June to July – Alchemy+Meaning – Group Show
August – Self – Group Show
September – Soothsay – Group Show by Pulse
October – Gorgeous – Solo Show by Lois Perry
November – Turning Mobility 3 – Group Show
December – MARCO Trust Kids' Art Finale – Children's Art Competition
December to February – RIGHT ON! – Illustration Group Show
Alchemy+Meaning – Group Show
10 June to 29 July
Nanette Lela'ulu | Sarah Guppy | Anna Hawker | Minh Truong-George
This exhibition explored the notion of the artist as alchemist. Art that moves us always appears to be more than merely the materials from which it is made. The four painters in this show express that their paintings reflect their inner experience and act as a transformational tool. Common themes are expressed, such as relationship to nature, the exploration of the cycles of life and death, of light and dark, of chaos and order, attraction and reaction, known and unknown.
Nanette Lela'ulu explores the issues of innocence and freedom, and the development of the relationship of inner experience to the outer world. Through symbols of birds and flowers, she expresses the themes of ancestral heritage and life and death. Her Caravaggesque treatment of light and dark enables her to 'delve into [her] darkness' in order to discover 'an immense presence of light'.
For Sarah Guppy, colour and texture, lines and numbers are central to her exploration of life issues. The death of her father inspired this series of paintings, through which she explores the life cycle, the human condition and her spiritual awareness. Through her background of gilding, she has a keen awareness of the concept of alchemy and she now applies this to the process of applying colour to the medium of glass.
Anna Hawker relates her artistic awareness to her other interests, including scientific principles such as Chaos Theory and fractals. She finds that her consciousness is influenced by the rhythms of nature and the 'interconnectedness of all things'. Her paintings explore culture and societal control and the ideal of harmony between human existence and nature, through symbols such as the breadfruit.
Minh Truong-George finds that her creative process expresses the complex paradox of identity - after the completion of each painting 'one will never be the same again', and yet the works reveal the core unchanging essence of self. Through her artistic process of layering paint and sanding back and layering paint again, she explores profound life themes, such as her childhood experience of being a refugee 'boat person' and subsequent issues of alienation and exile. And yet her painting process allows her to transform these experiences into self understanding, meaning and thus 'magic'.
Self – Group Show
5 August to 7 September
Tracey Williams | Dinah West | Beth Hudson | Gabriel Frederikse | Michael Zhou | Carol Lee-Honson
Justina Groeber | Jackie Wilson | Amanda Levey
The self portrait – a private glimpse at the artist’s self, straightforward and honest or an embellished show of what could be. By its very nature, self portraiture “inhabits a more permissive zone of representation”. It can also be a tool like no other in terms of personal examination. Whatever the reason and intent, be it an exploration of self or just that his or her face is always available, nearly all artists have attempted the self portrait.
Whatever form artists depict themselves in, and whatever their intentions may be, their portraits can be a fascinating look into the theme of self exploration. In this exhibition we have brought together an eclectic array of artists working in a variety of media to look at this theme.
Tracey Williams is drawing our attention to the paradox that contemporary mass culture presents us. On the one hand we are to contrive to present ourselves as free individuals but also to conform to an ideal. Tracey appropriates everyday events or things or ideas and re-presents them in ways that critically ironises the way people construct a masquerade of a ‘self’. She casts herself as iconoclastic / cult images of women from popular culture and mass culture notions of domesticity. Her five archetypes; Wonder Woman, Dorothy, the flight attendant, the ballerina and the bride are all ideals of womanhood particular to the artist’s own childhood. However, by superimposing her own face, thus “replacing the original in an act that is both masquerade and revelation, and by transforming the images in other ways, she suggests that “the individual can find a degree of authority over their own self construction.”
The techniques that Tracey uses “to construct these images also mimics our own performance of selfhood; cutting-and-pasting images and ideas gleaned from culture on to one physical space.”
Dinah West’s reduction wood cut print, “Self Portrait – Dunedin”, reflects the artist’s life when she was at Otago Polytech in Dunedin. Dinah’s appearance and dress at that time in her life was androgynous in nature but due to the influence of drag queen friends she played with notions of traditional feminine identity as costume. Her work allowed her to express childlike fantasy imagery, surrounding herself with symbols such as lipstick, nail polish and a high-heeled shoe. The Pop Art influenced, childlike cartoon quality of the work creates a playful exploration into self.
