(Heafey Gallery, Central Stories Museum & Gallery, Alexandra)
In Central Stories’ Heafey Gallery, painter Gretl Barzotto, ceramicist Kathi McLean, and photographer Sally Paterson explore the vistas and history of Central Otago. Working with man-made and natural materials, the artists traverse the land from sunrise to sunset, evoke distant voices and capture both the grandeur and intimacy of the world around them.
All who wake in and create in Central Otago know that there’s a distinctive light that glows through the mountains and glitters in the lakes; it’s often painted and etched in hues of burnished gold. Here, it’s also cast in silver — the early-morning chill coiling through the trees, the delicate shadows through the fog, the sparkle of snow on the rocks. In works like Lakeside Memories, Rose (Blue Lake, St. Bathans), in which the faint outline of a white dress is superimposed over the landscape, Paterson conjures wistful ghosts of the past, the silvery song of memory. Paterson’s technique — subtly, seamlessly layering multiple images into a single viewpoint — takes the viewer on a deep, poignant journey, and makes this one of the most interesting photographic collections of the year.
Barzotto’s brush dances a joyful line between abstraction and realism; with sheer sweeps of pigment and veins of glowing gold, the recognisable outlines of peaks and lakes take shape but with dreamlike beauty. From misty horizons to the clay beneath our feet, McLean’s earth-toned pottery is the grounding element, bringing the experience full circle, casting the magic and imagination into three-dimensional form like the treasured relics of a journey.
(Henderson Gallery, Central Stories Museum & Gallery, Alexandra)
Also at Central Stories, "This Painted Land" brings together eleven landscape artists creating large-scale canvases, opening portals and possibilities, inviting the viewer to step in and walk paths both familiar and imaginative. From sensorial bursts of abstract colour to almost photographic realism, there’s something for everyone here — a must-see in the Henderson Gallery.
Maurice Middleditch’s Otago Harbour from Highcliff Road captures the verdant peacefulness of low light across the Dunedin hills. Amidst the figurative detail, there’s a characteristic softness to Middleditch’s brush strokes, the faintest blurring of select edges, like a scene taking shape out of memory and preparing to dissolve back into the past.
Debbie Malcolm’s Upper Taieri River in Maniototo and Julie Greig’s Silvery Morning, from the Creamery Bridge are among a number of stand-out pieces; both works are so intensely atmospheric and evocative of winter that you almost expect breath to fog and ice to spread across the gallery walls as you approach. Every last blade of frosted grass might be the focal point of the composition, so much care and craft are woven into the creation. Greig introduces a small, valiant glow of sunlight through her overcast sky, but the one hint of warmth in the palette only emphasises the beautiful frozen stillness of the scene.
Neil Driver’s Lammerlaws Outcrop has a similarly serene feel. Driver has a unique ability to utilise colour and subtle tonal shifts to create distinctive textural effects, from a lit-from-within silken sky to the velvety stretch of rolling hills.
Time Passing in Pink (Time Stamp series), by Jane Mitchell. Time Passing in Pink (Time Stamp series), by Jane Mitchell. |
New works from the series titled "Octave", Claire Beynon, and Transient, Jane Mitchell
(Gallery Thirty Three, Wānaka)
According to astronomers, the universe "sings"— pressure waves emitting from a supermassive black hole in the Perseus galaxies have been "humming" in B-flat for perhaps more than 2billion years. Claire Beynon’s newest collection is born from the idea of that deep galactic song; sound and vibration can affect emotions, and possibly effect change throughout the world and each individual inhabiting it. Each work is based around and "plays" a different note from the B-flat minor scale. Like a musical score scrawled in black ink across a white page, Beynon’s greyscale palette allows the quiet drama of the imagery to resonate into stillness and contemplation. Strikes of light break through the darkness like bursts of inspiration and hope, but the black sections are not simply negative space, a void; the impression is weighty, grounded, and thoughtful.
Sharing the gallery space, Jane Mitchell continues her "Time Stamp" series with Transient. Our existence consists of infinite small moments, some of which pass almost unnoticed, some never forgotten, all of which shape the people we are and who we become. Often, however, we unintentionally become spectators — not just to others’ lives but to our own. In a nod to transient scenes glimpsed from the windows of passing cars and trains, Mitchell situates her paintings behind acrylic scattered with resin "rain drops". Certain details stand out clearly; others are blurred, as we speed past— or simply fail to properly see, hear, and live the stories unfolding around us.
By Laura Elliott
