Peter Stichbury

b.1969

NDE

  • 2013
  • Acrylic on linen
  • Purchased 2013
  • 850 x 1203mm
  • 2013/067

There’s a strangely ahistorical quality to Peter Stichbury’s paintings. While his subjects are clearly contemporary personalities, the weight of the art-historical past stands behind his approach to portraiture. In this powerful image, a young woman is depicted with a thousand-yard-stare –has something has happened in the past that she has not yet come to terms with in the present?

(Now, Then, Next: Time and the Contemporary, 15 June 2019 – 8 March 2020)

Exhibition History

earlier labels about this work
  • Unseen: The Changing Collection, 18 December 2015 – 19 June 2016

    NDE made its public debut high on Christchurch Art Gallery’s external south wall, when the immaculate surface of this canvas was minutely photographed then blown up onto tautly stretched vinyl as a glowing, seven-metre-wide billboard. Now, the fretful gaze that discomfited passers-by on the street outside cuts across the exhibition space instead. Have we, as the acronym in the title might suggest, stumbled upon a person on the cusp of the hereafter? Whatever this too-perfect young woman may have witnessed, it has, at least temporarily, removed her from our sphere into another. We’re uncomfortably close, yet worlds apart.