Polly Gilroy

After graduating with a BFA (1st class Honours) from Massey University, Wellington in 2017, Polly Gilroy moved to Otautahi Christchurch where she has since presented 4 solo shows and various group shows at PG Gallery192. Gilroy has exhibited across Aotearoa, as well as being internationally represented in Melbourne, Australia. She was a finalist in the Zonta Female Art Awards, Ashburton Art Gallery in 2020, 2021 and 2024.

Polly Gilroy’s deceptively minimal constructions are translations of her observations. Imitating light and shadow conversations within architecture, she creates works that explore the complexities of hues that are forever shifting in changing light. No paint can be seen on the surface and by bringing the support frame into the formal composition she is encouraging viewers to look through and beyond.

Inspired by the Support/Surfaces movement of the 60’s & 70’s Gilroy encourages her audience to question the boundaries of traditional painting and its expected confines by embracing the point of transition between sculpture and painting, binding the two through multi-faceted structures.

Gilroy’s work ostensibly focuses on the play of light, colour, and form, yet subverts the normal relationship between these three parameters and the painted surface. Rather than beginning with a canvas or similar ground, the artist has used her surfaces — light silk — as a muting agent, placing them over a painted base. Instead of seeing images coalescing from forms on the surface of the work, Gilroy’s work forces us to focus on the structure of the timber and boards which make up the stretchers and frames of the work…
Within this metaphorical and literal framework, we are left with attractive pastel colourfield abstractions, exemplified by the soft geometries. – James Dignan, Otago Daily Times

Exhibitions:

2024 – In between Expanses
2022 – Traces
2020 – In absence of
2019 – Within and Without

Artists Website
Artists Instagram
Interview with The Art Paper