To view exhibition archives click HERE
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september - december 2006 |
| Ashburton Pottery Society Annual Exhibition
12th-22nd September 2006
The 34th annual exhibition of the Ashburton Pottery Society will feature a variety of new work by members. There will also be work by two guest potters: Marie Rusbatch and Ngaire Van Grondelle. Marie Rusbatch (Dawson of Waikari Pottery) has been producing pottery for over thirty years. Marie’s functional domestic ware of white Ultra Vitreous clay has a bold, positive and colourful design. Marie also features airbrush designs on tiles, trays and wall-hangings. She has recently been producing bowls featuring black backgrounds with bright enamel designs. Ngaire Van Grondelle is a foundation member of the Halswell Pottery Club and has thirty six years experience in potting. Ngaire was tutored by Mirek Smisek, Roy Cowan, Juliet Peters and Len Castle. Ngaire is currently working in porcelain and copper/red glaze, greatly influenced by the Japanese style. She is very familiar with salt glazing, anagama and reduction firing. Ngaire was the first potter in the South island to own an LPG kiln. |
| One Day Only!
Muka Youth Print Exhibition
Young People Buy Art –No Adults Allowed
Wednesday 20th September 2006
A display of original contemporary art exclusively for young people aged 5-18. This event gives young people the opportunity to purchase original lithographs for a fraction of the normal price. It is the intention of the artists that the works will become the exclusive property of the purchaser. |
| Mid Canterbury Schools Exhibition
10th –29th October 2006
An exhibition of works by the children and young people of the Ashburton District. Come and view the creative work taking place in schools around your community. |
| Unwrapped
12th November-3rd December 2006
Award Winners Artists Talk Saturday 18th November 1.30pm
Workshop: How to use positive imagination and express your own individuality
An exhibition of Students works from the first year Aoraki Polytechnic/ Creative Arts Academy Art Certificate Programme. Unwrapped is the name chosen by the students to reflect their experimental work in their first year. The work shown covers disciplines in mixed media studies, drawing, oil painting, pastels, painting on silk and fabric decoration and design. Learning a multitude of new techniques and moving out of their comfort zone has been a huge challenge for all the students. The workshop will be conducted by Heather Welsh-Sarin and Julie Lowe following the artist’s talks on Saturday the 18th of November-all welcome.
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| Iain Cheesman & Ali Bramwell
Home Front
9th December-28th January 2007
Home Front celebrates the comfort of home, where carpet and chromed flowers in a tangle of barbed wire occupy the same room; these almost contradictory materials are contorted into new forms registering outlines of a quilt or an emblematic oak leaf. These art works offer themselves as memorials to register not so much the celebration of victory but more the celebratory remembrance of all those involved both during and after the ‘World Wars’. Home Front is a collaborative exhibition between sculptor Ali Bramwell and Multimedia artist Iain Cheesman. Their work comes together with video interacting with sculpture, where realities are manipulated and the gallery becomes a theatre set that the viewer can enter. |
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| In early July I travelled to Sydney to take in the Sydney Biennale. Zones of Contact takes place in 16 sites around Sydney and features the work of 85 artists from 44 countries. A principal aim of the Biennale has been to develop an international context in which Australian artists may participate alongside contemporaries from all over the world. This also allows audiences to engage with contemporary visual art that they may not have had the opportunity to otherwise. Biennale Curator Charles Merewether explores a sense of homeland, belonging and displacement. I was particularly impressed with the New Zealand contribution by Rachael Rakena and Brett Graham titled UFOB. The title combines UFO with the acronym for migrants FOB (fresh off the boats) to form the insult UFOB. The work was shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art where on entering the space a number of UFOs come into view. These dark curved objects hover above the viewer revealing a porthole from which one can view a series of television screens featuring bizarre imagery of migrants floating under water and washing ashore in plastic carry bags.
Other highlights were Anthony Gormley’s Asian Field which is made up of 210,000 figures that were produced by 350 volunteers of all ages from local clay found in the Guandong Province in China. | | Rachael Rakena & Brett Graham U.F.O.B |  |  | | Anthony Gormley Asian Field |  |  | | Adrian Paci Noise of Light (2005) | Lidwien van de Ven Promised Land/Palestine | The volunteer makers from Xiangshan village were photographed and their image appeared as part of this large scale collaborative work. An example of the clay figures the volunteers produced was also photographed and appears beside their portrait. The image above is of the warehouse space where to entire floor area is coved with the 210, 000 clay figures.
Adrian Paci’s Noise of Light is an installation work presenting a huge chandelier (approximately 6x5 metres) which is powered by 10 generators. The work is located in a large warehouse space and switches on and off again every half hour. The noise of the generators fills the space so one is immediately compelled to investigate.
Lidwien van der Ven’s Promised Land/Palestine was particularly intriguing as the large scale black and white photographs portray the land which is being fought over and that appears as a kind of dry, barren wasteland. The artist explores themes relating to politics and religions and the way we as the public see these events through the media. The artist travels around the world often visiting similar areas being covered by journalists. The artist often depicts those areas that are not seen as “news worthy”. Promised Land is a series of eight photographs and a poster of Mount Nebo (Jordan). In the Bible, Moses looked out over the Promised Land from Mount Nebo. | | How to Look at a Painting by Justin Paton
I purchased How to look at a Painting one afternoon in Christchurch. It is an inspiring and manageable read that I recommend to anyone who is interested in art. The gallery has copies of Justin Paton’s award winning book How to Look at a Painting available for $24.99.
“A masterpiece. Justin Paton is on par with the best art reviewers anywhere. This book will set your imagination alight”
MARTI FRIEDLANDER “Justin Paton is perfect company. Wonderfully intelligent and well-informed, he makes baffling stuff accessible, and shows us how great paintings-big and small-can make the familiar world astonishing and new” BILL MANHIRE “In this absorbing book, painting is revealed as food for the soul, a harbour of memories, a connection with deep realities and a source of satisfaction and pleasure for painter and viewer alike” MICHAEL SMITHER Justin Paton is curator of contemporary art at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery and a former lecturer in art history and theory. Justin has written for many national and international publications and is a frequent commentator on arts on radio and television. | | $24.95 | |
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