30 March, 7.30pm, free entry

This talk is the last in a series about storytelling held at PG in conjunction with 
Marian Maguire’s exhibition: ‘FIREPLACES: Odysseus, Penelope & Te Koha’ 

Show ends this Saturday 1 April, 2017

7 – 8.30pm
Thurs 17 Nov
$7 waged, $5 unwaged

Jeffrey Paparoa Holman is a poet and non-fiction writer. His most recent collection, Shaken Down 6.3: poems from the second Christchurch earthquake, 22 February 2011 was published by Canterbury University Press in 2012. Blood Ties: New and Selected Poems will be published by CUP in February. His Bob Dylan fan collection, Dylan Junkie is due from Makaro Press in April. He lives in Christchurch.

Jane Simpson is an historian and poet. Her poetry collection, A world without maps, has just been published by Interactive Publications (Brisbane). Jane was born in England to artistic parents, but grew up in New Zealand. She has a PhD (Otago) in religion and gender in NZ (1939–59) and has articles in international journals and chapters in books. Her poems have been published in takahē, Poetry NZ, Meniscus and Social Alternatives, and in a number of anthologies. Her chapbook, Candlewick kelp, was released in 2002. She currently works in Christchurch as an English language tutor. She also offers workshops on clear writing.

Barbara Maguire has enjoyed a life-long involvement with music in various capacities, with musical composition a strong interest throughout. In recent years, her earlier choral pieces have given way to a passion for strings, and in the last year to writing for full orchestra. “Erewhon” was written in 2013 and performed the following year by the Camerata String Orchestra. Here it is presented as first conceived, as a String Sextet, by Apollo Musicum lead by Robert Tait. The “Gallery Quartet” also written in 2013, is in three movements, and so named as a tribute to Barbara’s daughter Marian and the PG gallery192.

Apollo Musicum is a registered NZ Charity directed by an elected Council with Robert Tait as the current President and Director of Music. It serves as the overarching promoter and supporter for its constituents and one hundred on-call musicians. The Apollo Musicum comprises: Apollo String Quartet, (enhanced to perform as a sextet for this PG Verse night), Apollo Symphonic Chamber Orchestra, and the A Cappella Quire. The Apollo name was adopted in Christchurch 8 March 1994 but the core of the entity formed at Otago University with Robert Tait as a foundation member in 1952.

Andrew and Doc will discuss Doc’s current exhibition
WALKING with eyes open – a selection of documentary
photographs of Christchurch and its people as it recovers and repairs.

Free entry, all welcome.

Exhibition until 25 November

The post DOC ROSS in conversation with DR ANDREW PAUL WOOD – Tue 8 Nov, 12pm first appeared on PG gallery 192.]]> https://www.pggallery192.co.nz/doc-ross-in-conversation-with-dr-andrew-paul-wood-tue-8-nov-12pm/feed/ 0 https://www.pggallery192.co.nz/verse-night-thurs-1st-september-7-8-30pm/ https://www.pggallery192.co.nz/verse-night-thurs-1st-september-7-8-30pm/#respond Tue, 23 Aug 2016 01:45:44 +0000 http://www.pggallery192.co.nz/?p=6444 Come along for a great evening featuring: Poetry readings by Bernadette Hall & Kerrin P. Sharpe Performance by Reuben Todd $7 waged, $5 unwaged Bernadette Hall lives in a renovated bach at Amberley Beach, North Canterbury. Best known for her poetry, her most recent collections are Life & Customs,  VUP 2013 and Maukatere, floating mountain,  Seraph Press 2016, which... View more

Doc Drumheller was born in Charleston, South Carolina and has lived in New Zealand for more than half his life. He has worked in award winning groups for theatre and music and has published ten collections of poetry. His poems have been translated into more than twenty languages, and he has performed in Cuba, Lithuania, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Japan, Indian, Nicaragua, USA and widely throughout NZ. He lives in Oxford, where he edits and publishes the literary journal Catalyst.

Marisa Cappetta graduated Summa Cum Laude from the Hagley Writers’ Institute in 2011. Her poetry has been published in Landfall, Takahe, Snorkel, Turbine, Black Mail Press, Interlit Q, Shot Glass Journal, The Press and several national and international anthologies. In 2013 she received a mentorship from the New Zealand Society of Authors. Her book ‘How to Tour the World on a Flying Fox’, published by Steele Roberts will be launched in 2016.

