Rene 2 - Elliot Collins

"I first saw Elliot Collins' work in 2007 at his AUT (Auckland) Masters Graduation. His installation filled the largest gallery; a visual brainstorm of gorgeously coloured painting, delicate sculpture, and text-based work almost entirely covering the walls, floor and ceiling of the space. It was a risky approach, and in less capable hands would have seemed chaotic, but the show was impressive both for the quality of the individual works and the assured way with which disparate pieces had been curated by the artist into a cohesive whole.

Elliot Collins' unique method of 'cutting' text into thickly painted surfaces makes the material feel luscious, rich and tactile. It is the poetry of his language, however, that sets him apart from others of his generation. In a critique of Collins' 14m wall installation, recently commissioned by City Gallery Wellington, Mark Amery writes: "Collins' text lives in the cryptic spaces between personal anecdote, literary flourish, art historical quotation and public address ... [while] ... underneath the text swatches of paint swarm up as a school of fish, like a letting-go of modernism and all that is behind us, sent off into the ether by the force of the spinning of the globe". (i)

Here I give thanks for giving everything up and losing nothing. At least that's how I'd like it to go.

This painting has decided to live vicariously through others from now on.

This painting is attempting to speak to us in its peculiar dislocated language of the important themes of our lives.

A love story; nothing else will do.

Here I give thanks to a candle in a dark room.

In artworks like these the viewer has a sense of the artist making himself vulnerable. The paintings are brave, beautifully considered and thought-provoking, with a quality of romantic melancholy and knowing innocence that hits the heart with a flash of recognition. In a world preoccupied with irony and cynicism Collins' paintings are loaded with hope and humanity and possibility. They're probably unfashionable - but that doesn't seem to be doing his career any harm at all."

TIM MELVILLE
August 2010

(i) http://eyecontactsite.com/2010/06/wellington-survey

text taken from http://www.timmelville.com/artists/showArticle.php?file=elliotcollins.xml

Purchased September 2011

Buying committee
Blair, Claire, Katy

Still Life - Roberta Thornley

Although the cinematic quality of her photographs might evoke the dark sensuality of Bill Henson or the surreal narratives of David Lynch, the place to begin with Roberta Thornley's work is in the 'everyday' world. There is no narrative linking her works. Rather, they are discrete images about the simplest and yet most evocative of ideas. Contained within each work is a sense of the efflorescence of life and the wet, dark, decaying extreme that is part of its cycle of disintegration and renewal. Her work has an underlying element of unease, as if each image marks a crucial connection between beauty, desire, and the 'bible-black' of melancholy.

In spite of its being carefully staged, Thornley begins each photographic session with little idea of what will result. The final photographs are an outcome of the process of working with the object or model (often a friend or family member). The physical and emotional fatigue of Rosie was captured only after hours of posing. Drenched with water, she is blank, resigned, and exhausted. It is these moments of letting go - of truthfulness - to which we intuitively respond. They elicit what Roland Barthes calls the photographic 'shock' that is not about 'traumatising' so much as about 'revealing'. (i)

Thornley is a recent graduate of the University of Auckland Elam School of Fine Arts and at the age of 25 she has already generated a consistent body of work. She has a clear sense of what her photographs mean and where she wants to take them, with each series becoming more refined and more simplified. The strength of Thornley's work lies in her having, quite remarkably, and in a very short period of time, claimed her own ground.

Dr Kriselle Baker

published in: Art New Zealand, Issue 134, Winter 2010

Buying Committee;

Blair, Claire, Kathryn

Purchased September 2011

Little Smasher - Miranda Parkes

Little Smasher traverses the line between painting and sculpture, defiant of the conventions of either medium and exploring the gap between. It occupies the viewer's space, almost if separated from the stretcher-frame to which the canvas is attached. Occupying three-dimensional space, the viewing experience is a dynamic one.

Little Smasher exemplifies the best of Parkes' practice: her confidence and the refinement of her art technique shines through. The work is resolutely abstract, yet both the form and colour palette are familiar to the viewer from the landscape: greens, yellows and mauves overlay, folded, rolling forms.

Modernist painting and illustrate Parkes' knowledge of Op-Art and Abstraction. By flirting with the decorative aspects of her composition, the artist both subverts and pays homage to those artistic traditions.

Miranda Parkes is a talented young artist who has proven her ability and importantly her tenacity and desire to continue to make art in the years ahead. Parkes has consistently shown in group, as well as solo, shows, in Auckland and her native Christchurch.

Little Smasher survived the latest Christchurch earthquake, where the artist's studio was destroyed. It shares the title of the show at Antoinette Godkin Gallery, which was in fact confirmed before the quake.

Little Smasher possesses a bold visual impact, defying gravity and expectations. It is a serious work that punches above its weight, with a playful nod toward the past, and a serious work with a playful nod toward past traditions and future possibility.

Buying Committee;

Blair, Glen, Kay

Purchased March 2011

Rita Borbeletta - Charlotte Sinnema

The link to Charlotte's website;
http://www.charlottesinnema.com/

The link to a Campbell Live clip on Charlotte;
http://www.3news.co.nz/Charlotte-overcomes-the-odds-to-hold-first-art-exhibition/tabid/367/articleID/131676/Default.aspx


Buying Committee;
Blair, Kay, Glen
Purchased November 2010