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Otago Daily Times
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
Art seen: June 5
"Eden in Dunedin" (Toitū Otago Settlers Museum) "Eden in Dunedin" displays many of the finest articles of women's clothing and accessories from the Eden Hore Central Otago fashion collection. Hore's remarkable and unique collection, assembled during the 1970s and 1980s and now owned by the Central Otago District Council, focuses primarily on the fine fashion of the era in which it was collected. From lush evening gowns to quirky daywear, we are transported into an era bookended by hippiedom and grunge styles, while also heavily influenced by earlier eras. The display showcases items from many top New Zealand designers, and ranges in style from Rosalie Gwilliam's heavily sequinned evening gown to James Jaye Leather's stark but sexy leather trouser-suit. June Mercer's award-winning crocheted outfit stands alongside Beverley Horne's startling merino and lurex gown and hot pants. Accessories range from Vinka Lucas's stunning flapper-inspired cloche hat to chunky but stylish leather shoulder-bags. Every item is thoroughly documented with interactive displays of text and photographs of the pieces being modelled. The exhibition is completed by video and photographic installations which provide not only further information about the overall collection but also a taste of its location and the process by which Eden Hore acquired the pieces. "Civil Twilight", Nicola Jackson (Brett McDowell Gallery) Brett McDowell Gallery is gaudily strewn with over 50 works by artist Nicola Jackson. The darkness of the artist's macabre humorous works is counterbalanced by the freshness and brightness of the colours of the pieces, giving the gallery a Dia del Muerte feel. With the works chosen at least partly to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the Otago Medical School, many of the pieces focus on matters medical, with anatomies, maladies and remedies being front and centre. Whereas a few of the pieces are large, notably an impressive cotton quilt and a vibrantly pink jar, many of the works are small, icon-like pieces, with tiny images centred within equally artistic frames. There are strong elements of the surreal in the works and in the exhibition overall, the small paintings placed against guacamole-green walls and seemingly guarded by an array of gleefully grinning skulls. Two intriguing installations bookend the exhibition, both cabinets of curiosities. One is a vibrant collection of "Symptoms and medicaments", with shelves of happy, friendly viruses interspersed with tablets and capsules. The other, in extreme contrast, is an austere black and white, the jars of remedies adding their unnerving whimsy by virtue of their names. All are real medieval panaceas, with contents ranging from "milk and soot" to "knee dirt". "Inge Doesburg" (The Artist's Room) Inge Doesburg delights with her soft, misty landscapes at The Artist's Room. In a series of works which includes acrylic paintings, intaglio, dry-point and etching, the artist has captured the emptiness and airiness of the south. More experimental works, such as the meditative solar-etched tree of Soliloquy suggest that the artist is continuing to add strings to an already impressive artistic bow. Plaster is used to create texture in stark landscapes — or more correctly skyscapes — of Waipiata and the Wairarapa, turning the acrylic surfaces into gently toned gesso. There is a freedom to the mark-making in works such as Flagstaff Walk which are also an extension of Doesburg's previous work and an indication of her confidence in her style. In the current exhibition, Doesburg has extended her linking of art with poetry, drawing inspiration from the words of writers ranging from James K. Baxter to Goethe. Inspiration is also clearly taken from New Zealand art, with nods to Doesburg's antecedents in the McCahon-esque hills of From Flagstaff and Hotere-like style and composition of the Goethe-annotated Untitled . It is the artist's own hallmark style which takes centre stage, however, with works such as the rain-drenched Listening to the Mountain couplet, and Karitane , jutting like rusted roof-iron into a sleepy, milky Pacific. By James Dignan
Otago Daily Times
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
Art seen: May 22
"The Splendour of Ukiyo-e", various artists Brett McDowell Gallery The rise in appreciation for Japanese Ukiyo-e art since its time of creation is nothing short of remarkable. Originally viewed in much the same way that we today might regard photographs on calendars or mass-produced posters, the rise of interest in asian art in Europe in the final years of the 19th century began a rise in the perceived worth of the art, to the point where it is now seen as a high-point in Japanese creative culture. The low-art origins are a reason why good quality prints are often something of a rarity. Brett McDowell Gallery has made an annual ritual of its exhibitions of Japanese prints, and this year's collection is a fine one, featuring several better-known artists, most notably the Utagawa school's Kunisada. Many of the pieces are single frame images, displaying scenes in the real or imagined daily life of high society — the "floating world" which gives Ukiyo-e art its name. The current display also includes several impressive multiple-panel pieces, perhaps the most remarkable of which is the three-piece Natural Flowers cooling off on the Sumidagawa by Nobukazu, its effectively composed night river scene aglow with rich blues and reds. "Glass Harbour", Russell Moses (Milford Gallery) The rich colours of rippling water are also much to the fore in an exhibition of Russell Moses' impressionistic arrays at Milford Gallery. Moses' art has long concentrated on the play of light on the surfaces of plants and water, creating multiple windows on the world through his grids of small geometric forms. In his latest exhibition, the artist concentrates on the rippling waters of Otago Harbour, as seen from his Port Chalmers home. His work has changed subtly for his previous series, incorporating here highly reflective paint rather than his former pearlescent surfaces. Ripples are deliberately featured in this series, created by ridges in the painted surface