Exhibition Review
Object space Gallery
Tunaga Funaki and Salle Tamatoa
Weavings sit upon the wall, a collection of materials and variety of sizes. The talk with Salle was engaging and insightful opening up conversations of his own approaches to the practice alongside his Nan’s approaches to making. The use of materials made sense in relationship to cultural location in an outside world to Niue, creating connections to the accessible, these pushes of ‘new’ materials also seemed to carry though within the looseness of making. Salle had made forms which Had become more fluid and unfunctional pushing the meaning of what these techniques and skills traditionally seemed to intend to do, organic shapes started to appear from the weaved pieces. The combination and playing off each other (two artists involved created a good relationship within the objects themselves, there wasn’t only the weaving its self but a weaving of personal stories, a weaving of tasks which could open a viewer to thinking back to themselves and how I personally could connect making and collaborating on a day to day basis.
Vision Gallery
Claudia Kogachi
Fabric drapes down along the walls, these colorful rugs and mats encapsulate imagery of female figures doing menial jobs highlighting the possibilities of everyday work and tasks. This collection of works reference the possible artist life and future endeavors, tasks such as being a gardener or an electrician to help fuel Kogachi’s art practice. Questioning the seriousness of financials while trying to uphold and continue an art practice is a serious and real situation, making is enjoyable but can be a work in its self, how does one maintain this while still being financially able to live. The materials used help emphasis Kogachi’s making abilities, these works have physical texture, parts are cut down to sit back but do not subtract from the work, patches protrude giving depth to the work, they feel soft and at times help reference depiction, a bushy tree had long fabric while the sheers cutting caused the fabric around the sheers to be shorter, playing on a material in relation to depiction.
Gus Fisher Gallery
Wong Ping, Mark Schroder and Pinar Yoldas
This show consisted of three artists in separate areas of the gallery space, included were two video works and one installation, these works seemed to highlight financial positions and capitalist actions? Mark Schroder plays on the idea of corporate entities and the jokes or surreal nature of these places, making slogans which didn’t really make sense and came across at times as vague and meaningless, the area felt off personally, the environment was cramped and overwhelming, this work was supposedly new, Mark was a ceramicist artist the area was scattered with little ceramic mimicries of real life objects, stapler, tape dispensers and food lay around and on top of desks. The part of this work that drew me in was the architecture and building of place, and how simple infrastructure could teleport one’s self to another environment whilst simultaneously being aware of the surrounding gallery, the overwhelming nature of set up made me blur out the gallery context and focus on the reconstruction of a corporate setting.
RM Gallery
Sandy Gibbs and Jade Townsend
RM Gallery included two rooms one showing predominantly video installations focused around sporting events recreations of Olympic level swimming reenacted out. The other room hosted a work on stands referencing protests and signs, the materials used mimicked the materials used at protest but were altered, these stands faced from a corner outwards to the window. The focus to me seeing this show made me think of how video or projection could work but also focusing on the recreation of an object or moment, how information is being filtered and lost through contacts. The stands made me think through how I could have more structural objects sitting in a space whilst making.
Artspace Aotearoa
Natasha Matila-Smith
Natasha Mitila-Smith show and installation included large photos seemingly taken on a phone camera and had been blown up larger than life, words painted graphicly (as in computer typology not gory graphic) of possible self-help or reflections, large red clear plastic drapes to shift the rooms colour and lighting projecting a more pink hue throughout the room instead of white, lastly there was a heart shaped bed faced towards a video playing short quotes and more written comments focused around a form of love or self. The ideas which I enjoyed from this exhibition was use of space to give the large works room but also how Matila-Smith decided to break the room up, another one being the lighting shift and ambiance that this pink tone gave to the space to elevate an overarching feel or even aesthetic in a conceptual focused manner to go with understanding the context of the work and not just becoming solely an aesthetic idea. Playing with the rooms light and projection is an idea which I am intrigued by.
LareePayne Gallery
Laura Williams and Madeleine Child
Green paintings and odd sculptures. Religious re imaginings sit on the wall, a green earthy plant back ground accompanied these works. The paintings were fairly small in scale and had very small brush marks used. The sculptural pieces were also small in size and had a mixture of colours on them. These works felt odd sitting next to one another as they seemed fairly far from each other and almost out of place with one another. The paintings depictions were done in an almost flat and slightly cartoonish manner and felt references of Ayesha Green with the flatness and also the recreations of paintings although in a very different way and sense of depiction.
Llenyd Price 