This exhibition of new paintings by Gary Waldrom, shows his trademark carnival of elfin people. Where theatrical lighting, minimal ‘props’, barren and dry twilight landscape, and subtly suggestive interiors, set up an eerie and whimsical playground for the figures.

Gary Waldrom is a Hawkes Bay artist, and the expansive, warm, dry landscape that surrounds him there, distinctly informs the landscape that appears in his work, providing the backdrop to the strange little people with their cocky poses and their direct and smiling stare at the viewer.

There is a sense that the child-like figures may or may not be ‘there’ at all: that they may be ghosts that have come out to play in the twilight. But the cinematic manner in which Waldrom lights the frontally placed figures, gives them an aspect of solidity. And this device illuminates the individuality of each character: an individuality that is expressed by otherworldly clothing (or lack thereof). But the strength of presence of each figure - as told by the lighting - is still a question as they stand against a less certain, incongruous, and rudimentary background.

These paintings have a simple and pleasing adult-child or child-adult quality about them, and it is this particular psychic duality that enables Waldrom to reveal a great deal about the complexity of the human condition.