The Summer Show in Dunedin celebrates that season and presents a grouping of key works. The garden is seen and felt in Tim Main’s breathtaking Composition with Grasses VI (2008), Neal Palmer’s commanding Snakes & Ladders (2010), Karl Maughan’s important Riverena (2010).
Charlotte Handy enters the bush and fractures space into patterns in Begin on Your Own Histories (2010). Richard Orjis presents an orchid branch Sisters of the Moon (2008) as a narrative container. Ann Robinson’s masterful Curved Vase #3 (2009) combines the poetry of design and form with the lyricism of colour interacting in light.
Nigel Brown uses the metaphors of dance, the built stage and unites this with the reckless joy of bungy jumping in Pride of Place (2004). Remarkable sensations of movement arise in Lorraine Rastorfer’s astonishing Tanzen (to Dance) (2008). Symbols of time, journey, valour, local history and spiritual quest dominate the Northland focused dialogue of Robert Ellis’s great painting Ra Tapu Te Rawhiti 4 Pepuere (1990). Wendy Fairclough in Shades of Green (2008) establishes a domestic still-life tableaux and subjects this to a discourse on tone, hue and space.
Joanna Braithwaite unites human attributes with humour and pathos in Feathered Feats – Rescue (2004). Michael Hight’s beehive paintings have achieved iconic status for numerous reasons and Kopua (2005) is outstanding. Peter James Smith’s unique combination of scientific text and the romantic landscape is witnessed in the sublime work The Measure of Aoraki (2006).
Just back from a major art residency in Eastern Germany, Anita deSoto’s War Widow (2009) hangs in limbo. Marc Blake’s Everything I’ve Ever Known (2009) is a startling work, redolent with narrative vignettes. Recent McCahon Artist in Residence Andy Leleisi’uao episodic, linear constructed paintings tell stories of loss and quest, reaching deep into myth and the abject realities faced in suburban Auckland daily. Neil Dawson’s Whare (2010) sits off the floor on a stainless steel pedestal in front of Ralph Hotere’s Ruia Ruia (1977) and to its side hangs a Luke Jacomb Reticello Canoe Paddle (2008).