The Nomadic Art Gallery is a collaborative project going around Aotearoa with an array of artists from all over the country.
The curators are a couple from Belgium, showing in many ways a collaboration of artists could run as a gallery, operating with one artist or a group show was to show at a gallery at once, connections between artists start to converse and open up new dialogues into works which may have never been thought of without the force full space restrictions. The truck hosts artists working at once so you get connections which may have been lost with separate shows, almost as if a gallery would look like with all the shows paintings through history showing at once.
My work on the truck explored a sort of ‘hidden world’ or ‘hidden space’ which was exaggerated through the chairs folding capability covering and uncovering the final painting much like covering up the natural world with tall fences and infrastructure hiding natural ecosystems.
Do these river walks and trails tell a story of who trekked before, or are these new paths hiding them?
The landscape has been a place for me to escape to, focusing on the living on the verge of destruction, tree trunks emptied of leaves depict a preparation to be cut down as a sense of land is present by constant changing and questions of its possible future life.
From an ever changing landscape, my work is a contemplation of what I think the landscape means, how the areas are, were and may be. These contemplations include the land and native ecosystems which reside on the outskirts of new housing development, I am questioning housing development in relation to companies choices of location sites infrastructure.
Working on this project was quite a shift from what I was use to, the weather effects on the paints drying time was quite challenging but a unique challenge. During this I opened my mind to new possibilities such as how painting could be an immersion and collaborative effort with both the elements and others around, brush marks leaked into other people’s work, paint drips interrupted works. It was a challenge but I very much enjoyed participating and learning more about the collaboration between artists.
Llenyd Price 