Gow Langsford Gallery — spring catalogue 2011
Detail from Katharina Grosse, Untitled, 2005, Catalogue number 20
Don Binney 8 Shane Cotton 7 Tony Cragg 11 Paul Dibble 18 Tony Fomison 3 Dick Frizzell 15 Max Gimblett 16 Katharina Grosse 20 Chris Heaphy 29 Damien Hirst 4 Frances Hodgkins 22 Ralph Hotere 21 Kim Joon 5 Allen Maddox 14 Conrad Marca-Relli 19 Karl Maughan 2 Colin McCahon 10, 23, 24 Raymond McIntyre 9 Judy Millar 12 John Pule 1 Peter Robinson 25, 30 Thomas Ruff 31 Michael Smither 13 Elizabeth Thomson 26 Geoff Thornley 27 Benar Venet 6 Gordon Walters 28 Ai WeiWei 17
spring catalogue 2011
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John Pule
b.1962, Niue
Savage Island Hiapo, 2008 Oils, enamels, oil stick, ink, varnish, polyurenthene 2000 x 4000mm (diptych) Inscribed lower right: Savage Island Hiapo Signed and dated centre left: John Puhiatau Pule, 2008 Exhibited: 2008 Sydney: Martin Browne Fine Art, 28 May - 22 June 2008 Provenance: Collection of the artist
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Although referencing shared cultural histories, particularly those of his native homeland Niue, John Pule’s paintings are highly personal and embellished with his own intimate imaginings. A black grid of symbols akin to traditional Niuean hiapo covers the surface of both panels in Pule’s Savage Island Hiapo (2008). The dense imagery gives way to interruptions of window-like partitions within which narratives are developed. Amongst smoky cloud-like forms calamities unfold, legends are remembered and histories recalled. The cloud like forms themselves, first featured in Pule’s work in the early 2000s, can be understood as islands from which figures can be seen migrating. The blurred and softened green paintwork of the clouds reiterate a sense of transience while the vines that fall provide an anchor, both visually and metaphorically, in their reference to the Cordyline tree, from which - in Niuean tradition - human life originates. Still remembering the often injurious impact of colonisation on the Pacific peoples in his narratives, by the mid-2000s Pule had expanded his lexicon of imagery to include references to more global concerns. A new world of terror seen in references to the 9/11 and London bombings and the Iraq war advocate more global and universal fears with Pule’s sense of apocalyptic vision. Savage Island Hiapo is a large work first exhibited in Australia in 2008. Pule’s survey exhibition Hauaga at City Gallery, Wellington (2010) and Dunedin Public Art Gallery (2010-11) confirms the importance and significance of his work in contemporary New Zealand visual culture.
spring catalogue 2011
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Karl Maughan
b.1964
Dahlias, 1994 Oil on canvas 1600 x 1900mm Signed and dated verso Exhibited: 1994 Auckland: Karl Maughan, Gow Langsford Gallery Provenance: Private Collection, Auckland
Gaze at one of Karl Maughan’s works and step into the garden of the mind – sun drenched, fragrant and heavily floral. Working from both photographs and his imagination Maughan creates garden vistas that are meditatively still and yet deliciously real. Flowers first began featuring in painted art history as coded allegories for religious figures or concepts – the white lilies of the Annunciation for example. Dutch artists later created heady momento mori paintings of vases of flowers to illustrate the delicate transience of life. As landscape developed into an artistic genre paintings of gardens became more and more frequent. Dahlias (1994) is slightly unusual for Maughan as it draws as much attention to the textures and forms of the foliage as to the flowers. It presents the close study of a herbaceous bed within a larger garden space. The inclusion of patches of lawn and further planting gives layered depth to the images and enhances the idea of wandering through this snippet of utopian horticulture.
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spring catalogue 2011
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Tony Fomison
1939–1990
No. 139, c.1976 Oil on jute 783 x 1102mm Inscribed lower left: 139 Provenance: Private Collection, Auckland
Looming forward from the dark, the large face of a Polynesian figure seems to draw itself forward from a sombre beachscape in No.139 (c.1976). Dimly lit and moody, this vision is typical of Tony Fomison’s paintings, although it is surprisingly serene as the figure stands with apparent conviction before its audience and it is without the macabre feel that often permeates his works. Around this time Fomison was living in Auckland’s inner city suburb, Ponsonby, and portrayals of a Polynesian head within a landscape were frequent. Similarities can be drawn between Fomison’s beach scenes and Colin McCahon’s (1919-1987) depictions of the Muriwai landscape in the early 1970s. The sombre atmosphere, dark lighting and palette are particularly similar although the head, having featured in his works since the early 1960s, is distinctly Fomison’s conception. The heads themselves are thought to represent ancestral wisdom and its embodiment in the land. Although not dated this work relates strongly to a grouping of 1976 works first exhibited at Barry Lett Gallery and Fomison’s own sequential numbering system, from which the title No.139 derives, qualifies this.
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spring catalogue 2011
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Damien Hirst
b.1965, UK
Beautiful Apollo Idealisation Painting, 2008 Household gloss on canvas 1829mm diameter Signed and dated verso
Whether you think of his formaldehyde animals, diamond encrusted skull, spin paintings or tumultuous relationship with collector Charles Saatchi, Damien Hirst has dominated the contemporary art scene for the past two decades and remains the most prominent member of the group known as the Young British Artists (YBAs). Beautiful Apollo Idealisation Painting (2008) is one of Hirst’s “spin paintings” created on a spinning circular surface. Employing the skull motif, Beautiful Apollo Idealisation Painting displays themes of death and morbidity. The theme - partly influenced by a placement in a mortuary as a student at Goldsmith’s, University of London - is a recurring presence in many of Hirst’s most iconic works. Hirst’s famous work The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991) is an early contribution to an increasing oeuvre focused on the theme of death. Created for the Young British Artists exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in 1991, the infamous work is a tiger shark floated in a vitrine of formaldehyde. His later work The Tranquillity of Solitude (For George Dyer) (2006) was inspired by, and exhibited alongside the work of Francis Bacon (Gagosian Gallery, Britannia St, London in 2006), and his high profile diamond studded human skull For The Love of God (2007) are further examples of the contemporary exploration into death and morbidity that we see in Beautiful Apollo Idealisation Painting.
