"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

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

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