Tarawera Number 5 - Peata Larkin

Peata Larkin was born in Rotorua (1973) and completed a Masters with RMIT University, Melbourne in 2007. Awarded Merit award Norsewear Art Award 2007. Graduate of Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland University (2001-04). Recipient of Molly Morpeth Canaday Award 2006, RMIT University Scholarship for Excellence and Achievement 2006. Finalist Trust Waikato National Contemporary Art Award, Norsewear Art Award, Recipient of Mazda Emerging Artists Award 2006. Finalist Waiheke Art Award, Wallace Art Awards travelling exhibition, Trust Waikato National Contemporary Art Award 2005. Awarded special merit prize Norsewear Art Award 2004. Awarded merit prize Goldwater Art Award 2003.

Peata Larkin has exhibited and is collected throughout New Zealand with her work represented in significant public collections including Waikato University, Massey University, Pataka Museum of Arts & Culture and the Wallace Collection. Internationally, she is represented in collections in Australia, UK, Dubai and the USA including the Memphis Museum of Fine Art.
This painting captures Tarawera, the lake, which is where the artist’s people come from. Peata’s Maori heritage is central to her practice and this piece.

Peata Larkin has pioneered a way of painting which is unique. Acrylic paint is pushed through a weave substrate and in doing so the works acquire sculptural characteristics. Individual dots or mounds of colour (shaped by volume) are presented in an abstract pattern and the further the viewer gets away from the surface the more the pattern merges.

This piece comes highly recommended by Paul Baragwanath.

Buying committee - Glen, Kay, Blair
Purchased Nov 10

Mt Eden with Blue Car - George Baloghy

George Baloghy is an established New Zealand and Australasian painter artist. His current painting style can be described as realism, although it is a particular kind of realism, hardened and sharpened to be something more dramatic. By heightening colour and contrast he creates a reality not quite like the world that we see, but a kind of hyper-realism. He deals with a number of different themes, and these threads have intertwined over the years of his painting production. There are city landscapes, rural and coastal scenes, appropriated imagery from other artists, often with humour. They are more than paintings, they are also commentaries on how we see, and often with a subtle twist. As such there is generally more to the paintings than meets the eye, depending on your knowledge of art history and sometimes local events. His work is included in the curricula of University Art History Programmes, and he has work in almost all the major public Art museums in New Zealand. George Baloghy has worked professionally as an artist since 1993. - reference georgebaloghy.com Oct 2010.

Buying Committee - Glen, Kate, Karina

Purchased in Oct 2010

Rock Pool Study - Michael Smither

Michael Duncan Smither, CNZM (29 October 1939) is a New Zealand painter and composer.
He was born in New Plymouth and was educated at New Plymouth Boys' High School and Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland. While studying he worked part-time in a car spray-paint shop, an occupation which introduced Smither to the use of lacquer-based paints.
In 1959, Smither returned to New Plymouth, working part-time in arts-related jobs. His first solo exhibition was in 1961. In 1963 he married Elizabeth Harrington, who is better known as New Zealand Poet Elizabeth Smither. The two have three children, Sarah, Thomas and Joseph. Smither separated from Elizabeth and eventually divorced. For a few years he was married to Rachel McAlpine, a writer. Smither now lives at Otama beach on the Coromandel Peninsula.

Smither works in a variety of media - notably oils, acrylics, and screenprint - and on a variety of subjects. Domestic life is a major theme of many of his works, these scenes depicted with a rigorous yet idiosyncratic realism. A similar style is brought to his landscapes, many of which depict the Taranaki landscape around which he grew up. At least two of his paintings, The Family in the Van and Rocks with Mountain have attained the status of iconic paintings in New Zealand.
His first solo exhibition was in 1961.

Smither was the recipient of the 1970 Frances Hodgkins Fellowship from the University of Otago. He is the patron of community art gallery "Real Tart" in New Plymouth.

Buying Committee - Glen, Kate, Karina

Purchased in Sept 2010

On Waking Up & Getting Ready For Work - Jenny Dolezel

Born and based in Auckland, Dolezel is expert in drawing and printmaking as well as painting. 'Aggressive, nightmarish, off-beat, scary' these are the adjectives Dolezel applies to her work.

Born into an artistic background in 1964, Dolezel graduated from Auckland's Elam School of Fine Arts in 1987 with a major in printmaking, having also studied painting and drawing.
She is the recipient of 18 major art awards; including the James Wallace Art Award 1996 and the Royal Overseas League Art Award in London. In 2006 Jenny won 1st prize in the Parklane Art Awards judged by Peter Siddell. Jenny also won 1st prize in the BMW Art Awards judged by James Wallace. Dolezel has taken part in several artist residency programs including the Fresno Art Museum in California, and the Goethe Institute Scholarship in Berlin. Jenny Dolezel has taken part in numerous solo and group shows, and is displayed in many public and private collections. Jenny currently lives and works in Auckland New Zealand.Public art commissions of Jenny's work include a mural at Skycity, Auckland; a mural at the Aotea Centre, Auckland and a mural at the Boathouse on Blackwattle Bay, Sydney, Australia.