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spring catalogue 2011
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Kim Joon
b.1966, Korea
Duet-Cloud, 2006 C-print 1400 x 1000mm (mounted) Edition 5/5 Signed and dated certificate of authenticity attached verso Provenance: Private Collection, Auckland
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Kim Joon’s exploration of the intricately tattooed bodies he creates presents us with more than just beautiful works of art. An interest in tattoos that began in college was heightened when Joon spent time as a soldier in the Korean military, during which he often gave friends homemade tattoos using needle, thread and Chinese ink. The art of tattoo is, for Joon, a label or tag. This is shown through his use of military tattoos and his incorporation of well-known company logos; and also a symbol of a more personal expression, namely the exploration of hidden emotions and desires. He has said of his work: “I am interested in tattoo as a metaphor for hidden desire or a kind of compulsion engraved into human consciousness. I see the skin, or in some cases the monitor, as an extension of a canvas...tattoos can reflect an individual and collective reality or displaced desire.” (www.kimjoon.co.kr, Kim Joon text compiled by Julie Walsh) Duet-Cloud (2006) is from a body of work depicting idealised yet life-like human forms created using the computer program 3-D Studio Max. His figures are firstly designed and then built up with layers of skin, before the intricate tattoo detail is applied. In Duet-Cloud his tattoo has a lacquered look, smooth like a painterly second skin, which contrasts with the almost granular texture of the models’ skin. Joon has an MA in Painting from the Hongik University in Seoul and has exhibited in Europe, Asia, New Zealand and Australia.
spring catalogue 2011
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Bernar Venet
b.1941, France
9 Lignes obliques3, 2009 Rolled steel with acrylic patina 80mm H, 442mm W, 190mm D Edition of 8 Provenance: Collection of the artist
French sculptor Bernar Venet is known for his ability to capture classic beauty with a sense of movement in objects made from Corten steel. The elegant 9 Lignes obliques3 (2009) is a paramount example of this. The title of 9 Lignes obliques3 translates as ‘9 slanting lines’ and belongs to a series of beautifully collated line works. Beauty in form is Venet’s focus rather than the creation of works weighed down with meaning or personal message. As Robert L. Pincus explains: “his art isn’t topical in the least: he’s not trying to offer a view or exert influence on any social or political issue. This work isn’t expressive either, in a personal sense: it won’t tell you anything about the state of the artist’s psyche. Its form, pure and simple – that is, if pure and simple can be taken to mean that it is without symbolism or overt curatorial reference….they are about what can be done with line, straight, curved or gnarled.” (The San Diego Union-Tribune, He Covers the Waterfront, Art Review by Robert L. Pincus, Sunday 2 November, 2008) Bernar Venet was born in 1941 in Chateau-Arnoux, France. He is the most recent artist to be invited to exhibit at Le Chateau de Versailles where seven new sculptures have been temporarily installed in the extensive gardens and entrance of the palace. Venet’s work is in public collections worldwide including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Total Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.
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spring catalogue 2011
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Shane Cotton
b.1964
Tekau ma Ono, 1994 Oil on canvas 1820 x 1680mm Signed and dated lower right: SWC 1994 Illustrated: Shane Cotton Ed. Linda Tyler, Hocken Library (1998) p. 36 Provenance: Purchased Hamish McKay Gallery Shane Cotton one man exhibition 1998 Private Collection, Wellington Private Collection, Auckland
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Shane Cotton’s powerfully distinct artistic voice was first heard in the 1990s with works such as Tekau ma Ono (1994) where New Zealand’s past racial and cultural injustices are highlighted with eloquent force. Cotton’s work of this period discuss the conflicting Maori and European views on land, language and spirituality with a rich golden brown colour palette that provide an earthy background to his symbols and scenes. Tekau ma Ono uses imagery based on the interior decoration of early Maori Christian churches, some of which house examples of the first cross-pollinations of Maori and European visual cultures. The potted plant, a symbol frequently used by Cotton, has particular associations with the containment of land and ownership. While the pot itself, of solid dimensions and worth, references introduced notions of land value, the fluidly growing flora implies the ways in which land was seen and valued by Maori. The tree can also be understood as a reference to the tree of life and by extension to the significance of genealogy, or whakapapa, in Maori culture. Handwritten letters in Tekau ma Ono and the small circular scenes bordering the work reference early colonial biblical education in both language and religion. The influence of these introduced ideas have had sustained importance in New Zealand throughout its recent history. It is Cotton’s ability to inclusively discuss both sides of all such issues that has made him an influential figure in New Zealand contemporary art.
spring catalogue 2011
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Don Binney
b.1940
Tui Over Te Henga, 1965 Oil on board 1110 x 1242mm Signed and dated lower right: Don Binney Jan-Feb ‘65 Exhibited: 1965 Auckland: Ikon Gallery Provenance: Purchased from Ikon Gallery exhibition by a private Collector, Christchurch Webb’s Auctions Lot 54 1989
The created landscape of human accomplishment reaches to almost every corner of our world, and yet it is those untouched spaces that we seek out in order to relax and re-connect. It is this search that is rewarded in the paintings of Don Binney. Binney is one of New Zealand’s most recognised and respected regional painters. His images of native New Zealand birds in natural New Zealand landscapes, captured with clean lines and an earthy colour palette, highlight his interests in ornithology and the beauty of the environment without human habitation. Tui Over Te Henga (1965) retains the windswept freshness of the captured scene. From the hills in the foreground, to the sand and ocean in the distance, the sense of space is enticing. The Tui, one of New Zealand’s most wellknown native birds and of immense ecological importance, swoops in from above and offers a sense of movement and energy to the otherwise serene view. Tui and other native birds now fill Te Henga as early colonial farming has ceased and the area is returned to recreational land. Indeed the house, the small reference to human occupation and past endeavour, is included almost as an after-thought and is not the centre of focus.