Beth Hudson’s painting is contemplative. In “Brown Study” her palette is moody, her expression sombre and pensive. For her the challenge of the self portrait “requires close observation and the ability to do more than just capture a surface likeness”. Beth is interested in the notion that we only see ourselves in mirrors and that these are merely reflections of ourselves. She writes that this study is a reflective one, “an attempt to penetrate the emotions, memories and thoughts that form the person. It is associative because it deals with the past that leaks into the present. This is the shadows of things lost and found, but most importantly, continually searched for in quest for the transforming object or moment in which our full potential is realised.”
Self portraiture comprises one of the major themes in Gabriel Frederikse’s work. His brooding image of himself recalls the twentieth century British figurative tradition, painters such as Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach. Gabriel is interested in observational empiricism, in different takes on the fragmentary nature of twentieth century realism, and in the artist’s own pictorial language. For him the “mark of good portraiture is that it transcends the physical description of a person and draws us inside.” He paraphrases the words of Oscar Wilde: “ultimately all works that artists make reflect the self”.
Michael Zhou,on the other hand, does not connect self portraiture with identity, rather he treats his face as an object. While his favourite subject is people, the only reason he did a self portrait is that he couldn’t find a model. He found that painting himself was different from painting others; whereas in painting others he tends to beautify the image, in painting himself he was critical. He allows that the painting displays emotion but that it is too complex to articulate.
Carol Lee-Honson as a New Zealander of Chinese descent, draws upon both cultures in her work. In working with the idea of self she comments “I never see the self directly. I’m always a reflection of other people.” In “Looking Back” she is reflecting the self in her ancestors. The seated figure looking out is her grandmother. The back of this figure is reflected in the mirror and Carol is in the mirror looking at her grandmother. Her New Zealand identity is represented by the McCahonesque background landscape. She includes objects, patterns and colours in order to connect her with her cultural roots.
VIDEO WORKS
Justina Groeber’s “DOUBLE” plays with the different forms of ‘self’ – imaginary and perceived. The video records images of a touching hand projected onto the artist’s own body and in turn projected onto a vinyl that is worked up to suggest skin. Justina writes; “the hand appears out of the dark, disconnected and mysterious, a luminous and agile phantom, which slides smoothly, curls and transforms. As the image appears on my skin, I not only see, but also seem to feel the hand and impulsively play with this appearance making it move and transform. In the perception of the world around me my own body is the first and most immediate point of contact. The own body is discovered as a foreign object, which divides the mind between the perceiving and the perceived. It appears that this division creates a meta-space, through which the outside world is projected or imagined. This meta-space may be tactile, visual, or both.”
Justina’s physical images from this video piece consist of drawings of the hand thereby playing on the notion of the hand producing the hand. “It touches, does it create?”
“Boxer” is Jackie Wilson’s directorial début in digital video. She has worked on previous screen projects with Florian Habicht but this is the first work of Wilson’s they have done together. “Boxer” is a dance film piece based on perception, both public and private. It delivers a tense solo journey in three cubic metres. Not totally autobiographical but certainly based on personal observation.
Amanda Levey works in video as a means of making her expressive movement work visible to herself, and as a way of creating a tangible artefact from what is normally an ephemeral, one-off experience. “Video allows me to move in nature alone, and to be able to show this to others. The use of projection is a further development that allows me to dance with elements of nature in a new way.”
Her training with dancer and educator Anna Halprin has influenced her profoundly. At the heart of Halprin’s teaching about the body and its natural movement, is learning about the self through one’s relationship with the natural world around us. This has increased her sense of how her physical self reflects and is reflected by the elements of the natural world. In this new work, “project reflect merge”, Amanda experiments with the ideas of shadow, reflection and merging using the elements of rock, water and tree.
Soothsay by Pulse
9 September to 6 October
Fran Marno | Justina Groeber | Dorina Jotti | Miriam Saphira | Sue Vincent
Pulse is an Auckland-based group of women artists who have known each other and their respective artworks for a number of years and in a variety of contexts. They work together to create exhibitions in diverse media that are both visually and conceptually challenging. The name “Pulse” refers to their intent to address current issues vital to our community.