Kate Taylor is the vocal programme leader at Ara Music Arts in Christchurch. Kate recently worked on the 25th anniversary gala concert, late night Jazz  slam and her very own Stevie Wonder tribute show at the 2016 Cavell Leitch International Jazz and Blues festival. Kate released her debut CD ‘Kate Taylor live’ with Orange Studios in 2013 and is currently working on her next album ‘The 12 pianist project’  due out in 2017.

‘SIGNS’ – exhibition 28 June – 22 July
Opening: Mon 27 June, 5.30pm

Artist talk Thursday 16 June, 7pm
free entry, all welcome.

Exhibition – ‘ARIKI’ by Darryn George – on until 24 June.

Fiona Farrell is one of New Zealand’s leading writers, publishing work in a variety of genres. Her first novel, The Skinny Louie Book won the 1993 New Zealand Book Award for fiction. Other novels, poetry and non-fiction books have been shortlisted for the Montana and New Zealand Post Book Awards with four novels also nominated for the International Dublin IMPAC Award. Farrell’s short fiction has appeared in the company of Alice Munro and Hanif Kureishi in two volumes of Heinemann’s Best Short Stories (ed. Gordon and Hughes), while her poems feature in major anthologies including The Oxford Book of New Zealand Poetry and Bloodaxe’s best-selling Being Alive. Her play Chook Chook is one of Playmarket New Zealand’s most frequently requested scripts.
Since 2011, she has published three non-fiction titles relating to the Christchurch earthquakes: The Broken Book, The Quake Year and in 2015, The Villa at the Edge of the Empire, the factual half of a two-volume work examining the rebuilding of a city through the twinned lenses of non-fiction and fiction.
Farrell is a frequent guest at festivals in New Zealand, and has also appeared at the Edinburgh International Book Festival and the Vancouver International Writers’ Festival. She has held residencies in France (1995 Katherine Mansfield Fellowship to Menton)  and Ireland (2006 Rathcoola Residency). In 2007 Farrell received the New Zealand Prime Minister’s Award for Fiction. She was the 2011 Robert Burns Fellow at the University of Otago. In 2012 Farrell was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for ‘services to literature’ in the Queen’s Birthday and Diamond Jubilee Honours List. In 2013 she was awarded the Michael King Writers Fellowship.

James Norcliffe, a poet and fiction writer, has taught English in Christchurch, China and Brunei. He followed his debut collection of poetry, The Sportsman and Other Poems (1986), with the successful Letters to Dr Dee and Other Poems (1993), which was shortlisted for the New Zealand Book Awards 1994. Since then numerous award winning ficton and poetry books have been published including The Loblolly Boy & the Sorcerer (2009). In 2015, Norcliffe’s children’s novel The Pirates and the Nightmaker was released. Set in 1740, the story follows the adventures of a pirate ship as it drifts across the Caribbean, recounting the fantasy, intrigue, and adventure that accompanies the crew’s journey across the sea. The novel made the Storylines Notable Book list for 2016. The most recent work Norcliffe has produced as an editor (alongside Joanna Preston) is Leaving the Redzone: Poems from the Canterbury Earthquakes. Published in February 2016 to mark the fifth anniversary of the deadly Christchurch earthquake, the text comprises a variety of poems that artistically address the natural disaster.
Norcliffe has won awards including the Lilian Ida Smith Award 1990 and the NZ Poetry Society’s international competition 1992. In 2000, Norcliffe was the Robert Burns Fellow at Otago University. In 2003, Norcliffe, with Bernadette Hall, received the inaugural Christchurch Press Literary Liaisons Honour Award for ‘lasting contribution to literature in the South Island.’ Norcliffe won the 2006 Fellowship at the University of Iowa as a participant in the University of Iowa’s International Writing Programme, and Residency in Nebraska at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Centre, Nebraska City.

Motte (aka Anita Clark)  describes her sound as being Neo Classical tape delay violin. “Its sounds like what you would imagine it would feel like to be stuck inside a hothouse in the dead of night…full of tropical plants, flying insects and a suffocating humid atmosphere.” Her musical guilty pleasures are, 60’s Lounge and Exotica…Herb Albert, Martin Denny, Les Baxter and his Orchestra…Hawaiian Music..those 10 hour long youtube ambient tracks of running bath water, or a hairdryer. White noise.
Over the years Anita has played in Irish pub bands, The Ragamuffin Children, 6 months of Jazz School, The Eastern, and most recently Devilish Mary and the Holy Rollers. Her hometown is Lyttelton.