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spring catalogue 2011
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Raymond McIntyre
Entrance to the Park, 1920 Oil on board 340 x 255mm Signed and dated lower right in brush point: McIntyre / 1920 Handwritten label affixed verso: Sir Percy Sargood. National Centennial Exhibition of New Zealand Art 1840-1940 held at Dunedin Public Art Gallery. Inscribed verso in pencil: Purchased by Sir Percy Sargood, Centennial Exhibited: 1940 Dunedin: National Centennial Exhibition of New Zealand Art 1940, Dunedin Public Art Gallery Provenance: Private Collection, South Island
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1879–1933
Like many successful painters of this era, Raymond McIntyre’s life abroad enabled him to engage with contemporary European trends inaccessible from New Zealand. Having moved to London in 1909, the Cantabrian was a well established figure in the local art scene in the early 20th century. Here he enjoyed a successful relationship with the Goupil Gallery, London’s leading international contemporary gallery of the time. He exhibited with the New English Art Club and had work accepted into the prestigious Royal Academy of Arts. A private person, he did not exhibit between 1926 and his death in 1933, the reasons for which are not fully clear. Entrance to the Park (1920) is one of a series of London street scenes painted between 1911 and 1926 and depicts a gathering of walkers at the gated entrance of a garden. Short, thick strokes of paint capture the essence of his subject, rather than its details, showing influences of impressionism while the vibrant colours reflect McInytre’s ongoing interest in Fauvism. Painted from a high view point, typical for McIntyre, it is an eloquent work that displays a quiet confidence. Entrance to the Park relates strongly to a watercolour Park Entrance (c.1920) illustrated in Raymond McIntyre: A New Zealand Painter (1984, Heineman. p.64).
spring catalogue 2011
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Colin McCahon
Small Brown Hill, 1966 Oil on canvas 1716 x 918mm Inscribed in brushpoint: McCahon 8-2-66 Exhibited: 1966 Sydney: Five Auckland painters, Darlinghurst Galleries, 22 March-10 April 1966, cat. no. 12. 1988 Auckland: Colin McCahon: Gates and Journeys, Auckland City Art Gallery, 11 November 1988-26 February 1989, cat. no. G24 (as Journey into a Dark Landscape) Illustrated: Colin McCahon, A Question of Faith, Bloem and Browne, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Craig Potton Publishing 2002, p. 205 Colin McCahon Trust record number: cm001103 Provenance: Private Collection, Christchurch
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1919–1987
Small Brown Hill (1966) is a beautifully dark and beguiling example of Colin McCahon’s landscape paintings. His son William Colin McCahon describes his father’s relationship with the land; “He saw the land anthropomorphically as God, the hills and valleys reflecting a force that, contained within them, was struggling to emerge; a force he had now experienced. ‘I love the land; the land loves me back,’ he would say.” (Bloem & Browne, Colin McCahon A Question of Faith, 2002, Craig Potton Publishing/Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, p. 30) The bold white outline of the hill falling off the bottom of the canvas is a strong integration of McCahon’s waterfall motif. In addition to its spiritual and symbolic meanings the white outline acts as a powerful compositional element in this work. The white edge silhouettes and pulls forward the small brown hill from the nuanced black and brown washes of landscape that it is set within. This dark background is subtle with barely perceptible changes of shades suggesting a vastly extending plain or beachscape with a distant horizon and sky.
spring catalogue 2011
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Tony Cragg
Big Head, 2008 Bronze 1010 x 470 x 650mm Provenance: Collection of the artist
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b.1949, UK
Tony Cragg is one of Britain’s most acclaimed sculptors, working in a range of materials from the found industrial products of his early career, to the stone, bronze, stainless steel and wood used in more recent works. An interest in science, as well as experience working as a laboratory assistant early in his career, are influences both showcased in the experimentation and technical proficiency of Cragg’s sculptural works. These techniques are prominent in the gloss and motion of the curves in Big Head (2008), suggesting movement and life. Silhouetted profiles appear on either side of the organic mass that makes up the work and bear example to Cragg’s belief in the importance of bringing fluidity to solid mass in his works. In discussion on his views on sculpture he has said: “There is this idea that sculpture is static, maybe even dead, but I feel absolutely contrary to that. I’m not a religious person – I’m an absolute materialist – and for me material is exciting and ultimately sublime. When I’m involved in making sculpture, I’m looking for a system of belief or ethics in the material. I want the material to have a dynamic, to push and move and grow. I also want that to happen over the course of making things, so that as soon as one generation of sculptures has gone up, and another generation is coming on and things are growing up around me. That’s how it seems to work for me.” (Robert Ayers (May 10, 2007), THE AI INTERVIEW Tony Cragg, ARTINFO, http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/25052/tonycragg/, retrieved 2008-04-24) Cragg has worked and lived in Germany for the past two decades and has exhibited extensively internationally since the early 1980s. In 1988 he was awarded the Turner Prize for his exhibition as the British representative at the Venice Biennale. Cragg’s work is included in major public and private collections worldwide, including the Tate Musuem, London; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, Torino and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia.