and the resultant effect is works in which the light shimmers and shifts as the viewer moves around them. The use of multiple colours within specific works is also a departure, allowing the pieces to suggest both the water and reflections of the land beyond. In a couple of the works, a mirror black surface is used to suggest night waters, also a nod to the art of Moses' late friend Ralph Hotere. The artist's deliberate association of the painted surface with the geometries of music comes to the fore in several pieces where ovals of flat white become visual chords on the surface of the waters. "Kiingi Tuheitia Portraiture Award 2023", various artists (Tūhura Otago Museum) With this year's Kiingi Tuheitia Portraiture Awards drawing towards their conclusion, Tūhura Otago Museum is displaying finalists from the 2023 awards, allowing an opportunity to see the standards and styles the competition engenders. The competition's aim is simple: Emerging Māori artists are encouraged to create works honouring their tūpuna, playing out the line of their whakapapa to their ancestors. Despite the modern media used, this is perhaps the most traditional of Māori art subjects, the honouring of those that went before. The award is a fitting legacy for Te Kiingi. The works are appropriately being displayed in the Tangata Whenua Gallery, where they are interspersed with the permanent displays of Māori history. Pieces range from the purely representational to the more abstract or expressionistic; photorealistic paintings are presented alongside the symbolism of a broom and a three-panel poem. The winning work by Stevei Houkāmau (Ngāto Porou, Te Whanau-a-Apanui) uses a necklace as an inspiration, with each of its stones a memory-trace leading back to the artist's ancestor. Many fine and imaginative pieces are present, with highlights including paintings by Robert Pritchard-Blunt, Marie Kyle and Jody Tupara, the aforementioned poem by Trinity Thompson-Browne, an impressive carved work by Tukiri Tini, and a clever group sports photograph by Bodie Friend. By James Dignan
Otago Daily Times
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
Art seen: May 8
James Dignan takes in some exhibitions. We Saw You There, Inge and Marc Doesburg (Olga) A joint exhibition by husband and wife Marc and Inge Doesburg provides a memorable display at Olga. Most of the pieces are provided by Marc Doesburg. His photographic works show transition zones, those haunting places glimpsed in passing on the way to a destination. The artist uses chiaroscuro techniques to present structures as light forms within an overwhelming negative space, letting the structures float as if in a galactic void. The images are prosaically named with just location and year, adding to their anonymity. The crisp, clear shapes of pieces such as ''Frankfurt 2024'' and ''Dusseldorf 2023'' render these works pure studies of line and light. Inge Doesburg provides three larger works which perfectly complement the harsh delineations of Marc's images. These pieces are natural landscapes, viewed through a heavy mist. The ambiguity here is not with location but with form, and the subject is untouched by the straight lines of human construction. The intriguing use of transparent film as a canvas adds an inner sheen to two of the pieces, while the largest, ''Chatham Islands'', beautifully depicts a rain-drenched land under an acrylic wash of tenebrous cloud, floating on a blackened sea. The works, though all monochrome, swim in subtle tones from steel blue to sepia brown, adding extra emotional depth to their subject matter. Bluebird on a Booze-Tree, Jonathan Cuming (Brett McDowell Gallery) Jonathan Cuming provides a dark surrealism in his mixed-media works at Brett McDowell Gallery. The artist's expressionist works, in strong blocks of colour, are heavily worked with strokes and lines of graphite and coloured pencil, producing images that follow a New Zealand artistic path previously trodden by the likes of Philip Clairmont and Jeffrey Harris. One point of difference with these precedent-setters is the wry black humour of his works, brought into sharp focus by the pathos of his deadpan titles. The combination of the bright colours and wilfully childlike nature of Cuming's images alleviates any darkness that the satirical material might inspire. ''A Drowning'' becomes as a scene from a Mr Bean episode; ''Making Ends Meat'', despite its dark commentary on poverty, remains a bright, almost joyous image. ''Brolly Spiders'' become children's toys, rather than the creatures which shocked the artist when they fell from a neglected umbrella. The works surround a central ''found statue'', a worked tree-branch deposited by the tide, which now becomes the gleeful dancing figure of a ''Driftwood Christ''. A second found object construction, the Duchamp-like ''Doublehappy'', couples the internal workings of an animal trap with a discarded basketball hoop to create a thought-provoking yet ambiguous installation. ''Journey into the Unknown'', Gerda Satunas (Fe29 Gallery) Fe29's latest exhibition, ''Journey into the Unknown'', presents the work of ceramicist Gerda Satunas. Satunas is a Lithuanian-born New Zealander whose art career has followed a shift of media akin to the artist's own travels across the world. Beginning as a fashion designer, Satunas travelled to New Zealand after working in fabric in various cities throughout Europe, and continued her chosen artistic field on arriving in this country, being named as a finalist in the 2016 iD Fashion Week. It was in Dunedin that Satunas's love of ceramics was sparked. Combining this with an abiding love of the natural world, especially the shoreline, she has created a series of works that focus on the forms of ferns and seaweed, shimmering in the sunlight and ripples of the sea. The strong works, with their heavy glossy glaze, are in the form of clay and porcelain wall hangings and vessels, the foliage-inspired strands flowing freely to suggest a mass of vegetation flowing in the water or wind. Satunas's works form a journey, and are an expression of the homesickness which often accompanies travels across the world. Although constantly flowing, the seaweed and plants tug at their stems, simultaneously desiring freedom and pinned forever to their roots, both literal and psychological.