Free entry, all welcome.

Exhibition until 29 April.

Come along for a great evening featuring:
Poetry readings from Frankie McMillan & Nicholas Williamson
Original music from the Lizzie Cook duo
$7 waged, $5 unwaged.

Frankie McMillan is a Christchurch based short-story writer and poet, writing from her 136-year-old inner city cottage. McMillan studied at Victoria University of Wellington, where she completed an MA in creative writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters. In 2005, she was the recipient of the Creative NZ Todd Writers Bursary. Since publishing The Bag Lady’s Picnic and Other Stories as her first book of stories in 2001, McMillan’s work has been included in many other publications. She released her first collection of poetry, Dressing for the Cannibals in 2009. The same year she was the winner of the NZ Poetry Society International Poetry Competition. Her latest book, There are No Horses in Heaven is a warm and delightful collection of poems.

Nicholas Williamson is also based in Christchurch, and his poetry and stories have appeared in Landfall, Sport, Poetry NZ, Takahe, JAAM, and New Zealand Books. His poetry has been anthologised in The Oxford Anthology of New Zealand Love Poems.Williamson’s first collection of poetry The Whole Forest was published in 2001. His poem ‘Broken Light’ was selected for Best New Zealand Poems 2001.
Williamson describes his work, as ‘very visual, the poems attempt to create pictures of the people presented in the context of a recognisably New Zealand landscape and culture.’

Singer/songwriter Lizzie Cook lives in Christchurch, but her music takes you all over the world.
Known for exotic accordion melodies evoking smoky French jazz cafés, Latin American revels, Celtic tales and the folk music of Eastern Europe, Lizzie released her 3rd album Shimmer in December 2010.
Like an energetic recounting of stories and events with good friends… nostalgic, wistful, sensitive, stroppy, doubting, sensual, candid, direct, festive…her latest collection will remind you of significant personal times, insights, experiences, perspectives and people.

music – Lizzie Cook duo :wine – presented by Giles Wood; photographer Vera Hedegus-Gaspar describes her current project; Andrew Paul Wood and Marian Maguire discuss some works on show at PG (Summer Stock Show)

Doors open 7pm, free entry

An exhibition of woodcuts, wooden screens and watercolours inspired by traditional Japanese ‘shunga’. Christchurch based, of Japanese / New Zealand heritage, Aiko Robinson is a recent graduate of Elam School of Fine Art, Auckland. This is her first one-person exhibition.
WARNING: this exhibition contains sexually explicit imagery

AIKO ROBINSON – HEAD OVER HEELS
by Jane Bowman

The basic principles of the woodcut printing technique were applied to print fabric in China as early as the 3^rd century AD. This printing technique became extremely popular in the ukiyo-e movement that occurred in Japanese art from the 17^th to 19^th centuries. Ukiyo-e was focused on the depiction of subjects from everyday life. It is a particular genre of ukiyo-e that Aiko Robinson is referencing: shunga. A form of idealised erotic art, shunga has the literal translation of “spring pictures.” Spring was a euphemism for sex. As Robinson herself asserts, “Like most pornography, shungadepicts sexual fantasy, rather than reality.”[i]

However, it is not only the subject matter of Robinson’s prints that captures one’s attention, but also the scale. A scale that is in complete contrast to the intimate and portable size of the historic shunga prints. The three woodcut prints are large and cannot be ignored. A monochromatic palette heightens the graphic quality of the images, with a myriad of bold black and white lines depicting the stark forms. The scale of the lines makes for an interesting viewing experience; the eyes are quickly taken along the dominant exterior of the rendered forms. After visually ducking and diving across the print, drapery is recognised, then delicate fingers and toes discovered. Suddenly one realises Robinson has presented us with entwined headless human forms, with exaggerated genitalia all part of the entanglement in true shunga fashion.

