Raranga & Tatreez

In 2022, Ola Sawaie was gifted leftover embroidered fabrics from Um Ahlam and other wāhine (women) who live in the Al Baqa’a refugee camp in Jordan. She was later gifted poicords (whiri) made by two Māori wāhine, Waitangi and her daughter Tiahopō. Waitangi and Tiahopo made these whiri out of wool before they returned to Ruatoki, Bay of Plenty, to live after leaving it for many years. Making these whiri was a tool to soothe themselves from the trauma of returning to the site of the 2007 raids in Ruatoki. Making the whiri brought joy to the lives of Waitangi and Tiahopo, and in return, they wanted to share joy with others!

Ola experiments with mixing Palestinian tatreez, a very old craft that goes back to the Canaanites nearly 3000 years ago, with Māori textiles inspired by the poi and the korowai. In this show, she connects the two worlds of Palestinian tatreez and Māori raranga and pūeru (weaving and textiles). It is a celebration of pattern and colour that honours the role of Māori and Palestinian wāhine (women), exemplifying silent resistance through cross-stitching and weaving.

Groups of women from two cultures (Palestinian and Māori) gather to talk, cross-stitch, weave, pass their stories, and display their resilience. Ola’s interventions combine these two worlds to highlight the possibility of different cultures living in harmony.

Wāhine used poi to keep their hands flexible for weaving, and tāne (men) used poi as a training aid for their strength. During the New Zealand land wars in the 1860s, poi were also used as a nonviolent spiritual messenger. In 1868, Te Whiti-o-Rongomai, a peacemaker, prophet, and chief of the Taranaki tribes, adopted the sakura (feather plume/treasure) of the albatross and the poi as his emblems of peace and hospitality.

Enjoy!

About the artist

Ola is an artist and designer originally from Jordan in the Middle East, now living in Hawke’s Bay. With a hyphenated identity (Jordanian-Kiwi) and a great appreciation for Māori culture and art, Ola reflects her cultural identity in her cross-cultural designs. She is a PhD student in the faculty of Design Innovation at Te Herenga Waka–Victoria University of Wellington.

Her PhD research focuses on cross-cultural design.

Leslie Falls

Though the works in this exhibition are deeply embedded craftsmanship,

I also rely on spontaneity and intuition, choosing to forgo pre-planned

ideas in favour of improvisation, which allows my artworks to unfold

organically.

I am dedicated to the physical quality of my materials, immersing my

practice in the inherent substance, manipulation, sensibility and tactility,

that result in the handmade.

The images in these works come from experiences of my childhood.

From playtime in Gaga’s Log House to hours spent in pursuing my

interest in the role of women and domesticity in art.

Jane Burn:

The landscape is key in the lines and silhouettes created by the forms of the Landline

Vessels, handbuilt over several days my hands follow the direction the clay wants to go,

each vessel completely unique ...the painterly marks on the Landmark tiles are all inspired by recent trips to my island home on Aotea, sketches on clay .....

Laila and the Green Helmet

In this show, we investigate the complex relationship between humans and nature. We envision a world where our connection to the natural world is fundamentally different.

What if nature could communicate with us, guiding our actions and decisions? Tuning us into nature’s wisdom, allowing us to listen to the voices of forests, oceans, and wildlife. 

We invite you to step into this reality, where a deeper bond with nature leads to a more harmonious coexistence.

All prints edition of five with artist’s proof. Printed on archival 100% cotton rag paper. 2024

All works are a collaboration between Rebecca Hanke and Florence Charvin

More images to come…

Paul Rayner - Okoia Valley series are listed together as they are a series of paintings

Acrylic on card, 2024

All works framed using museum glass

580 × 460

apologies for the glare on the glass and the quality of the photos, believe me they are much better in person!

Scroll down if you are looking for Mark Rayner ceramics or Paul Rayner ceramicsand one collaboration from them both

Please enquire if you are intersted in any of these works, they are available a bit longer…

Andrea Gardner – statement

My work explores concepts around identity, selfhood, and the psychological tension found in female experience. Through staged photography I am interested in juxtaposing the familiar with the unexpected and how artifice mixed with reality can create “truthful fictions” and unexpected narratives which might be playful, absurd, poetic, enigmatic or uncertain.

In my current photos I have inserted myself into the compositions, usually in some form of disguise using clothing, paint, glass, wigs, masks, cardboard and paper shapes, etc. Because the face is usually hidden the female figure becomes more anonymous and universal. Parts are concealed, transformed, protected. The body also becomes an abstract shape that interacts with other shapes and patterns.

My process is akin to going down a rabbit hole, a metaphor for being transported into a wonderfully strange or troubling surreal state or situation. The ambiguity in the photographs leaves room for interpretations that can be psychological, aesthetic, feminist or environmental. At times there is a theatrical and performative quality.

