// Thurs. 6/10 – Sat. 22/10, 2011
// Opening 6pm Thurs. 6/10
This exhibition of photographs presents to a New
Zealand audience the artistic project of Samuel
Ostermann, a graduate of the Elam school of Fine Arts in Auckland City. Samuel is concerning himself with the legacy of “Temporary Sculpture” or “Plural Sculpture” and “Post-Object art”. Look out for his art-work in ‘Singles’ and Boabooks from Geneva, Switzerland!
// Opening 6pm, Thursday 6 October
// Thursday 6 October – Saturday 22 October 2011
The idea for this exhibition generated out of a shared interest, between the four participating artists, in the relationship between process, chance and formal outcome within their work. Rather than being bound by the doctrine that has historically defined a formal approach, the work within the show pursues a more natural, unconscious kind of formalism. The thread linking the work is the fact that chance is in some way internalised within the outcome. Within the works is the sense of an ‘incidental’ formalism: formal outcomes are the by-product of a process, system or action rather than the result of any marked attention to arrangement, style or artistic means.
BABY
BABY
O BABY
// Thurs. 15/09 – Sat. 01/10, 2011
// Opening 6pm Wed. 14/09
Text in response to the work by Julia Waite:
In 1947 Gordon Walters visited Theo Schoon in South Canterbury. Schoon was busy working for the Department of Internal Affairs photographing and making copies of rock drawings. Both men were impressed by the rock artist’s economy of means and inspired by the organic quality of the drawings they saw.
Like Walters and Schoon, Bradley seems to have ventured into a ‘cave’ and returned with a series of artefacts – hers address the intersection of fine arts with craft, the gallery with domestic space, the everyday and public with the private and personal. Baby Baby Baby, Oh Baby fuses elements of Walters’s abstract modernism with Schoon’s more craft-based practice while considering the effects of relationships in the art world. And Bradley’s personal is not just political – it’s professional.
To explore these themes the artist hoes into past experiences. The exhibition includes handmade artefacts and paper ‘records’. Clay forms sit atop a makeshift table like an archaeologist’s recent, uncatalogued findings, ready for investigation. A koru pattern is recorded in a series of rubbings onto paper, a technique often employed in archaeological research. These ‘dug up’ relics, a mix of clay and porcelain in various shapes and sizes, can be taxonomically organised into three main groups. The first, thin tablets of clay impressed with the repeated koru pattern; the second a cluster of tight balls; and the third, a collection of irregularly shaped forms, which recall the pieces of textured limestone Schoon photographed.
There is evidence of personal encounters in this tableau of mutating artefacts. Using emergency contraceptive pill packaging Bradley manipulates Walters’s benign koru pattern motif and suggests the art world’s layers of connection and the uneasy relationships between biology and culture, art and the body.
What controls us but cannot be seen – hormones and genetics, the repetition of life – fascinates Bradley. The crisp elegance of the ECP koru pattern, which subtly spreads across all the elements, contrasts with the irregular and organically shaped ceramics. The insidiousness of these ‘biological’ controls is accentuated by the partial breakdown of Walters’s koru motif, which itself might be seen to contain undertones of obsession and monotony.
Bite marks and lines of severance disrupt the surfaces of each unique ceramic ball, challenging the seemingly serious nature of the work and any of clay’s gentler associations. The title of the exhibition, a lyric from The Carpenters’ ballad Superstar, adds to the drollness of the work. And this choice of title – of theme song – accentuates the intersection of the public and the private. Here art world heavy weights Schoon and Walters collide with the heart broken Karen Carpenter.
While Baby Baby Baby, Oh Baby appears to hold evidence of the excavation of experience and memory, the opposite has really occurred: Bradley’s buried personal encounters in metaphor and art history.
// Thurs. 25/8 – Sat. 10/09, 2011
// Opening 6pm Wed. 24/08
// Thurs. 25/8 – Sat. 10/09, 2011
// Opening 6pm Wed. 24/08
// Thurs. 4/8 – Sat. 20/8, 2011
// Opening 6pm Wed. 3/8
A three week gallery exhibition, as well as the following series of works based in the stairway next to RM:
// Thurs. 14/07 – Sat. 30/07, 2011
// Preview: 6:00 – 7:00pm, Wednesday 13/07, followed by drinks at D.O.C. at 7pm
// Artists Talk: 6:00pm Thursday 28/07
// Thurs. 23/06 – Sat. 09/07, 2011
// Opening 6pm Wed. 22/06
Re: Insect psychology
It is difficult to empathise with creatures of a dimension not easily observed. When humans are viewed with the aid of sensory enhancing technologies, their appearance often invokes horror. Is this because their form is so unlike ours? We know empathy is possible between fishmoths, carpetsharks and other similar sized lifeforms, for these creatures contain thysanuramorphic traits that imply character and personality. The majority of human forms are so alien that we struggle to see any silverfish trait at all.
Kind Regards,
Simon
—–
Simon Lawrence is consumed by the inconsequential details of his own home in which thoughts or perceptions are presented without regard for logical sequences. Structure and distinctions between various levels of reality create an interior monologue. Free association of objects and images show a continuous flow of ideas that move forward by ones own knowledge and perception; or stand still.
– Paul Johns
// Thurs. 2/06 – Sat. 18/06, 2011
// Opening 6pm Wed. 1/06
// Thurs. 21/04 – Sat. 07/05, 2011
Waiting rooms, elevators, corridors in public buildings, they are all similar in nature. They’re places that we all experience and usually only pass through when we’re on the way to some place else. At times their décor can make them seem inhospitable and at times it can make them feel warm and welcoming; most of the time they’re coated with surfaces that are easy to clean.
I like to presume that the way in which these spaces are decorated reflects the aspirations of whoever chose the fit out. For example, a lobby clad with gold fittings and wall-to-wall marbling easily presents itself as an aphorism for success. To some extent, many of the interior spaces that I pass through are similar to out-of-date election billboards in that they carry a lot of thrust but not much real meaning. As such, even though these ‘common areas’ are deeply infused with human concerns, they often make me feel a little alienated. The subterfuge that surrounds human endeavour can feel a little cold when it is so tightly knitted around you.
Stainless steel, tile and grout; I find it comforting to look for gaps between where one surface ends and another begins. A broken away tile can serve as a vent in an otherwise impenetrable façade; one small area where the politics surrounding it’s provenance aren’t immediately visible.