GRACE WRIGHT – Afternoon Delight – 14 Feb-3 March, 2017
Painting as ‘visual pleasure’, is a concept lying at the heart of my work. The luscious, organic forms ooze and flow sensually around each other, like honey pouring out of a bottle. The forms are derived from a sense of bodily-ness that is abstract, yet suggestive of the interior and exterior body. Like pieces of a puzzle, these voluptuous, flowing gestures are pleasurable in the way they fit together to complete something. A sense of ‘dynamic-ness’ is created by the use of both tense and harmonious colour combinations. Passionate bright, bold colours are held in tension with greys and dirty tones. This surprising contrast optically pulls the viewer in and out of the painting, contributing to a sense of beauty by contrast with the ‘ugly’.
Conceptual lightness as a contemporary idea is also something I’m interested in. These are playful works that don’t attempt to address any directly political or conceptual meaning. Rather, they are about the pleasure of viewing painting in a material and visual sense. Referencing ‘bodiliness and oozing’, flowing forms seem an exciting way of approaching the history of abstraction.
– Grace Wright
Exhibited alongside AIKO ROBINSON – Afternoon Delight
GRACE WRIGHT studied at Elam School of Fine Arts, gaining honours in 2014. Since then she has exhibited in group and solo shows, has been a finalist in Waikato Society of Arts NZ Painting and Printmaking Award, (2015 and 2016), and was also a finalist in Arts Whakatāne Molly Morpeth Canaday Art Award in 2015.
Wright explains that “Painting as ‘visual pleasure’, is a concept lying at the heart of my work. The luscious, organic forms ooze and flow sensually around each other, like honey pouring out of a bottle. The forms are derived from a sense of bodily-ness that is abstract, yet suggestive of the interior and exterior body. Like pieces of a puzzle, these voluptuous, flowing gestures are pleasurable in the way they fit together to complete something. A sense of ‘dynamic-ness’ is created by the use of both tense and harmonious colour combinations. Passionate bright, bold colours are held in tension with greys and dirty tones. This surprising contrast optically pulls the viewer in and out of the painting, contributing to a sense of beauty by contrast with the ‘ugly’.
Conceptual lightness as a contemporary idea is also something I’m interested in. These are playful works that don’t attempt to address any directly political or conceptual meaning. Rather, they are about the pleasure of viewing painting in a material and visual sense. Referencing ‘bodiliness and oozing’, flowing; forms seem an exciting way of approaching the history of abstraction.”