Yet, for such striking imagery there is still some beautifully subtle detailing that is particularly apparent in the delineation of the aforementioned fingers and toes. These dainty digits resemble the historical depiction of such forms, seen throughout many genres of traditional Japanese imagery. Such linear constructions bring to mind the eye-catching work of English illustrator and writer Aubrey Beardsley (1872-98). His magnificent Art Nouveau curls and swirls and the flat decorative qualities of his imagery are recollected in Robinson’s prints. It is interesting to note that Beardsley, along with other 19^th century European artists, was also inspired by Japanese woodblock prints.

The flowing woodgrain of the printing block has also been included in Robinson’s curvilinear compositions. The imagery seems to be coming out of the grain, which cleverly reminds us of the process used in the creation of these images. Unlike the detailed interior scenes that often provide a setting in historical shunga, here the areas of woodgrain patterning become the background for these modern day figures and provide a compositional anchor.

As a result of the lack of setting, there is much less intimacy involved with this imagery. The viewer also feels removed due to the anonymity of the figures that are headless. Robinson has presented us with a unique pictorial device, particularly in reference to shunga and modern day pornography. It is as though she has applied her own censorship to the imagery, removing the identity of the figures, instead of blurring out the genitalia. It seems to feel less invasive when the subject is not known. Robinson’s headless figures have a looming Surrealist feel, reminiscent of René Magritte (1898 – 1967). The prints’ titles also have a Surreal or even Dadaist quality as they reference the absurd. Head over heels, Love is blind and Losing my mind are emotions and states of mind that could never be felt by these headless beings. In addition, the titles are an indication from Robinson that we are looking at depictions of love, rather than pornography.

By contrast, this feeling of love is intensified with the intimacy of scale and execution of the watercolours that are presented alongside the woodblock prints. Robinson’s watercolours portray many of the same concepts as her prints with further depictions of headless figures in various sexual acts. But due to the scale, the viewer must stand close; a more private experience than that of the woodblock prints. A new level of immaculate delineation of form and exacting control of miniscule detailing becomes apparent after this closer inspection. In works such as Like a mushroom in a field of pansies we see the same sensitive lines, now quieter but more frequent. There is great variation within the linear characteristics. The full depth of the Indian ink creates dark, sharp lines that contrast with the muted washiness of others. The human forms have evolved as well, becoming more European in their physical traits and showing similarities to the angular figurative works of Austrian painter and draughtsman Egon Schiele (1890-1918).

At the same time there is a softness and beauty about the images, heightened by the medium itself. A pretty palette has been employed to emphasise particular areas within the tight and controlled compositions. Human forms are highlighted with a gentle blushing of peach, while sections of drapery are filled with colour to distinguish flesh from fabric and draw the eye to the various focal points. As in her woodblock prints, once again there is a subtle nod to the medium from Robinson. In Like overflowing waterfalls a porcelain-like hand is forced in to a wet area of pooling pigment. It accentuates her control of the medium, and also adds to the sensual reading of the image. This sensuality is encapsulated by the glorious swathes of drapery. The drapery visually and literally cushions the human forms. In admiration of shunga ideals, Robinson has exaggerated the flowing lengths of fabric, creating another unique element in her modern take of this historic art form.

Jane Bowman, PGgallery192, June 2015

[i] A. Robinson, Pornography and the paradoxes of the Edo Japanese Voyeur, 2014, Bachelor of Fine Arts Honours research essay, p. 2.

Article by Warren Feeney – The Press, Christchurch, 10 July, 2015

Philippa Blair – CROSSINGS

For lots of reasons it isn’t the done thing to write about art from a personal perspective and I understand why. A writer’s feelings/responses may have nothing whatsoever to do with the artist’s intentions – they can be way off track. Yet I’m tempted to follow a track.

I first met Philippa Blair when I was an art student, thirty years ago. She had freshly returned from a life in Australia and was making a splash on the local art scene. To me she was daunting. The following year, 1985, only just out of artschool I printed two black and white lithographs for her. Being present as she drew and scribed the stones taught me a lot about drawing. At that stage I could not have told you what but from the vantage of a three decade long working relationship I now have a better idea.

Artists reveal themselves in studio. A sincere approach to viewing involves a similar disarmament – eyes wide open to experience. And by eyes I don’t just mean the two on our faces, I also mean the ‘eyes’ of memory and imagination, those that recall and build new visuals in our minds. Colours, shapes and textures spark reminiscences just as smells do. Our imagination melds what we see with what we know. When looking at art, images often shape-shift as we play with them on our internal screen and that is part of it. 

