"Solo Exhibition", Jo Jago and "From Mud to Masterpiece: A Celebration of Clay", Alexandra Pottery Club
(Central Stories Museum and Gallery, Alexandra)
At Alexandra’s Central Stories, multimedia artist Jo Jago has taken over the Heafey Gallery for December, exhibiting her brilliantly jewel-toned ink and watercolour paintings and prints. As a visual experience, Jago’s work often feels as if you’ve cracked open a crystal, with striking bands of vivid crystalline blue, laced with veins of glittering gold. The metallic accents continue through her landscapes and seascapes, creating a continuous path of sun-touched gold. There’s a nostalgic, almost storybook quality to works like Starry Seascape on Foam Board that will appeal to many ages, conjuring images of both sailing under the stars and space exploration in the night sky.
Also at Central Stories, in the Henderson Gallery, the Alexandra Pottery Club have their popular end-of-year exhibition, which always shines a spotlight on the versatility and diversity of the medium. Many pieces combine function with artistry, like Dee Russell’s beautiful glazed bowls Central Otago Night Sky and Sunset Over Clyde. The former captures the prismatic effect of the stars, heightened by the overhead lights, while the latter is streaked with cosy shadows and the softening peach tones of the receding sun. Jenny Knowles’ Quail in the Hills uses an effective blend of natural tones and rich purple, the bowl encircled with flower-clustered hills, the quail perching on fence posts with impudent, tangible personality. Ruth Arnott’s Light on the Water vessel is stunning in its structural elegance and visual depth, while nearby, Amelia Paterson’s pastel Chess Set adds a touch of welcome whimsy.
(Hullabaloo Art Space, Cromwell)
Lush landscapes, bronze ballerinas, collage salsa dancers, wire garments and ceramic ice-cream cones (complete with chocolate Flake) — it’s a brilliantly creative and fun collection of works to close out the year at Cromwell’s Hullabaloo Art Space.
Sculptor Barbara Dawson’s bronze figures are a celebration of dance, expression and artistic freedom, showcasing the capabilities and beauty of the human body. Her figures dance alone and together, lost in silent music, palpably joyful, with slightly exaggerated lines emphasising the impression of perpetual rhythm and movement.
Ceramic artist Jacque Ruston’s quirky, appealing sculptures are placed irregularly around the gallery. You walk and find clay ice-cream cones, piles of clay taps, hanging chains and a selection of oversized ceramic rings that look as if they’ve come from the jewellery box of a fairytale figure. That sense of countless hidden stories and found treasures continues in jeweller Jennifer Hay’s work, in which she uses intricate woven wire to create pieces that might be museum artefacts, including the spectacular Sakura Kimono. Wire loops mimic the weave of fabric, draping into delicate beaded flowers.
Nearby, turning scrap paper into works of art, Debbie McCaw creates lively, detailed scenes from countless tiny bits of discarded magazines. Her eye for colour gradients and the transformative quality of light is extraordinary, with landscapes opening up before the eye and human figures seeming to come alive in their frames, embodying the energy of the words and stories from which they’re quite literally formed.
(Gallery Thirty Three, Wānaka)
Gallery Thirty Three’s "Summer Series" is now an annual highlight in Wānaka, a celebratory group exhibition with something for everyone, in a variety of media. More than 10 artists are featured this year and new works will continue to be added throughout December and January.
Among the many show-stopping works, Anna Evans draws the viewer into two strikingly beautiful forest scenes, engulfed by vibrant plant life, with countless tiny brushstrokes in every inch of the imagery. Arrow of Amaryllis is a vivid burst of colour, deeply saturated in tone, backlit with a golden glow through the tree branches, while Relief of Demeter is a more pensive world touched by silvery mist, with clusters of contrasting red blooms.
Katherine Throne’s oil paintings are also a glorious profusion of flowers, painted with thick, lush swirls of pigment and a sense of gleeful exuberance. Her landscape piece, Heading Home Down the Matukituki, has the same feeling of freedom and underlying happiness, as contented, tired figures traipse home across sunbaked land.
Neil Driver’s Apricots in Blue Bowl look invitingly edible, gleaming under gentle, muted light. Driver has a characteristic painting technique that can create an almost velvety appearance, with the smooth surfaces of the fruit and bowl a rich contrast against the weathered grain of the wooden table. Nearby, Tessa Barringer’s paintings also have an old master feel in the theatrical simplicity of the dark backgrounds, juxtaposed against incredibly detailed, shifting textures, from whisper-soft bird feathers to the cool sheen of pottery.
