Tuesday, January 18, 2011

King Street Gallery on William - On This Island









Nine artists in New Zealand - Jan Senbergs, Euan Mcleod, Idris Murphy, Ann Thomson, Julie Harris, Judith Van Heeren, Peter Simpson, Steve Lopes and David Keeling...

A beautiful, beautiful show curated by Owen Craven and inspired by the diverse landscape of New Zealand. Every piece in this exhibition showed a different perspective, creating historical reference for future artist’s and I will no doubt gush... It takes a seasoned Curator to bring together such a group of Artists as these and send them off into the wild blue yonder and then select works that best represent each Artist’s representation of the landscape. One would hope the works would work together and they do beautifully!

I loved ‘Rock-face-Castlepoint’ by well heeled painter Jan Senbergs, his large black oil stick drawing describing the ruthless ocean edge and ‘Rocky Landscape Mt Ruapehu’ with it’s descriptive oil stick strokes... Steve Lopes diptych ‘Mt Ruapehu Figure’, oil on board and ‘Untitled Figures, Mt Ruapehu’ oil on canvas showed a jovial exuberance from the groups youngest artist. ‘Landscape with kereru (after Walter Buller)’ and ‘Landscape with Kaka parrots and thermal pool’ oil on linen by Judith Van Heeren offered up a reminiscent of early colonial paintings... One of my favourite painters Euan McLeod, ‘Castlepoint Hillside’ and Castlepoint Light House’ and ‘Poplars Castlepoint’ and ‘Small Mt Ngaurahoe’ all oil on canvas showed us a different light to the others, as I have not had the pleasure of visiting New Zealand as yet, I gather it is less harsher than Australia...

A spritely Ann Thomson going at it with guns blazing with her ’Stone Images I & II’, acrylic, collage and charcoal on canvas broke up the serenity between Euan and Idris Murphy’s ‘3 parts of night (triptych)’ acrylic on board. Peter Simpson’s ‘Slippage Ruapehu’ and ‘rolling Skies Ruapehu’ oil on linen were a breathtaking surprise and stopped me in my tracks! ‘Castlepoint Night’, ‘Second Field Study 9(Diptych)’ and ‘Castlepoint’ oil on linen by David Keeling with his eerie night and day versions of the same landscape. ‘NZ Walkthrough, thinking of Colin McCahon’ by Julie Harris, gouache and ink on paper on canvas offers a perfect balance...

I have walked around this series of works quite a number of times since it opened and do feel the need to walk around again and maybe again as it offers the feeling of visiting a distant land that you may not have visited before...

Written by Fleur

11th January - 5th February 2011
www.kingstreetgallery.com.au

No comments:

Post a Comment