Philippa talks about music, about improvisation. She talks about place. Not just landscape or buildings or streets but the idea of a place, the vibe that surrounds it. Its history, the mayhem, the quiet, loneliness, risk, excitement.  She talks about experience. Her paintings are visual allegories of experience. That sentence just rolled out. It sounds good but I’ve got a feeling it isn’t right – way too blithe. An allegory provides a metaphor for something else. Usually there is symbology, there’s talking in code. It occurs to me that I may not be that far off the mark – perhaps Philippa speaks in an abstracted visual code when she is in the studio. 

One of those first two prints we did back in 1985 was called ‘Labyrinths’ and, while drawing it, Philippa talked about a tree having its heart in its roots[1]. I assume now that this was about how groundedness is important, how growth comes from depth, the sprouting leaves are an expression of the real stuff, that which is pumped from down low. Today I pulled ‘Labyrinth’ out of the print drawers. It is a mass of lines that swoop in and around each other, anchored by the base line. It has elegance but it is also dark. It appears alive but feels ancient. Throughout her career Philippa has come back to the idea of labyrinth again and again. She doesn’t picture it as a geometric plan, the way the architect of one might. Neither does she depict the internals, that would be walls or hedges – monotonously and confusingly similar – pictorially dull. She is not visually literal in that sense. What I see is an engagement with what it is to be lost in one, only she expresses that feeling from the outside. She is inside and outside the labyrinth at the same time. Lost in it while watching herself being lost in it. Her labyrinths aren’t fixed, they are natural things, as fluid as the movement of her arm. I am reminded of dreams in which I can’t find my way back, am unable to form a mental map. There is a vortex-like quality to Philippa’s labyrinths. I think she is attracted to them, drawn in by them and in the labyrinth she goes to ground. From that frustrating, bound up, thwarting place, she is able to find her roots and bring forth her art, working her way out of the tangle into the light. There are three paintings in this show relate to the labyrinth. They all have titles that relate to safety and recuperation: ‘Nesting’, ‘Repair’, ‘Refuge’. None talk about being lost.

Her work method has gone through many changes. It has revolved, warped, whittled, transformed. Sometimes abruptly, sometimes as a slow evolution. In early works one thing I noticed was that she often reinforced structures, strengthened key lines, her hand following the groove of previous passage. What I see in more recent work is that she doesn’t repeat an action through a previous mark. The work is purer. There is the confidence of thirty-five years behind it, which allows her to let things go. She wipes initial statements out, messes them up, will topple structures to build anew. She drops baggage and moves on. 

I want to employ adjectives but there is no need, the paintings supply them. I want to describe actions but you can see them for yourself – it’s all there for the looking. I find myself thinking about life. 

The paintings that comprise CROSSINGS span the years 2011 to 2013 and all were made in Los Angeles.  During 2013 Philippa and her husband, John, shifted back to Auckland after two decades living and working in LA. It’s a big thing to up sticks and move. The two of them would have traversed the Pacific repeatedly over the years, sometimes in aeroplanes, oft times in their imaginations, separately or through conversation. It is inevitable that Philippa carries the feeling of living in Los Angeles as she and John make a fresh start in Auckland. I see her standing, with the North American continent behind her, looking out to the Pacific, she is at work in her studio in Auckland. Even when one lets go the baggage there is history.

Philippa has said the act of painting is a kind of dance. Each painting has a time to it. Her works aren’t preplanned but neither does she start with a blank. There is already an impulse, a rhythm, before she makes her move. I have a feeling that the painting plays out as a series of in-the-moment decisions with a riff in the background, which sets the pace and feeling. She relies on the paint being wet, the material nature of the stuff. She works with liquidity: pours it, drags it, swipes through to the canvas. She also harnesses paint’s fat viscosity as it is squeezed from the tube. She collects it in the grasping brush bristle, back and forth from palette to canvas, the canvas increasingly weighted with multi-hued daubs. Seldom does the weave disappear completely. And while there may be references to places or objects there is no pretense at illusion. What I see, predominantly, is paint. Now dry, was wet. Life has phases.