spring catalogue 2011
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Judy Millar
Untitled, 2005 Oil and acrylic on aluminium 800 x 600mm Signed and dated verso in oil stick Provenance: Collection of the artist
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b.1957
Judy Millar is one of New Zealand’s most internationally recognised contemporary painters. Having represented New Zealand at the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009) she went on to exhibit alongside the likes of Carl Andre and Marina Abramovic in Personal Structures: Time Place Existence a collateral exhibition at this year’s Venice Biennale. This is the first time a New Zealander has shown in this context and highlights her international career which continues to gain momentum. Her paintings are often hard to categorise. Both intensely physical and highly mediated, they seem to question the subjectivity of the artist perhaps even more so in her earlier works like Untitled (2005), in which finger and hand marks can be traced in the layers of coloured paint. Although these works may appear experimental and speculative, her technique is well practiced. Adding to her refined application technique is a willingness and an ability for each gesture to register on the painting’s surface in a way that is fresh and impulsive, ultimately giving these works their dynamism. Untitled comes from a small body of works on aluminium first exhibited in Recent Paintings at Gow Langsford Gallery in 2005, the same year as her major solo exhibition I will, should, can, must, may, would like to express at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki.
spring catalogue 2011
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Michael Smither
b.1939
Boats, Okahu Bay, 1998 Oil on board 1200 x 1780mm Signed and dated lower right: MSD Exhibited: John Leech Gallery, 1998 Provenance: Purchased John Leech Gallery, 1998 Private Collection, Auckland
While perhaps best known for his crisp-edged paintings of people, domestic scenes and quintessentially ‘New Zealand’ landscapes, Michael Smither has also produced a vast body of abstract work. Stylistically, this painting, Boats, Okahu Bay (1998), falls somewhere between the two genres, finding its basis in observed reality while relying upon a distinctive use of colour and simplification of form for its peculiar success. Initially this painting appears as a random distribution of oddly-shaped blocks, their rainbow colouration against the striking field of yellow creating a sense of activity as they zigzag their way up the picture plane. But the shapes soon take on a more specific meaning as our eye adjusts to recognise a group of boats on sunyellowed water, each with its own reflection and individualised colour palette. Michael Smither was born in New Plymouth in 1939 and is one of this country’s most prolific and highly regarded artists. Along with painting he has also been creating prints since the 1960s, a medium he can adapt to the requirements of realism and abstraction with equal skill.
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spring catalogue 2011
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Allen Maddox
Untitled, c.1979 Oil on canvas 1755 x 1200mm Provenance: Estate of Allen Maddox
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1948–2000
Allen Maddox was born in Liverpool, England, and emigrated to New Zealand as a teenager. He attended the School of Fine Arts in Christchurch during the 1960s and has come to be identified with those other expressionistic artists who also studied there: Philip Clairmont (1949-1984), Tony Fomison (1939-1990) and Philip Trusttum (b.1940). It was in 1976 that Maddox developed what was to become his signature style. Unsatisfied with a painting he was working on, he reputedly struck the shape of a cross onto the canvas intending to destroy it. Instead, he liked the effect so much he was to continue to experiment with the cross motif from that date until his death in 2000. While this design is repeated in all of Maddox’s paintings, drawings and prints it does not become monotonous. As in Untitled (c.1979), the manipulation of colour, composition, width and breadth of brush stroke and scale ensure each work retains the appearance of spontaneity and the ability to captivate. Maddox’s work has been interpreted in many ways; as the pure expression of the artist’s emotions and experiences, as a visual representation of the battle between order and chaos, good and evil, or as referencing the mark of the cross, the symbol of a kiss, or the signature of the illiterate.
spring catalogue 2011
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Dick Frizzell
Dark Gorge, 1987 Oil on board 1200 x 1200mm Inscribed lower right: Dark Gorge / Frizzell / 20/2/87 Illustrated: Frizzell, Dick Frizzell: The Painter (2009), Godwit. p. 141 Provenance: Private Collection, Hawkes Bay
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b.1943
Dick Frizzell, famous for his dramatic diversions between genres and styles, is one of this country’s most loved artists. His ability to capture the essence of New Zealand culture with an affirming zeitgeist has won the hearts of the nation; his grocer cartoon The Four Square Man is now an icon of contemporary ‘kiwiana’ itself. Dark Gorge (1987) depicts the Manawatu Gorge in Frizzell’s kooky faux-naïve landscape style. By the mid-eighties Frizzell had already produced works with seemingly disparate origins – from post-Picasso abstractions to animal portraits, cartoons and tabletop still-lifes – thus landscapes where a natural fit for the artist with a penchant for diverse subjects. What’s more, in this new subject Frizzell found another way of tackling the status quo as he took on the tradition of landscape painting. For Frizzell “it all felt pretty exciting - actually representing reality like that - the light, the air, the space - so I did a few more and quickly realised that I’d stumbled upon another Art Political idea. Why were landscapes so disparaged (I’m not talking metaphysical McCahon landscape here but just the more-orless-straight-picture)? What would happen if a recognised “contemporary” painter went there? Well, I found out...” (Frizzell, Dick Frizzell: The Painter, Godwit, 2009, p.139) Perhaps ironically, what Frizzell fondly calls his ‘Bad Landscapes’ of the eighties are some of his most intriguing and highly collected paintings.
spring catalogue 2011
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Max Gimblett
Shunryu Suzuki’s Light, 2003 Acrylic and vinyl polymer on canvas 1270mm diameter tondo Signed, titled and dated verso in brushpoint Provenance: Collection of the artist
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b.1935
Max Gimblett’s engagement with Buddhism inspires what has become known as his ‘all mind / no mind’ approach to painting. This technique can be understood, in a sense, as a kind of action painting, born out of a state of Zen consciousness from which Gimblett acts out intuitive gestures onto his waiting surfaces. Shunryu Suzuki’s Light (2003) is a tondo, or circular shaped canvas, a form frequently associated with Zen philosophy. It represents enlightenment, the universe, strength, elegance and the void. The singular stroke of inky black paint that boarders the canvas in Shunryu Suzuki’s Light stops short of completing the circular gesture fully. The pause creates a visual tension in the composition and perhaps metaphorically suggests an inability or struggle to fully realise enlightenment. The title reiterates Gimblett’s affliation to Buddhism in its reference to Shunryu Suziki, a Zen Master who popularised Zen Buddhism in the United States. Gimblett, now aged 75, is recognised as one of this country’s most significant artists. His work is held in many major collections in New Zealand and abroad, including the Solomon R. Guggheim Musuem, New York; Whitney, New York and The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Franciso. He continues to work from his Bowery studio in New York’s Manhattan.