Natural Intelligence

Brit Bunkley

Short Biography

Bunkley, a NZ/USA dual citizen, received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, two NY state grants, and the Rome Prize Fellowship in the USA.

He has exhibited at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa, had international screenings, including the White Box Gallery in NYC, the Athens Digital Arts Festival, at the Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin several times between 2003-2024, and exhibited video multiple times at File SaoPaolo.

In 2012, he was an award winner at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art for the «Now&After» Festival. He participated in the Athens Digital Arts Festival in 2017 and File Sao Paolo (2017, 2018, 2019). Bunkley screened his video, Ghost Shelter/6, at The Federation Square Big Screen, Channels Festival 2017, Melbourne, and at the Oberhausen Short Film Festival, Oberhausen, Germany, in 2018.

He participated in the Visions in the Nunnery at the Nunnery/Bows art gallery in London in 2022 and in 2024 at Rencontres Berlin, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, and he exhibited in Artweek Gyumri, Armenia. he was the award winner for Best Art | Experimental video/film at the New York City Independent Film Festival 2024 in NYC.

In collaboration with Florence Charvin and So Vintage

Please enquire online or in the gallery

Opens 5:30pm Saturday 16 March closes 19 April

Scott Brough — Still Spinning

Red clay and a coating of white clay slip, with or without

decoration with iron pigments and some form of clear glaze

is one of the enduring combinations in the history of pottery.

Potters around the world and across time have used this

palette of commonplace materials. To me it is like the flour

salt and water of bread dough, or the guitar bass drums and

vocals of rock and roll. It is everything you need and nothing

you don’t; with limitless scope for variation and expression.

One such tradition, the pottery of 15 th century Korea known

as Buncheong, I am particularly drawn to and inspired by. Its

playful and spirited handling of materials and decoration,

with freely applied glaze made primarily from wood ashes,

clay and feldspar is in many ways a blueprint for the work

this work and the way I approach pottery at large.

The title of the show Still Spinning is taken from the song

While Digging Through The Snow, by the transcendent

Canadian band Whitney K. To make pottery is to walk a

series of revolving steps. Forming an object from soft clay is

neither the first or the last in this sequence of repetitive and

occasionally mundane tasks. Once you have reached the

end it is time to start the process again. The pottery that I

make rarely requires the input of new ideas into this mix,

usually ideas (or shapes, patterns) are recycled, gradually

changing and evolving. Each step in the process is not an

opportunity to refine and make smoothe the work done

previously, rather I aim to leave another remnant mark, to

add to the trail of breadcrumbs rather than cover tracks.

When future generations look back on our time, surely there can be no greater symbol of our hubris, our blatant disregard for our environment, than the plastic bread tag. Tiny, difficult to recycle, multitudinous, the small eternal reminder of what it takes to deliver us our daily bread.

Most bread manufacturers have switched to cardboard. Almost equally difficult to recycle, at least these bread tags will return to earth in our lifetime, not stick around, clinging to this mass of detritus we have made of our planet long after we are all dead and gone.

Jo Blogg gratefully received an incomprehensible bounty of bread tags, gifted whilst fossicking at the Environment Centre, deposited there by those hopeful they might find a second life. In Jo’s competent hands those hopes came true.

Jo experimented, arranging the tags, mindful of their sympathetic pastel hues, then baked them in her oven, melting them together in an array of shapes. From the many, one. And then many more.

It’s a process that brings her joy, sustaining her ability to innovate, to diversify, to create treasure from trash. In doing so she builds on her impressive oeuvre. Artful compositions nod to her many mandalas.

Conglomerate shapes, a vestige of her plethora of florals. And there’s a playful domesticity to the work, a tongue in cheek nod to the kitchen, reminiscent of her Cook Book exhibition.

The best of artists take all they have learned and build upon it, breadcrumbing their way to success. In this exhibition, light and filled with whimsy, Jo shows she is continually evolving, forever pointing out to us the beauty and absurdity of our existence. In doing so she is not only creating something alluring and accessible, she is shining a beacon for future generations, showing us that though we are, en masse, making a mess of our planet, individually we can be redeemed.

Rosheen FitzGerald

Artist statement

This show consists of three parts: first, the complete Specimen Voyage series of 13 -which is concerned with aspects of climate change - second, the Ancestor Diptych, and third, 14 other works which, broadly, continue a theme of the past few years of small works linking late Medieval imagery with current environmental and cultural issues within Aotearoa/New Zealand, with three of them referencing the recent introduction of a history component to the education syllabus.

