The ''gentrification'' of Dunedin's warehouse district may signal an end to its days as an artists' enclave. Rebecca Fox talks to Blue Oyster Gallery director Chloe Geoghegan about her foray into the district.
Often the woman behind the scenes making things work, Chloe Geoghegan is about to step into the limelight as curator of a new show she says pushes the limits.
''I've really extended what we are capable of. I've pushed the boat out.''
She believed it was time to challenge herself or risk disappointing people.
But it had meant juggling her job as director of Blue Oyster - the administration, funding applications and being the face of the gallery - with curating a show.
''It's time to grow my own practice.''
''A Tragic Delusion'' will display the work of four early emerging artists - Deanna Dowling, Tomas Richards, Cobi Taylor and Robyn Jordaan - around the theme of sculpture.
Ms Geoghegan wants to acknowledge New Zealand's sculptural history and how it got to where it is today by showing the work in an unconventional way: in an empty loft space in the warehouse district.
''It decentralises the Blue Oyster and offers the space up to be absorbed into a broader, less conventional exhibition.''
Touches of the Blue Oyster and Ms Geoghegan's strength in facilitation are reflected in the exhibition's public programme of talks and performances.
Tapping into her ''inner art historian'', she wanted to highlight what it was like before spaces such as the Blue Oyster were created.
So she deliberately asked experienced artists and performers, such as sculptor Stuart Griffiths and artists Kim Pieters and Nick Knox, to take part.
''I'm only 28 so I've only heard about these things. So with the public programme I'm trying extract the history. It brings out my inner geek.''
The artists were all going to take different approaches to the brief, she said.
Ms Taylor was a graduate of the Dunedin Art School who painted such large works that installing them was ''sculpture'' in a way, she said.
Ms Dowling, a sculptor, won the Waikato Art Award last year and was finishing her master's at Massey University.
''It's great to have someone who is committed to sculpture like they did 30 to 40 years ago.''
Mr Richards, a Dunedin Art School graduate who lives in Wellington, will take on the anti-institutional part of the theme, removing a floorboard from Blue Oyster and taking it to the warehouse and taking a piece of glass from the warehouse to the gallery.
''His work is at a very subtle, minute level. Experimental.''
Robyn Jordaan, who is in her third year at Elam Art School in Auckland, will look at the gentrification of the warehouse district.
While many female sculptors did small and intricate work, Ms Jordaan's was the opposite, she said.
