The paper dart has been a key motif in Neil Dawson’s work. In Vortex 5 he whirls these in a rotary motion across a domed shape, altering scale and bending perception. The underside and edges of the darts have been painted in a fluorescent colour that reflects as a blush and an infused shadow. The consequences are breath-taking and very beautiful.
Dick Frizzell examines in a major work Grand Central the Central Otago landscape in his distinctive, acclaimed manner where the literal and ordinary becomes celebrated and revealed. Sunlit Track and Shaded Track are wonderful studies of light and dark, and the specifics of place.
Bruce Hunt, similarly, looks upon Otago Peninsula. Shadow and light contrast, a birds-eye vantage point, a dialogue with McCahon are revealed in the splendid Above Hoopers Inlet – Peninsula. In the deceptively simple Cape Saunders a wind-beaten tree frames the farmed landscape and flattened horizon.
Karl Maughan uses the architecture of the garden to lead the viewer in and then surrounds us with abstracted impressions and suggestions rather than literal flowers. He uses shadow and light, the notion of something around the corner or along the path as key devices that takes the viewer into enveloping, changing, emotive visual experiences.
Bridie Henderson’s new porcelain necklaces – the Black and White Series – suggest wearers and memories. Have these been collected or created? The anthropological language of the carved and patterned feathers is heightened with the imagined stories that emerge.
Linda Holloway invents an abstracted world where objects sit in front of the landscape and space becomes bent. Some objects are simply shapes, patterns and designs, others voids or windows. People appear, fences define, horizontal and vertical elements carve up and recompose the pictorial plane into individualised elements and yet this magical world functions as a whole.
Andy Leleisi’uao’s painted world is part-myth, part-hieroglyph, part heaven and hell. His works are also parables of human endeavour where work is shown as ceaseless for most while others ponder the immensity of it. These are narratives without beginning or an end - we come to realise each story is endless.
Jenna Packer has a unique visual language where the improbable and impossible accompany the vignettes and depictions of historical event. Packer builds metaphorical histories, using humour, farce, contradiction. The works develop a strange, dream-like quality in which powerful social narratives emerge.