What’s On
Night Market at the Gallery
Wine, beer, food, crafts, jewellery, ceramics, plants, candles, records, books, DJs (not for purchase) and more...
Spring Time is Heart-break: Contemporary Art in Aotearoa
A major exhibition featuring works that tell stories about personal and collective histories, communication, distance and relationships to our environment.
Don't miss
Our Out of Time exhibition is closing soon.
Open 7 days, 10am - 5pm
Late night Wednesday until 9pm
Free entry, free wifi
Edward Hanfling
Commentary
Philip Trusttum and the Squashed Painting
The painting is of a head on the end of a knife; it’s called Not Good (2014). Trusttum is better known for paintings that exude pleasure, their subject matter including physical exercise, sensuality and music, childhood, games and toys, animals, and ordinary domestic tasks such as mowing the lawn—life. There is pleasure and life too in the way he paints—in dancing, hyperactive line and luscious colour. It might seem anomalous, then, for Trusttum to paint something that is “not good”. When I interviewed him for Art New Zealand in 2011, he hinted at a bleaker side to his work, but said: “Stay away from explaining any darker meaning. I mean, we’ve got the earthquakes here.” There is something to be said, though, for complicating the perception of Trusttum’s pictures as purely hedonistic.