Mood & Memory is Elizabeth Rees’ fourth solo exhibition in Dunedin but her first since 2000.

As revealed by the title, the exhibition has two constituent parts but pervasive throughout is the presence of an enigmatic landscape, peopled as much by signs, marks and the fact of recollection as by the actual presence of man in the landscape.

Rees’ mastery of mood, momentum, light, ephemera, apprehension and event has been remarked on and acknowledged as outstanding by reviewers and critics everywhere in New Zealand.

Rees has turned back to the South Island landscape and in works such as the epic Lake Drive (2005), Range Road 1 (2005), and Peach Light (2005) the location is specific (Wanaka and the Crown Range). In these paintings there is a sense of a literal journey being undertaken by both the painter and the viewer. The landscape is shown to be in a state of flux and dissolve, and so the dialogues and rhythms established by Rees’ combination of painting and drawing transpose and transform. In Corridor (2004), Descending Road (2005) and Range Road II (2005) the journey becomes spiritual - psychological encounters with time and impending event.

The Time Frame (I, II, III) works recall Rees’ earlier investigations and use of structural devices, such as architecture, multiple event and cinematic narrative, while also being painterly explorations of background and foreground, and compelling studies of shadow and flickering light.

Four related paintings (Aquamarine, Herald, Passage and Dusk) from 2004 see Rees moving away from the generic depiction of figures in an atmospheric landscape to the particular and personal. These paintings are very specific – the women have individual personality, behavioural and mental characteristics. They traverse portraiture, using the subject’s gaze as the fundamental starting point for a narrative that flattens time while establishing the arguments of context.