Opens 5pm Friday 7 July closes 19 August

Scott McFarlane

Scott McFarlane was born in Wellington in 1966 and lives in Northland NewZealand. He completed a Diploma of Fine Arts, (Honours) Otago School of Art in 1993. He has exhibited regularly in New Zealand in private and public galleries and has works in numerous private and public collections.

Recent Solo Exhibitions (for full list please contact the gallery)

2023 Piano Wire and Ecocide. - The Rabbit room, Napier Distancing Social. - Avid Gallery Wellington

2022 Altercation at Harmony Hill. - Brett McDowell Gallery, Dunedin

2021 A new face in Hell. Face to Face Portrait Festival- Avid Gallery, Wellington

The vision before the event. The Rabbit room, Napier 2020. Far North Stories Pea sea art, P.C. Dunedin

Raw Materialists - Hangar, Whangarei

2019 At Taiamai - Whitespace contemporary art, Auckland 2018 The Raw Materialists – Avid Gallery, Wellington 2017 Recent Paintings – WHMilbank Gallery , Whanganui

Unearthed – Whitespace, Auckland 2016 Legerdemain - Whitespace, Auckland 2015 Maps and Flags - Whitespace, Auckland

Blatantly obvious deliberately puzzling – Avid, Wellington 2014 Strange Travel Suggestions – Kete Art Fair, Wellington 2013 False Idols - Whitespace – Auckland

Pictures of the Past Change Their Meanings Fast – Avid, Wellington 2012 Fever - Whitespace – Auckland

2011 Zeitgeist - Whangarei Art Museum

2010 I have a face I can smile like everyone else – Avid, Wellington

Residencies

Rita Angus Cottage

194a Sydney St West, Thorndon, Wellington December 1st 1997 - May 29th 1998

Eastern Institute of Technology - Hawkes Bay

June 1st - 20th 2001 May 20th - 22nd 2002

Collections

Waikato Museum, Te Whare Taonga O Waikato Whangarei Art Museum

James Wallace Arts Trust

Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade

Otago School of Art, Otago Polytechnic

Museum of NEWZEALAND Te Papa Tongarewa Quartz Museum Of Studio Ceramics, Whanganui

12 August -23 Sept 2022

A New Angle -Annette Bull

In this body of work I have taken inspiration from the cubist painters of the 1920s-30s, to investigate new ways of developing my thrown forms.

I alter my usual thrown forms and create what I consider almost the antithesis of wheel works, flattening the characteristic thrown curves into planes with accentuated angles and sharp corners where they meet.

This work was woodfired in my kiln for 18 hours reaching 1300ºc.

The clay is a dark stoneware with a shino type glaze.

More images to come…

Dear Hart

Part 1 “Pillar of Fire”

A Pere David deer walks across the rim of the Grand Canyon. Later, deer walk through fire-scorched forests and jump from digital islands into the abyss. “Pillar of Fire” is a montage of landscapes, ranging from an abandoned mesa top pueblo to the cold war era “iron cross” Corona Satellite Calibration Target ruins in Arizona. “Pillar of Fire” is a biblical reference and a secular trope of catastrophic climate change.

Part 2 “How They dream. How we dream.”

We dream of the Pere David deer dreaming of buildings. The Pere David deer is an unusual deer with donkey tails whose antlers grow like tree branches. They are officially extinct in the wild, but they have been reintroduced to their homeland in China, exist in captivity in zoos and are bred for trophy hunting in the USA and New Zealand. The animated version is a hybrid deer interacting within anthropogenic environments.

Show opens March 10 and runs until the end of April

Yasmin Dubrau

This series of work originated during our month long residency at Driving Creek Railway in Coromandel last year, a special place steeped in history and stories. I took photographs at a nearby beach in brief moments of evening sunlight snagging on beach rocks, and casting long shadows across the sand and water. Many of the paintings I made during our residency were from my imagination based on this imagery. I found that the more I painted and repainted these scenes, the more the sense of scale and the location became ambiguous. With this pared down imagery, and a palette of increasingly golden and intensely saturated hues, I found the paintings leave me with more questions than answers, and feelings of surprise, and mysterious information.

The weavings of my paintings are like translations into a foreign language. They are the first that I have made using torn cotton fabric since learning to weave in this style in Japan. One of my pleasures in these works is the aspect of them having already had a previous life, an unknowable history, as an article of clothing or futon cover, sheet, curtain etc. As new weaving they are, quite literally, woven into a new story. I’m delighted to finally be exhibiting a body of work that brings these two aspects of my art practice together.

Scott Brough

Working with different clays and exploring their inherent qualities has always been an integral part of my work. While in Coromandel, we had the opportunity to collect a few bags of raw natural clay. Finding several different types (grey, white and red) within a small area, I decided to process them as minimally as possible, to preserve the natural characteristics of each. The resulting clays each had a unique feel, and required different handling compared to commercial pottery clay. There was a process of learning what each clay was capable of, and how to work to its strengths.