spring catalogue 2011
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Ai Weiwei
b.1957, China
Kui Hua Zi (Sunflower Seeds), 2009 1000 sunflower seeds in porcelain, sculpted and painted by hand, manufactured in Jingdezhen, China, in glass jar, inscribed with title and artist name 160 x 100 x 100mm Edition 21/30 Accompanied by signed and numbered certificate of authenticity and information package Provenance: Carolina Nitsch Gallery, New York; Gow Langsford Gallery
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Even before his high profile detention by Chinese authorities for alleged tax evasion, Ai Weiwei had a reputation for being highly political. Kui Hua Zi (2009) is a perfect example of this. Collected together in a glass jar Weiwei’s sunflower seeds look like they would be at home in a pantry but, as the Tate Modern wrote of its own exhibition of millions of these seeds earlier this year, “what you see is not what you see, and what you see is not what it means.” (Juliet Bingham, Curator at Tate Modern, Tate Modern website, retrieved 22.07.2011, http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/ exhibitions/unileverseries2010/) Much like the Tate’s Sunflower Seeds, but on a smaller scale, Kui Hua Zi initiates a debate about the individual within the mass. Each seed appears indistinguishable from the rest at a cursory glance, but is unique – just like the real thing, no two are exactly the same. They carry a message of the position of an individual within a great mass and the enormous power the rulers in society can exert over the ruled. Porcelain was invented in China more than 1,000 years ago and has long been one of its most valuable exports, but in this work Weiwei uses it to make a comment on the mass-produced cheap goods that are a hallmark of Chinese products in the contemporary world. This creates a flickering visual distinction between the uniform, dispensable masses and the unique and valuable hand-crafted object. In the words of gallerist Carolina Nitsch “the porcelain sunflower seeds represent the one and the many; and the modern with the ancient.” (as noted in accompanying information package) Weiwei’s sunflower seeds are as edible as Duchamp’s sugar cube in Why not Sneeze, Rose Sélavy? (1921), but the edibility of them as a general concept is still important to the work. During the Cultural Revolution in China sunflower seeds were one of the few readily available food sources. Propaganda also painted Chairman Mao as the sun and the Chinese people as sunflowers turning to face him.
spring catalogue 2011
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Paul Dibble
Holding the Balance, 2004 Cast bronze 2550 x 800 x 800mm Inscribed on base: Paul Dibble 2004 Provenance: Private Collection, Brisbane
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b.1943
Works by Constructionists Alexander Archipenko (1187-1964) and Ossip Zadkine (1890-1967) inspired sculptor Paul Dibble’s ongoing Geometric series in which the human form is reduced to a series of geometric shapes. Although the Geometric series began in the late 1990s, works from this period are now referred to as the Hard Geometrics, to distinguish them from the grouping of Soft Geometrics that followed. Holding the Balance (2004), although made later, falls within the Hard Geometric series. Here, the form is portrayed by exacting, hard-edged sphere and cone shapes. The geometric head and leg forms are balanced by the free flowing lines of the figure’s hips and torso making the work at once static and filled with the possibility of movement. The cast bronze sculpture seems to defy gravity and it is this sense of duality, the solid and the delicate, that makes the piece so intriguing. Paul Dibble’s work is represented in both public and private collections throughout New Zealand such as the James Wallace Trust Collection, Auckland; Waikato University, Hamilton; Saatchi and Saatchi, Wellington and Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand, Wellington.
spring catalogue 2011
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Conrad Marca-Relli
S - 5 – 62, 1962 Mixed media collage 394 x 432mm Signed and titled verso in brushpoint Provenance: Scott White Contemporary, San Diego Private Collection, California
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1913–2000, USA
A major solo exhibition held at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in 1967 established Conrad Marca-Relli as one of the leading representatives of the new American Abstraction. Along with his peers Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline, Marca-Relli belonged to the early generation of New York School of Abstract Expressionists, recognised in America and in Europe from the 1950s. Although he began as a painter Marca-Relli is widely noted as one of America’s master collage artists and as an important exponent of American Abstract Expressionism. The collage genre, although used for hundreds of years prior, became a distinctive part of modern art at the beginning of the 20th century particularly following its use by both Georges Braque (1882–1963) and Pablo Picasso (1881–1973). Marca-Relli’s works typically combined oil painting with collage and are often characterised by the appearance of broken surfaces. His earlier works used canvas cut-outs pinned onto supporting canvases and by the 1960s Marca-Relli was experimenting with more industrial materials including metal and vinyl sheeting. S - 5 – 62 (1962) is built up by pieces of ivory formica layered together and set into a neutral background. Emphasised by the colour of the adhesive used to set the pieces together, each layer differentiates and reveals itself creating a surprising depth of field. Widely perceived as a key figure of a specific moment in the development of American painting, Marca-Relli’s works are now housed in significant collections including New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
spring catalogue 2011
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Katharina Grosse
Untitled, 2005 Acrylic on canvas 2990 x 1800mm Signed and dated verso Provenance: Collection of the artist, Germany
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b.1961, Germany
Katharina Grosse’s painting practice extends the conventional meaning of what a painting can be. Interested in the fusion of painting with architecture and sculpture, Grosse’s works are often physically immersive as the viewer literally walks into and around her painted environments. Using industrial spray gun techniques Grosse paints onto an inventive range of surfaces and often unexpected objects, including dirt piles, building facades, furniture, Styrofoam cut-outs, and clothing, as well as more conventional materials like canvas and paper. Grosse is often invited to ‘intervene’ with the buildings of the host galleries that exhibit her work, most recently at MASS MoCA, USA (2010) and Arken Museum of Modern Art, Denmark (2010-11). In a sense her work is a modern take on plein-air painting and Abstract Expressionism, with the tools of modern day street graffiti. As in Untitled (2005) her vibrant palette, exuberant gestures and the large scale evokes associations with the sublime landscape. Despite this, her works are not intended to be read as recognizable images. Rather, they are ambiguous and in a way anarchist, alluring the viewer to process what is seen in alternative ways.
