(Blue Oyster Art Project Space)
Including moving image, photography, sound art, and participatory sculpture, Emily Clemett, Ana Hislop and Emma Hislop present a thematically interconnected and yet materially discrete set of meditations on the idea of "Ko rawaka/Everything we need".
Clemett’s found object work Everything you need (2024) is a whimsical array of things, such as silver salvers, sticks, marbles, water, wristwatches, books, or scrolls of sheet music, among other things — small bundles and bowls of emblematic objects for the combinations of tangible and intangible things in life that we need to survive or to thrive.
Ana Hislop’s Te taha wairua (2024) is an ethereal moving image work of wai landscapes and associated animal life, projected upon layers of sheer fabric with stitched motifs that represent the artist’s whakapapa. Deep blue cyanotype works, Pūngao: Whenua, Hau, Wai (2024), complete Hislop’s contribution, referencing three essential things that sustain our planetary life.
Emma Hislop has made an audio work titled Ko rawaka (2024). It consists of recordings from the writer’s daily living, framed by the same line of questioning about the things that we need.
Family conversations, music, speaking te reo Māori to the pīwakawaka that lives in the family’s garden, are among many audible reflective elements of this work that completes the exhibition.
(Slant Art Project Space)
Over 40 artworks are included in "Allbell & Associates", a group exhibition that features the work of past and present artists associated with Allbell Chambers studios.
The premise for the exhibition began as an idea for a drawing show by current resident studio artists, with extended invitations to friends, colleagues and previous studio holders. By happenstance, these plans coincided with the establishment of Slant Art Project Space: an artist run gallery and space set up by Sarah McGaughran to showcase local Ōtepoti artists.
Consisting of predominantly works on paper, "Allbell & Associates" represents a diverse set of established and emerging artistic practices. A fairly strong sense of visual cohesion is maintained by the commonalities of paper, mark-making, colour or style.
In small groupings or friendly coincidences, thematic elements speak from work to work across the room in dark graphite greys, whites or warm oche browns. On one wall, the figurative and the abstract connect through pastel shades of purple and grey. On another wall, botanical drawings in green sit with interior scenes, and whimsy and humour are balanced by works with more sombre characteristics.
Many of the drawings are for sale and the show will run until September 6.
(Dunedin Public Art Gallery)
Featuring the topic of colour, "A Painter’s Palette" in the Dunedin Public Art Gallery’s whānau gallery is a rich and engaging exhibition. The artworks on show from the gallery’s collection are arranged in colour sequences: whero/red through to kōwhai/yellow, on one wall, and kākāriki/green through to waiporoporo/purple, on the opposite wall, form a network of primary, secondary and complementary colours. On the back wall of the whānau gallery is a glossy rainbow coloured sculptural work by Michael Parekōwhai titled They comfort me too (1994), referencing the game of pick-up sticks, in kitset form and made for giants.
Educational and fun, this exhibition invites reflection and speculation. In addition to highlighting the basic theory of colour, this collection of artworks also generates a range of questions and prompts for the viewer to consider wider cultural and historical elements associated with each colour.
The works are vibrantly communicative in terms of the relationships of colour and they also draw out playfully disparate conceptual combinations: Scott Eady’s Red Bike (2011), a shiny red restored child’s bike from the artist’s large scale participatory 100 Bikes Project, is installed next to Rose Nolan’s cotton embroidery work, I don’t know who you are, but can you tell me where I am? (2008), for example.
By Joanna Osborne