For Philippa, landscapes, sights, people, issues, ideas all channel into her work. But not all of this into each work. The under-rhythm is a combination of related ideas that are beating for the duration. When she scribes through soft wet blue with charred umber, pushing through to the weave, she does so for a reason. When two colours ooze into each other and congeal she is there, watching it happen. When a skin forms on a pool of contented green and she reaches for a squeegee there is purpose for her disruption – according to the rhythm of that particular painting contentment had to be unsettled.

There are endings and beginnings within the same work and that seems the way of it. Experience isn’t discrete. Events exist within the context of the past, and the future. Which is what looking at Philippa’s recent paintings has brought me to think about. All this may have nothing whatsoever to do with Philippa’s intention, but I have a feeling this doesn’t matter. Looking at her work now I don’t need to dismantle them. I can give myself over, for the time I am prepared to stare at them, to experiencing a different visual articulation. I go with it.

On March 9^th of this year we re-opened the gallery, relaunched as PG gallery192, post earthquake repairs, renovations and upheavals. It was fabulous to finally hammer into fresh white walls and install LAUNCH, our opening show. We have made a new start.

One of the first works we hung was ‘Lyttelton Harbour – diptych’ by Euan Macleod. It is Macleod’s response to the quakes. The painting is riven by the join between the two canvasses; the horizon shunted upwards as it crosses the breach. Although Macleod has lived in Sydney for decades he was born here and his connection to the landscape is palpable. Figures stride naked through terrain slashed ochre, blue, green. They are of the same substance as the ground, the air, the water. One figure, the largest, is split across the two canvasses and seems to shudder over and under paintwork. However, this is no captured moment. To me the scene has no temporal reality but rather is part of a continuum. One senses that the land has always been in upheaval, that to heave is in its very nature. Weather squalls in from the south, nor’westers power over the bluffs to the left. Easterlies pick a chop through the water on one canvas, while dawn coolness leaves it still on the other. The seasons roll around, the tide flows in, ebbs out; the rhythm of mornings and nights seems echoed by footfalls. Somehow Macleod has achieved timelessness and immediacy simultaneously.

On the adjacent wall is ‘And the Seven Seas’ by Bill Hammond. He lives in the harbour and felt the full force of the February jolt in his Lyttelton studio. I worked with him on four lithographs, the ‘Proto’ series, later that year. The imagery was semi-abstract, hinting through fragments. Morphing shapes floated through unmodelled black; disjointed, like stray memories that had lost location. In those lithographs Hammond purposefully anchored nothing and that was the way it was during the quakes – uncertainty pushed its way into our lives. By contrast, this new work is an assertion of luxurious calm. A carmine sea is overlayed with gold mist. There are robes, wings, decrees in ancient foreign tongues. Floating islands suggest distant shores, figures support landscapes, the seven seas are layered through the image atmospherically. There appear multiple horizons. To my eye Hammond is reclaiming his environment and with it the landscape of his imagination. The action is lateral and complex, connected yet separated through spatial depth. If I could reach my arm into the painting it would come out dewy. The tonal range is narrow, there is no black/white melodrama, no strident line or sharp angle. Arabesques rule, and the film of gold wash, which catches in the heavy weave of the canvas, deflects a quick view. I look at the painting in sections, then from the side. It changes on me with the light. I find my gaze doesn’t jump, it meanders from scene to scene. The figures hover securely, they are not set adrift, for the painting has solid compositional bones. However, Hammond has clothed them. In making the architecture less obvious he has invited the viewer into a sphere of unhurried and deeply satisfying viewing experience. This is the kind of painting that keeps coming.

‘Big Blue’, a sculpture by Nicole Bourke. Polystyrene, flock, lacquer. This list of synthetic materials belies the works impression for ‘Big Blue’ appears alive. I imagine it nibbles; it might reach out and engulf me. Perhaps it is an ecosystem or a mutant colony. It sprouts like a reef, balloons, collapses, secretes and grows upon itself. Or maybe it conceals some dark shy creature that emerges when my back is turned. Slithery blood-red holes open amidst the velvet blue, its shadows are so deep they are almost black. The scale makes a difference. It’s bigger than me and the relationship of each bulbous shape relates to the scale of Bourke’s own hands and therefore my own. Her fingers have traveled across all those surfaces, smoothing them, encouraging life out of them. ‘Big Blue’ is unnervingly intimate.

