"F" - Andre Sampson

Artist Statement



My practice investigates the roll of contemporary painting and printmaking from the point of view that it is a radical act to gain the viewers attention, and hold it for as long as possible in an image-saturated culture. I am interested in fracturing the viewing experience by collapsing visual patterns and rhythms that arise in the work during its construction. When things aren’t conforming to instinctive visual assumption, when it just doesn’t feel right, then you are compelled to engage with the work.

By bringing together the languages of visual communication from the fields of art history, illustration and contemporary advertising media, I aim to arrive at a place within each work where it becomes its own distinct fact.

Stylistic inconsistencies are deliberately engaged in order to provide an opportunity for intense examination of the tensions that arise where varying modes of communication meet, thus extending the duration of initial impression. Development of affecting tensions arise through the interplay between spontaneity and calculated development, loose gestures and rigid form, fore-ground and back-ground, an interplay between positive and negative space, planes of colour and tone jostle for attention, of stillness and speed, and of noise and silence.

By undertaking an emergent approach to make the work, manipulating the painted and printed surface until the materials do something I have not seen before, the finished work will represent an unanticipated outcome. Works are developed separately, following an individual visual logic.

The use of printmaking processes engages ideas of reproduction, repetition, procedure, and the constructed image. It also allows the pace of the project to slow, without losing any of the spontaneous, gestural and vigorous. Printmaking also instills preparedness for ‘failure’ at every step, an attitude I adapt to my painting practice, because it enables bolder risk taking and increases the opportunity for the occurrence of unforeseen outcomes.

Buying Committee;

Gretchen
Katy
Bryce

Purchased June 2012

Home Again - Brendan McGorry

“Home Again Again” comes from a series of work exploring personal genealogy and ideas around multiple generations working together and sharing knowledge towards a common goal. In this case the common vision of returning home together, depicted in the cell like cluster of homes they are staring towards.


As is the case in many of McGorry’s paintings compositional elements arise from his studies of Renaissance art in Italy. “Home Again Again” borrows from the seven-metre wide fresco “The Resurrection of the Flesh” (1499-1502) by Luca Signorelli (1441-1523) in the Chapel of San Brizio, Cathedral of Orvieto (S. Maria Assunta), Umbria. It was here that the artist drew every morning while studying renaissance frescos with the New York Studio School in Italy.


Rather than slavishly copying any one, two or three figures from Signorelli, McGorry has borrowed the general disposition and attitudes of the figures: climbing out of one state (death) and into another (resurrection); and their upward gaze. He has therefore linked the resurrection moment (“and the dead shall be raised”) with a contemporary experience of “coming home” to ones roots or origins; a return that happens over and over again, from generation to generation to generation.


The work loosely suggests that the figures are rising from some indeterminate protoplasmic ooze, signified by the pink colour and the cytoplasm below the central figure’s right foot. In McGorry’s painting the figures do not gaze Heavenward; although they do gaze skywards, looking at a cluster of homes. But these houses are visceral and earthly. Mirroring the life and death allegory of Signorelli McGorry’s blue orb signals each man’s genetic beginnings (their heredity) and embodied end (their progeny) in its cluster of houses rendered like the early moments of cell-division in the womb.

Thus “Home Again Again” spans five centuries of art history and the several generations of McGorry’s own family.

Buying Committee;

Gretchen
Katy
Bryce

Purchased June 2012

“Pohutukawa” and “Cabbage Tree” - Brendan McGorry

“Pohutukawa” and “Cabbage Tree” are from McGorry’s 2008 series "Walking home through the forest" in which the artist explored mortality, new life and genealogy.





Pohutukawa

The series was composed as an installation of 10 small portrait paintings arranged in front of a 3 x 4 metre charcoal drawing. The drawing depicted lighthouses as symbols of a light that leads the way, with unravelling legs that spiral down through the drawing, becoming flowering strands of DNA, leading to objects of daily life arranged along the bottom. In amongst the DNA strands and the lighthouses float images of cells dividing and a growing blastocyst which depict the beginnings of new life. The small paintings each depict a different male member of the artist’s family, from his grandfather to his children and nephews; and each figure is accompanied by flowering native tree, after which the painting is named. Taken as a whole, the work illustrates the enduring journey of one genetic print.

Buying Committee;

Gretchen
Katy
Bryce

Purchased June 2012


Cabbage Tree

Datura 17.48 - Emma Bass

SPEED

EMPATHY
PERFECTION
PASSION






Award-winning photographer Emma Bass applies her talents


to a diverse range of subject matter.






Emma’s world is visual … light and colour are her lifeblood.






http://www.emmabass.co.nz/about/
 
Buying Committee - Gretchen, Kathryn, Bryce
Purchased May 2012

Graham Hitchcock

Artist statement

I have a drive that needs to be satisfied daily through the creation of artwork be it a painting or sculpture. Because of this, I often have a number of paintings on the go along with sculptures in wax or clay readying for bronze or cast glass pieces. It is not until I arrive at my studio do I know I will feel the urge to do. My works, do not always relate yet they all have an subtle connections, the distorted bodies, unnatural angled hairless heads, large hands is because they are creations from my subconscious and that is how they wish to be exposed. My paintings are often challenging my ideals pushing me to understand, experience situations I would not normally find myself. As I work on a painting or sculpture it becomes a story, which unfolds before me, every little detail becomes an important part of that story. The finished painting has more often than not, been painted over another painting that did not work out however it is now an important background research piece of the final piece. I hope that my art will make the observer smile, laugh or question.
Buying Committee;

Gretchen, Katy, Blair

Purchased in Feb 2012