B.

This two-part exhibition will profile the latest work of two of New Zealand’s leading printmakers - John Reynolds and Marian Maguire - and examine some of the innovations currently taking place in this area of art practice. Both artists have produced work conceived on a scale not usually contemplated by printmakers, and have avoided the matting and glazing which is traditionally associated with works on paper. They have each employed the composite to establish a body of work to be viewed and read as a total installation. As Maguire is from Christchurch and Reynolds lives in Auckland, the two-part exhibition will also offer a North-South perspective.

In Library Travelling, Marian Maguire combines print techniques (etchings, cardboard engravings), scale, colour and visual rhythms to explore aspects of knowledge, in particular the way we learn about unseen things through the process of reading. The viewer is confronted by vivid images of gates, their life-size scale seeming to invite entry into the privacy of Maguire's book journeys, which are represented by the 50 or so small etchings. The extreme contrast in scale and the nature of the work's content creates speculation about the nature of reality, knowledge, ideas and imagination. The etchings are printed on handmade paper, and are placed in a continuous line on the wall, a line broken occasionally by the large, colourful gates, evoking the narrative form of a book.

('Library Travelling', Bulletin, No.101, April/May 1996, p.3)

This exhibition was held at the McDougall Art Annex in the Arts Centre.

For information on John Reynold's exhibition Millennium, click here.