Andy Leleisi’uao’s works on paper are both gentle and noisy, populated.  The figures are boldly silhouetted and minimally featured, yet not without character; in fact, each figure is individualised. Leleisi’uao’s narratives emerge from his Pacific heritage, from mythology, from colonial interaction, from his own investigation of self and society. Sometimes the stories are raw but he tells them with a politeness that coaxes an empathetic response. Figures appear questioning, curious. They make offerings. Some watch, others are oblivious. They co-exist with jigsaw pieces as if we are all part of a larger puzzle. Although these works are small, barely fifteen centimetres high, some figures appear colossal, towering above the picture’s other inhabitants. Or they may be weighty, welded to the base line by gravity and their own leaden mass. In contrast, origami birds fly across sunsets or are held aloft on sticks like large ritual puppets. I am struck by the absorption of era, as if these narratives don’t exist in any particular timeframe but are set in a place where past, present and future are all bound together.

Angular, hard-edged, tense and gleaming, Darryn George’s panels, all titled ‘Register’, approximate the size of a human torso. Long lines run up and down, short ones dart across. They vein their way through the surface diagrammatically creating parameters, separating deep-lustre from matt black, vivid red from metallic graininess. These paintings, automotive paint on melamine, have a motor-body finish and acute attention to detail. At first glance they are fast paced. White lines sear across the surface but those lines aren’t uniform when looked at close. They are ridged, show a glimmer of hand, and this creates incident and tension. These paintings are cleverly composed within tight constraints, yet also throw the image back at us, for there is another thing. If we relax our focal length we can let the lines go, see into the works. The partially lacquered surface creates an incomplete mirror and our own shadowed form becomes part of the viewing experience.

When we were putting together the show we knew that the hallway space would supply a special challenge. At one point during the build the walls were defined only by studs and dwangs, yet even then it was clear the space was going to be different. The two doorways on the left were to be replaced by a single opening and the original plaster archway had collapsed as a result of the jacking process. This completely changed the sense of entrance into the whole gallery and has provided a sub-gallery, an encounter space, in which art can bounce from wall to wall. We were absolutely delighted when John Reynolds agreed to make a wall drawing in that space for the opening show. He arrived on Sunday morning (we opened Monday evening) and we let him loose with a box of crayons. A web grew, splintering its way across pristine walls.

Fractured structure is a phrase Reynolds likes – the idea of building and breaking in one. Reynolds built his drawing as a series of dashed lines that stretch from epicentre to architrave, from cornice to plug box, seeking purchase, supplying bracing. There is a playfulness to its logic – it grew in a systematic yet organic way. The hyphenated lines lightly embrace the wall, like an idea that is suggested not shouted. The wall still comes through isn’t pushed back spatially. To me the web, the fracture, is no illusion – it is a thought.

Structures, fractures, webs. Useful words in the current context.

It has been no mean feat getting the gallery to this stage. Even conceiving the place afresh, amidst aftershock fatigue, was a huge effort. There is no need to describe that to anyone local or to explain how I, like many others, feel guiltily relieved that we have reached light at the end of the tunnel when so many are still picking up the pieces. In a small way I hope that PG gallery192, by being a structure, contributes to an infrastructure, is part of a bigger interaction, this achieved by sparking many smaller interactions. It was not until our city was devastated that I realized how important buildings are for social cohesion. We need places to meet up.

Art requires walls. A computer screen, a phone, is not the same as one gets no sense of the scale, of texture. No account is taken of changing light levels and angles of approach, which make a difference to the way a work is digested. In a gallery one can stand close up or step further away get the impact of several works at once. This encourages us to use our brains in many different ways when we view. One way in is to pick up the references and translate the symbology so as to decipher the artist’s intention. Another is to respond to the visual dynamic within the work and allow the artwork to lead us through it, let it wash over us. Almost always, though, we also draw on our own memory banks and art can be a springboard into completely different thought lines which are personal to each viewer. It’s all valid.

I’ve been slow to get this piece of writing out and no wonder really. I was absolutely exhausted by the time we opened and it has taken a while for the work to really filter in. But what a gift! One doesn’t realise how much interacting with art offers life until it is not easily had. Nigel and I have often remarked how much we have missed it. Being artists ourselves, we have been able to keep contact with art through our own studio practice, but we are also avid viewers and, as such, are thrilled to finally have art to stimulate our own eyes and minds. We look forward, hugely, to the rollover of exhibitions at PG gallery192 and hope you do too.