Buying Committee - Glen, Kate, Karina

Purchased Sept 2010

Jean Cocteau - Gavin Hurley

Collage techniques of cut-and-paste are integral to Hurley’s work. Collecting textures and papers from old books and second-hand haunts, his portraits have a genteel, even antique, decorum and a childlike naivety. Not portraits in the usual sense, of accurately representing a person, his works are a carefully neutral approximation, given individual personality with a set of clip-art style accoutrements, or in the particular placement of a lock of hair. Even when working with paint on canvas, rather than with paper, Hurley’s collage approach is visible in the curious accessories around his sitters.

The flat, matte areas of colour also reveal the way that Hurley's images are built of flat plans, carefully layered. With a nod to early cubist painter he contrasts those flat areas with carefully, almost mechanically shaded ares, which give an illusion of depth. The archival nature of Hurley's work is reflected not just in his choice of second-hand materials and motifs, but also in his subject matter. Invariably working with historical subjects Hurley's work is laced with a coded nostalgia, where history is reconstructed from fragments and left over relics.- Hanna Scott

Buying Committee - Glen, Kate, Karina

Purchased Sept 2010

Maze - Tony De Lautour

Aptly titled "Maze", this elegant, deceptively modest painting consists of multiple symbols and motifs that float, surreal, on a black background. At first, the work appears to be an indecipherable maze of symbols, but on closer inspection reveals and encyclopedia or road-map of Lautour's pictorial language.

The artist has combined symbols from a variety of sources to create an artwork that generates multiple layers of meanings, as well as captures competing ideas that hover within darkness. These include crosses, the letter x, clouds and lighting, mountain ranges and smoking volcanoes, a cobweb bearing the inscription "new day" at its extremities, and a lion with a cross, amongst others.

Because the symbols in Maze are not ordered, with no definitive viewing perspective provided, the work demands the viewer's active involvement in teasing out its readings. The work can be viewed as a diagram - an insight to- the artist's mind. Ideas float around, jostling for attention, captured here in a moment of time, for all time. The network of lines, circles, letters and dots function like a map waiting to be read and deciphered, as well as referencing early computer games and blackboard diagrams.

A political element is often present in de Lautour's practice. Here, there imperial lion speaks of colonialism, with the crucifix in his paw, while the neatly segmented mountains blocks of two, three of four, illustrate the commoditisation of the land. The lightening bolts might somewhat humorously reference the artist's own punk rocker leanings, or perhaps, the wrath of God.

Maze is a significant work that connects broad aspects of de Lautour's practic. Tony de Lautour is an artist whose work is represented in the collections of Auckland Art Gallery; Govett-Brewster Gallery, New Plymouth; Museum of New Zealand Te Pape Tongarewa, Wellington; National Library of New Zealand, Wellington; Christchurch Art Gallery; Sarjeant Gallery, Wanganui, and the University of Canterbury.

Buying Committee - Karina, Glen, Kate

Purchased in July 2010

Don't Look Back - Belinda Griffiths

Born in South Africa, moved to NZ in 1996. Studied graphic design at AUT and worked as designer for many years before making the decision to dedicate more time to art. Works primarily in acrylic. Works concentrate on the expressive qualities of mark-making and the conveying of emotion through the human form.

Exhibited widely and won a number of small awards including 3 time supreme winner at the Franklin Arts Festival and has been a finalist in the Iris Fisher Awards and winner of the Molly Morpeth-Canaday Art award in 2010.

Buying committee - Karina, Glen, Kate

Purchased June 2010

The Monarch - Stephanie O'Connor

Graduate of Auckland University of Fine Arts with a major in photography. She is a photographic and digital artist with a special interest in photo retouching. She has a recurring interest in the idea of theatricality and Carinvalesque, blurring the bridge between fact and fiction with hyper real images.

Buying committee - Karina, Glen, Kate

Purchased June 2010

Know we know what the artist looks like too!

Abstract IV - Antony Densham

Recent graduate from Elam School of Fine Art and prior to that gained a Bachelor of Graphic Design from AUT. The series from which this work comes explores the materialisation of form. He has work in the James Wallace Arts Trust private collection and last year was a finalist for the Anthony Harper Art Award in Christchurch.

Buying committee - Karina, Glen, Kate

Purchased June 2010

Numero Uno

This is the first post of what will be an archive record of the art purchased (and loved) by Articus. Each new piece of art will be photographed and posted along with a blurb and the price paid.