Justina Groeber – Physical and psychological space don’t always coincide. While physical space can be shared between individuals, thoughts, opinions and feelings may remain completely sperate. A person may be physically present. Her or his face and body may be visible in full detail. At the same time he is engaged only with himself, psychologically adsent, intangible.
Dorina Jotti – Landscape is not nature but a coded view of it – not innocent but loaded with intentions and purposes – not direct but through a glass – not straight but mediated by words and other signs – not in a word, as it is, but in codes. Why not appreciate the codings?
Sue Vincent – In this group of paintings light, movement of bodies and colour become one. They capture the movement of dance when you stop thinking and just exist suspended in a consciousness that is almost unconsciousness. A metaphysical moment when anything is possible says the Soothsayer.
Miriam Saphira – My work is autobiographical but intrinsically tied to my concerns about the land. Mt Taranaki as soothsayer will cover the land with heart. The mountain is moving, fermenting, considering revenge to the East. My ancestral lands will be changed with layers as Taranaki seekis Ruapehu. “She burns me.” Sappho 500BC.
Gorgeous – Lois Perry Solo Show
7 October to 3 November
Each painting in Gorgeous is the record of an event – an encounter between myself and the flat, two-dimensional canvas (with its straight parallel edges). In this encounter the medium is paint – coloured stuff that flows, moves, and mixes. Surface, edges, colours, water – these are the material elements of the painting process.
I select colours from the top of an everyday paint chart. I am drawn to colours that are exotic and excessive. Each colour has its own personality for me. Some colours are assertive, even wilful, and others are shy, conciliatory. In the process of painting the colours take over, and the painting becomes an entity with a life of its own. If the encounter is successful the surface will sing – and the songs it sings give the painting its meanings.
Lois Perry
Turning Mobility 3
4 November – 2 December
Turning Mobility is a series of art exhibitions by and for some of New Zealand’s best known and unknown disabled artists. The third Turning Mobility Exhibition was held at MARCO gallery | project space. It aimed to assist in breaking down some of the barriers that surround people with a disability, while raising funds for organisations assisting the disabled.
By being recognised as artists, we mark our place in the community and gain respect and social standing. This can of course be said for any artist, but for some of us, it is necessary to take the focus off ourselves and onto our art, enabling us to be seen as equals in a society that does not always view disabled people as equals.
Turning Mobitility 3 was a great success with artists from all over New Zealand and some from as far as the United Sates entering works.
MARCO Trust Kids' Art Finale - Children's Art Competition
3 to 12 December
The 2005 Kids' Art Finale was a huge success with 34 kids from schools around Auckland entering lots of great works. Isobel Welsford-Ackroyd, Shanti Truong-George and Aidan McNeillage received the three Most Outstanding Awards.
RIGHT ON! – Group Illustration Show
20 December 2005 to 28 February 2006
Flox | Anya Whitlock | Lisa Williams | Greg Hodgson
MARCO gallery | project space invited local illustrators to paint murals directly on the gallery walls. This eclectic show presented a diversity of ideas and talent by four young Auckland illustrators.
Flox
My painting practice reflects a strong sense of ornamentation, from both historical and contemporary aspects. More specifically, my work is influenced by Art Nouveau, Victorian and Arts and Crafts movements, whilst still drawing from contemporary graphic design and graffiti contexts. I have recently broken away from my typical studio-based practice to further include the street as a medium for expresssion, and to further expolore the notions of high art vs low art.
Anya Whitlock
My work literally bursts out of the traditional ‘art frame’, demonstrating the expansion of art into life, a cornerstone of MARCO’s ethos. The toadstool as subject matter is a vehicle to symbolise the evolution of creative thought – starting with spore formations and evolving through thought forms to more tangible shapes.
Lisa Williams
Earthworm Yoga
I am interested in the extraordinary nature of the ordinary.
The world that’s in your backyard
or right under your feet as you rush around.
The thing I like about yoga is that it slows you down.
Everything around us is magical,
it just takes a little bit of imagination to see it.
“The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in the fairy books, ‘charm’, ’spell’, ‘enchantment’.”
G K Chesterton from “The Ethics of Elfland”
Greg Hodgson
I like to create images that kids will get a kick from. It’s cool seeing them smile when a character connects with them. I guess I am still a kid as are most of my friends. As the Ramones once said “I don’t wanna grow up”.
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