Thank you very much to Nicole Bourke, Darryn George, Bill Hammond, Andy Leleisi’uao, Euan Macleod and John Reynolds for creating LAUNCH. Thanks also to our staff – Amanda Greenfield, Jane Bowman and Tessa Warburton – for their continuing contribution.
And, from me, thank you Nigel Buxton.

We are delighted that on March 9 at 5.30pm we will open the inaugural exhibition of our repaired, revived and re-invented gallery, renamed:  PG gallery192

The reconfigured space is absolutely beautiful and we are proud to present the exhibition:

‘LAUNCH’
Nicole Bourke,  Darryn George,  Bill Hammond
Andy Leleisi’uao,  Euan Macleod,  John Reynolds

OPENING: 5.30pm, Monday 9 March, 2015

‘The Labour of Herakles’ by Marian Maguire opened at Leeds City Museum on 23th January and runs till 15th March 2015.

Reviewed by Damian Whittle

click here to read the blog

The title of the print, None but ourselves, is taken from “None but ourselves can free our mind”, from Redemption Song by Bob Marley.

This is the fourth print launch by the National Whale Centre Development Trust in an ongoing series of artist prints with a cetacean theme to raise funds for the proposed National Whale Centre for Picton.
John Pule’s etching, printed at PaperGraphica Print Studio, is part of a portfolio of works by some of New Zealand’s and one of Australia’s most important image makers including Dick Frizzell, John Walsh, Greg O’Brien, Fiona Hall, Michel Tuffery and two others still to be confirmed.
Participating dealer galleries are generously foregoing any commission on sales made for the cause.
The National Whale Centre Development Trust is indebted to the generosity and enthusiasm of the participating artists.

__________________________________________________

NATIONAL WHALE CENTRE – Media Release
March 12, 2014

Christchurch first to view new John Pule whale print

Christchurch art lovers will be the first to view leading New Zealand artist and poet, John Pule’s exceptional etchingNone but ourselves when it is unveiled in the city on March 28.

John Pule has kindly donated his print, which is centred on a whale theme, to raise funds for the National Whale Centre Development Trust.  This is the fourth in an ongoing series of artist prints with a cetacean theme to aid the Trust’s cause – the establishment of the National Whale Centre on the Picton foreshore.

The Niuean-born artist, who is also a renowned poet, will talk about the print and read one of his poems at the launch at printmakers PaperGraphica in Bealey Avenue.  His book of poetry, The Bond of Time, will be launched by Canterbury University Press the previous night.

Limited edition copies of the print will be available for individual sale initially with all proceeds going to the Whale Centre project.

“John’s print makes a valuable addition to the series and the Trust is indebted to him for his generosity and enthusiasm for the project which we believe will significantly benefit the South Island and New Zealand as a whole,” says project director Luit Bieringa.

The title of John Pule’s etching is taken from the line “None but ourselves can free our mind”, from Redemption Song by Bob Marley.

Pule’s print will be part of a portfolio of works by some of New Zealand’s and one of Australia’s most important image makers including Dick Frizzell, Greg O’Brien, John Walsh (already released), Fiona Hall , Michael Tuffery and two others still to be confirmed.

The prints are available from PaperGraphica, The Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland, the Diversion Gallery, Picton or Bowen Galleries in Wellington – a geographical spread of galleries to reflect the Trust’s national focus.

“The previous prints are selling well and we expect to launch the Michael Tuffery print in Wellington in May,” says Luit Bieringa.

The NWC aims to tell the story of New Zealand’s whaling history in the Marlborough Sounds as well as current whale and dolphin (cetaceans) conservation efforts through information, research and exhibition programmes.  The Trust aims to build an interactive space near the Picton foreshore for visitors to learn more about cetaceans and the local area’s whaling history.

After the release of individual prints over the next year, each artist will receive a full set for their own collection, with a portfolio of 8-10 prints being offered to the public.

www.aworldwithwhales.com

For more information please contact:

Luit H Bieringa
Project Director
National Whale Centre
Ph: 64 4 385 9435
Mob: 027 448 1947
luit@nullbwx.co.nz

Or
Media/PR sponsor:

Brenda Saunders
Trio Communications
Auckland
Mob: 021 777 171
brenda@nulltriocommunications.co.nz

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