spring catalogue 2011
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Ralph Hotere
Yellow IV, 1968 Enamel on board 1235 x 635mm Signed and dated verso Provenance: Private Collection, Auckland
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b.1931
Born in 1931 and regarded as one of New Zealand’s most significant artists, Ralph Hotere has been engaged with creating an extensive body of abstract work since his first solo exhibition nearly sixty years ago. The Black Paintings series was begun in the late 1960s and is the work for which Hotere is best known. The series was inspired by the work of American artist Ad Reinhardt (1913-1967) who created his own so-called ‘Black Paintings’ in the few years before his death. Like Reinhardt’s, Hotere’s series is centred upon the allure of the colour black in all its variations and the careful use of other tones serving to highlight its dominance and distinction. Yellow IV (1968) is one of Hotere’s earlier Black Paintings and features a finely-painted circle in yellow upon a dense black ground. It is difficult to determine why a painting of such simplicity can hold our attention and create such a sense of calm and contemplation with so few elements. While Hotere is reluctant to provide explanations for his work, his use of black has often been interpreted to refer to ideas of spirituality, eternity and death.
spring catalogue 2011
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Frances Hodgkins
Water Mill, 1943 Gouache on paper 505 x 385mm Original hand written label attached verso: Water Mill by Frances Hodgkins lent by Jane Saunders, 12 Victoria Road, Fallowfield, MCc. Original exhibition Label attached verso: 34. City of Manchester Art Gallery, 15167. Exhibited: 1943 London: Gouaches by Frances Hodgkins – A new series of Gouaches painted during 1942-43, The Lefevre Galleries, March-April 1943 1948 United Kingdom: Exhibition of Pictures sponsored by the Isle of Purbeck Arts Club in association with the Arts Council of Great Britain, touring Swanage, Bournemouth, Totnes, St Ives, 6 March-24 May 1948 Literature: Frances Hodgkins, Four Vital Years, Arthur R. Howell, Rockliff, Salisbury Square, London 1951 page 110 listing Jane Saunders as the owner, page 122 catalogue No. 5 and page 127 catalogue No. 34. Frances Hodgkins on Display Galleries Dealers & Exhibitions 1890-1950, Roger Collins and Iain Buchanan, Bulletin of New Zealand Art History Special Series No.5. 2000. Page 82, catalogue No.5. Page 91, catalogue No 34. Provenance: Collection of Jane Saunders, UK by descent
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1869–1947
Frances Hodgkins’ work can be characterised by her expressive use of line, shape and colour, and her distinctive brand of semi-abstraction. Still more prominent than this, however, is the spatial ambiguity that her work consistently demonstrates, where objects in the fore-, middleand background seem to co-exist on a single plane. This method is particularly evident in Water Mill (1943), a gouache painted by Hodgkins in her early seventies while her artistic prowess was at its peak. The mill has here been given a central position within the composition but does not dominate it, instead melding equitably with the greys and dusky blues of its surroundings. Where an artist with different stylistic concerns might have employed bright colour to trick the eye into believing those items depicted in the foreground are closer to the viewer, Hodgkins here uses brighter tones with the opposite intention in mind. Touches of vivid yellow and blue are scattered with relative regularity over the entire picture plane, highlighting the lack of conventional diminution or atmospheric perspective and adding a feeling of liveliness. Hodgkins died in Britain, her adopted homeland, just a few years following the completion of this work. While regarded there as one of the leading artists of her time, the more conservative New Zealand society took much longer to fully appreciate her unique talent.
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Colin McCahon
1919–1987
French Bay, 1957 Oil on hardboard 894 x 1167mm Inscribed bottom left in brush point: McCahon Dec - ‘57. Colin McCahon Trust record number: cm000958 Provenance: Private Collection, Auckland
McCahon lived in the Titirangi suburb of French Bay with his family between 1953 and 1960. At the end of the street he lived on and almost within sight of his house, was the suburb’s namesake and the subject of this work. McCahon was deeply influenced by the immediate landscape in French Bay and this is shown in the quantity of works he created with this subject. French Bay ’s (1957) blue, brown and white marine landscape is painted with a strong sense of both movement and light. The use of blue washes in the bottom of the work suggests tidal currents along with the brown mud-flat sections which, further up the work, become the fringe of land around the Manukau Harbour. The water and sky are otherwise indivisible – one flowing into the other and both overlaid with the suggestion of wind and light. At the time this painting was created McCahon was fascinated with the idea of seeing for the first time and this imparts an almost feverish intensity to the work. McCahon painted French Bay in a style that appears to draw both from Cubism and a ‘Cezannian Naturalism’.(Brown, G, Colin McCahon Artist, 1984, A.H. & A.W. Reed Ltd, p. 55) The subject of the work is not broken into multiple view points, as they would have been in a Cubist style, but instead McCahon uses paint to describe the way light affects the surface of the water and the sky at French Bay. The choppy brushstrokes and diagonal rectangles of colour merge together and flicker apart – just as sunlight does over choppy water on a breezy day on the Manukau Harbour.
