Exhibitions
Events
On display
Uncomfortable Silence Curator and Writers
Jayden Plank Psychedelic Wasteland 2019. Aluminium, raku clay, automotive paint. Collection of the artist
Meg Porteous Self-portrait (Street) 2019. Pigment print on vinyl. Courtesy of the artist
Talk
Past event
Meet under the stairs
THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED
Join guest curator Holly Best in conversation with exhibition publication writers Robin Neate and Gwynneth Porter about the eight bodies of work in Uncomfortable Silence.
This exhibition explores the work of emergent New Zealand artists and feelings of doubt or unease that can arise in the encounter with contemporary art.
Best and the Gallery team have produced a publication to go alongside the show, a catalogue of sorts, that pairs the artists with a writer of a different generation. This has been done to lean into the awkwardness of the unknown, and put the artists in conversation with people outside their immediate peer group to generate new dialogue.
Come and meet two of the writers and the curator of the show as they talk about the work in the exhibition, and what has come to the surface for them in the process of curating and writing, and being in dialogue with the artists.
Robin Neate is an artist, and senior lecturer in painting at the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts. Gwynneth Porter is a writer and editor, and the Gallery's Visitor Programmes Coordinator.
Related
Exhibition
Uncomfortable Silence
7 March – 19 July 2020
Fresh work by early career New Zealand artists that is both enigmatic and unsettling.
Collection
Elisabeth Pointon Best Wishes.
Informed by her employment at a luxury car dealership, Elisabeth Pointon’s practice considers language, accessibility and representation. Appropriating both the conventions of corporate language and the visual language of advertising, Pointon comments on the largely white and masculine-led environments of the workplace and the art world.
Get it right. is drawn from an email circulated at Pointon’s workplace, relating to staying on task and meeting financial targets, but is also a phrase that has arisen in Pointon’s interactions with curators and gallerists in the art community. Borrowing this phrase that hints at the financial bottom line permeating target-driven work environments, Pointon relates it to the experience of emerging artists, and to the expectation they face to capitalise on the opportunities that come their way.
Holly Best, Uncomfortable Silence: 7 March - 19 July 2020
Collection
Robin Neate In a lonely place
In a Lonely Place is the title of a classic film noir directed by Nicholas Ray, who was best known for the countercultural movie starring James Dean in his most celebrated role, Rebel Without a Cause. When Robin Neate was titling this work—which comes from a series he called the Ray Paintings—he chose the phrase for its evocative feeling and ability to provoke personal readings from the viewer. “In a lonely place. I’ve been thinking maybe that’s where painting is today, but at the time that I chose it I was thinking more about the loneliness of working in your studio or even living in this part of the world.”
The Ray Paintings continue Neate’s earlier explorations of abstraction in photographs and experimental films. “Cinema has influenced me as much as painting”, he says. “Growing up in New Zealand, cinema gave you ideas from the wider world that might resonate with you.” Falls of light in darkened rooms, clouds of dust in a projector beam, the blur of an out-of-focus image; Neate’s abstract paintings recall long afternoons spent in movie theatre matinees during the 1950s and 60s while other kids were outside playing sport. “The way we see history is always linked to our personal histories. How and when we encounter images is always significant. It’s that emotional context for art that interests me the most.”
Neate’s works reveal a concern for the discarded and outmoded. Painting, he suggests, is not a linear practice but one filled with loops and double-backs, whose history—along with the wider register of visual culture—is instantly available as source material for a contemporary artist.
(Your Hotel Brain 13 May 2017 - 8 July 2018)