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Colin McCahon
1919–1987
There is No Other Way, 1958-1959 Enamel on hardboard 736 x 876mm Inscribed verso: Colin McCahon / There is only one Way / butex on hardboard / c.1958-59. Colin McCahon Trust record number: cm000255 Provenance: Private Collection, Auckland
Through a variety of approaches, the Christian faith was a subject frequently cited in Colin McCahon’s paintings. Biblical narratives and scripture, the spiritualised landscape and the recurring metaphor of dark and light all added religious undertones to a lifetime of works. Considering his career as a whole, 1958 marked a notable shift in McCahon’s practice. Following a four month visit to America where he had the opportunity to view works by the European Masters, new American painting and works from Asia, McCahon’s subsequent works appear both freer in style and stylistically distinct. While remaining faithful to his religious subjects, it was also around this time that McCahon’s personal belief and questions of his faith were first openly expressed. Although There is No Other Way (1958-59) reiterates Jesus’ proclamation “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6), this work can be understood as a contrary precursor to the Elias series (1959) in which McCahon publically articulated his doubts about his Christian faith.
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Peter Robinson
50/50, 1993 Bitumen and oil stick on canvas 1070 x 760mm Provenance: Private Collection, Auckland
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b.1966
Born in Ashburton, Canterbury, Peter Robinson is from both Maori and European extraction and is known for employing elements from both cultures in his artwork in a contradictory and provocative manner. 50/50 (1993) is part of Robinson’s Percentage series of the early 1990s, and makes reference to the complexity of race relations in New Zealand, in particular to genetic claim over a culture. Robert Leonard comments of the series “...they stake his claim to a Maori legacy, and yet simultaneously seem to trivialise it, as if to question how much of a Maori he is or whether he’s just jumping on the bandwagon.” (Robert Leonard ‘3.125% Pure: Peter Robinson Plays the Numbers Game’ Art And Text 50, 1995) The two airplanes in the upper half of the work represent the arrival of a new culture and aspects of trade and economic exchange between the new settlers and existing indigenous people. The significance of the percentages in each work relates to Robinson’s own racial makeup and indicates the privilege of his bi-cultural perspective in having access to symbolism and ownership of both Maori and European traditions. Robinson’s work has been shown extensively both in New Zealand and abroad. Exhibitions of note include De-Building, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu, 2011; The Influence of Anxiety, The Centre for Drawing Project Space, London, 2010; Polymer Monolioths, Artspace, Sydney and Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2009; ACK!, Artspace, Auckland, 2006; The Humours, Walters Prize, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, 2006; Three Colours (with Gordon Bennett) at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne and the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2004-2005; bi-polar, 49th Venice Biennale, Italy, 2001; Divine Comedy, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, 2001; Superman in Bed - Collection Schürmann Kunst der Gegenwart und Fotografie, Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund, 2001.
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Elizabeth Thomson
Homoptera/Lepidoptera, 1990 Bronze in 33 parts Dimensions variable Provenance: Private Collection, Auckland
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b.1955
Challenging the viewer’s sense of reality, a swarm of oversized bugs make up Elizabeth Thomson’s Homoptera/Lepidoptera (1990). Thomson is known for her works that reinterpret and recontexualise botanical, entomological and molecular forms and play on the relationships between art and science. Here, each individually crafted piece of bronze sculpture is a hyper-real, albeit larger-than-life rendition of her insect subjects. The title Homoptera/Lepidoptera refers to two entomological classifications and the types of insects represented in this grouping. Within these we see common species of cicada, aphid, hoppers, moths and butterflies. The overall effect is perhaps surprisingly Sci-Fi as the delicately rendered bugs appear to nest in a sprawling cluster as it seemingly spreads over the wall. Thomson, born in Auckland in 1955, has been based in Wellington since the early 1990s where she currently works from her Newtown studio. She studied at Elam School of Fine Arts, where she later taught printmaking. Having exhibited frequently since the 1980s her works are now represented in both public and private collections including the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki and Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand.
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Geoff Thornley
Alba No. 6, 1984 Oil on canvas on plywood 1295 x 1010 x 45mm Provenance: Private Collection, Auckland Signed and dated verso
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b.1942
Throughout his artistic career Geoff Thornley has remained loyal to abstraction. Educated at Elam School of Fine Arts in Auckland, Thornley recalls artist and teacher Louise Henderson as a pivotal influence on his work. Henderson, a French émigré, is best known for her semi-abstract works and for her instinctual use of colour. Thornley, too, has often been engaged with explorations of colour and its emotive effects, however, in this work he utilises a reduced and muted palette. The elements that make up this composition, a square and four semicircles, are carefully positioned so as to create tension, seeming to bounce off one another and the edges of the canvas. The Alba series forms part of the wider ‘Constructions’ body of work that occupied Thornley from the late 1970s until the early 1990s. Together with the Cipher, Dyad and Tondo works, these compositions share a three-dimensionality that adds weight – literally and figuratively – to the seeming simplicity of their design. The word ‘alba’ is Spanish for ‘dawn’ and derived from the Latin ‘albus’ meaning white, the title of an earlier series by Thornley.
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Gordon Walters
Rauponga, 1986 Acrylic on canvas 1220 x 917mm Signed and dated verso Provenance: Private Collection, Auckland
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1919–1995
Gordon Walters held his first solo exhibition of abstraction at the New Vision Gallery, Auckland, in 1966. Although, by that time, he had not exhibited his work for seventeen years, Walters had been continuously engaged with artistic experimentation. His interest in geometric abstraction meant that his art was far removed from the mainstream in New Zealand and uncertainty about the response his work would receive had resulted in reluctance to exhibit. However, following that first exhibition, Walters’ confidence gradually grew and, while his work was often misunderstood, he began to regularly exhibit throughout New Zealand, developing an extensive and distinctive visual vocabulary. Walters often found his initial inspiration in traditional Maori motifs but always filtered this through his own interpretation of European hard-edged abstraction. Rauponga (1986) forms part of a series begun by the artist in the late 1970s and continued until the mid-1980s, screenprints of which are held in both the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki and the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu collections. The word ‘Rauponga’ literally translates to mean ‘fern leaf’, although it can also refer to a specific pattern used in traditional Maori wood carving.
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Chris Heaphy
b.1965
Armstrong Tranquillity, 2008 Acrylic on linen 2280 x 1700mm Signed and dated verso Exhibited: 2008 Auckland: Sea of Tranquillity, Gow Langsford Gallery, July 22 - August 15 2008 Provenance: Private Collection, Auckland
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On first glance, Chris Heaphy’s Armstrong Tranquillity (2008) (named for Neil Armstrong and his Apollo lunar landings), evokes feelings of death, morbidity and fragility. Reminiscent of the cut-out work of Richard Killeen (b.1946), each symbol in Heaphy’s collage references the artist or his view on the world around him. Heaphy has said of his work: “The paintings….work on a number of levels. They address mortality and the questioning of what it is that makes us who we are. They delve into the complexity of spirit and explore the many parts of us that make the whole. They talk about culture, experience, life, death, belief systems, the environment and attempt to embrace the idea that oneness is in many ways the sum of everything.” (Artist’s statement, 2007, http://www.gowlangsfordgallery.co.nz/exhibitions/ pastexhibitions/chrisheaphy2008.asp) The intricate silhouettes of skeletons, sailboats, weapons, hands, profiles and foliage indicate the skull is acting as a platform on which to display myriad influences from both European and Maori civilisations and culture; Heaphy being a descendant of both. Virginia Were has praised Heaphy for his “willingness to keep adding to his ever-expanding visual vocabulary” (Art News, Exploring a new constellation) and this work, in all its delicate detail, bears testament to that. Chris Heaphy has a BFA in painting from Canterbury School of Fine Art and a MFA in Painting from RMIT University of Melbourne. He has been the recipient of several grants and residencies and has exhibited extensively throughout Australasia and Europe. Heaphy’s work is included in numerous major public and private collections in New Zealand and abroad. He currently lives and works in Auckland, New Zealand.
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Peter Robinson
Boy am I scarred, eh!, c.1997 Oil stick on paper 3100 x 2400mm Provenance: Private Collection, Wellington Private Collection, Auckland
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b.1966
Text and symbolism synonymous with the cultural language of New Zealand have often played strong roles in the art of Peter Robinson. Colloquial sayings, koru forms and bold block colours form Robinson’s palette of visual language and provide a powerfully direct perspective to viewing racial and cultural issues within this country. The commodification of land by colonial powers and the subsequent displacement of Maori people are strongly influential elements in Robinson’s work. This issue is referenced in Boy am I scarred, eh! (c.1997) where the ill-fitting text fights for space and the word ‘scarred’ reminds us that while surface scars heal, scar tissue is an unseen constant that requires attention. The koru is a symbol internationally recognised as referencing new life as it unfurls and grows upwards to the light. Robinson has interpreted the koru in Boy am I scarred, eh! but the symbol literally spirals out of control and the direction appears reversed inwards and down into the black background. This, together with the patch-worked aesthetic suggests strong feelings of anger, grievance and loss. Perhaps more explicit is Robinson’s reference to Colin McCahon’s (1919-1987) signature painting Scared (1976). The text ‘Am I scared boy (eh)’ spelt out across McCahon’s canvas, is a commentary on a photograph McCahon saw of two Maori boys apprehensively entering the unknown territory of the art gallery. By extension, this painting is understood to comment on the challenges faced by a generation of Maori in the 1970s, who when urbanised, were marginalised by Pakeha culture and also disconnected from their own cultural heritage. Robinson has clearly emphasised this in his extension of the word ‘scared’ into ‘scarred’ but a sense of courage, and humour, remains in the bravado of the final emphatic ‘eh’.
spring catalogue 2011
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Thomas Ruff
b.1958, Germany
nudes ta02, 2006 Chromogenic colour print, mounted with Diasec Face, wooden frame 1360 x 1060mm Edition 4/5 Signed, dated and numbered in pencil verso Exhibited: 2010 Auckland: Thomas Ruff: Photographs, Gow Langsford Gallery, 26 March 24 April 2010 Provenance: Collection of the artist, Germany
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Thomas Ruff is a celebrated German artist, internationally renowned for his conceptual photographic series’ that began in the 1980s. Working increasingly less with the camera in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Ruff began working with computer generated and digitally manipulated images and turned to the infinite store of images on the web for his source material. Here he found synergy between the low quality nature of online images and digital processes that he had already been experimenting with. It was on the internet that Ruff came across the field of pornography, the subject of his controversial Nudes series. The images themselves were selected for their formal qualities - composition, light, colour - and the series as a whole covers the wide range of sexual fantasies and practices available the internet. Manipulating the images via digital processes, Ruff blurred the source images, adjusted the colouring and removed intrusive details. The images are processed in such a way that the original pixel construction is vaguely visible in the end result. The Nudes can be seen as a contrast to the tradition of nude photography which, generally speaking, has one dominant perspective. Ruff’s Nudes present other possibilities for the nude portrait - one which dispassionately presents the reality of diverse adult sexual practices. Ruff’s work has been shown at major galleries and institutions worldwide including the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, Barcelona and the Solomon R. Guggenheim, New York. He exhibited at the German pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1995 and Documenta in 1992. nudes Ta02 (2006) was first exhibited in New Zealand in Thomas Ruff: Photographs at Gow Langsford Gallery in 2010.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Spring Catalogue 2011 at Gow Langsford Gallery, September 2011. Front and back cover image: Ai Weiwei, Kui Hua Zi (Sunflower Seeds), 2009 Photography: Tobias Kraus Photography www.tobiaskraus.com unless supplied Publication Coordinator: Anna Jackson Text: Bella Burgess, Amie Hammond, Anna Jackson, Georgina Barr, Joanna Trezise With thanks to: Pigment Art Services, Iain Cheesman, Mark Young at Vintners and Ella Langsford. Š 2011 All text and images copyright the artist and authors and Gow Langsford Gallery ISBN: 978-0-9864630-2-0