These pieces have also been inspired by the classical ceramics of China and Korea; with their light blue glazes, known as Celadon, which originated in China a thousand years ago and was quickly prized by many cultures around the world. The glazes are very sensitive to the colour and texture of the clay beneath. While they can seem opaque, the glaze scatters and refracts light, in a way that allows the pieces to continue revealing themselves over time. I have enjoyed taking cues from shapes I have seen in Yasmin’s painting, allowing the forms of pieces to develop beyond their function.

All paintings and weaving by Yasmin Dubrau

All pottery by Scott Brough

All paintings are on acid-free paper and framed with conservation grade 99% UV protective glass

Within These 4 Walls -Jo Blogg

Written by Rosheen Fitzgerald

“Time is an encoded pattern of fabric woven with information and energy”. Vishwanath SJ

Anyone who knows Jo knows Jo loves clothes. Her distinctive flamboyant style is almost as iconic as her work, and the breadth of her wardrobe is equalled only by her prolific output as an artist. Taking inspiration from home, Within These 4 Walls sees Jo Blogg immortalise her style under a microscopic eye — 170 diminutive square pattern studies rendered painstakingly in paint in a kaleidoscope of colour.

Jo’s wardrobes are arranged methodically, from dark through the rainbow of colours to pale shades, and her painting process followed this method beginning with the darker shades at the back of the house. She reproduces small details of pattern out of context working from dark to light in production but chooses to display them in a cacophony of shape, style and shade, in a way that models her own approach to fashion. There is a diversity of designs, colours and eras represented in a manner that appeals both in whole as a cohesive exhibition, and individually as single pieces.

For Jo, as for many of us who find a means of expression through our dress, this was something of a personal journey through clothes. A lockdown project in which she cleansed her chakras by dressing consecutively in rainbow colours allowed her to delve into what each piece means, how it made her feel. From her extensive collection she chose to study pieces with intimate meaning, each work imbued with life and memory. Few of the pieces were new, most came from fossicking op shops or were gifted by friends. The process of producing this exhibition presented an opportunity to ponder the secret life of garments. Each piece began life in the mind of a designer inspired to create pattern and form. Each piece was worn by someone or someones before who brought with them their own hopes dreams and aspirations. Jo herself forged her own emotional relationship with the clothes — where they were acquired, the events to which they were worn, the conversations and connections made while wearing them, and often the person they were gifted to when their life with her was done. Here is a dress worn to a funeral, there menopausal wear chosen for comfort as well as style, a pair of pants that had the bottom twerked out of them by an over enthusiastic dancer, psychedelic regalia worn to a memorable gig — a flow of clothing worn through a life of art. In this way each work captures a piece of history, one that has a past and a future.

All works are acrylic on plastic with perspex frames.

Square all 9cm x9cm $111 ( There are one of 170 works at this price, sadly not all works are able to fit on this webpage)

‘A Strangely Normal Shirt’ 14cm x 9cm all $220

https://baybuzz.co.nz/jo-blogg-within-these-4-walls

Text by Jill Trevelyan

Who would be an artist? New paintings by Peter Ireland

For Gisborne artist Peter Ireland, the New Zealand expatriate painter Frances Hodgkins is an inspiration. ‘She was a tough old bird’, he says, ‘and I admire hugely her focus, commitment and tenacity.’

Hodgkins was nearly 60 when she gained recognition in England in the late 1920s, and she painted some of her most celebrated works in the last decade of her life. Always open to experiment, she has been an exemplar for New Zealand artists for more than a century.

When Peter Ireland read a book of Hodgkins’ letters in 2017, he had an idea for a new series of paintings, linking her art and her letters. Those eighteen works are now on display in ‘The Artist Life’, an exhibition at Napier’s Rabbit Room at 29a Hastings Street.

Sampler X (ruins), shows Ireland’s method. Taking a Hodgkins painting from the collection of Te Papa, he selects a detail, transposes it to a circular format, and superimposes a short text from one of Hodgkins’ letters. ‘I always have to wear a hairshirt – & I am inured to economy’, it reads. The text seems to float against the image, flickering in and out of view, inviting us to look closely to puzzle it out.

Ireland has often drawn on historical images in the past, toying with ideas of originality and appropriation in his art. Here, Hodgkins provides a departure point, an invitation to experiment with new imagery and colour harmonies, while exercising his wit and imagination. These are playful, inventive works: as Ireland says, ‘In filmic terms, Hodgkins is the producer but I’m the director!’

It’s no accident that the texts in the paintings recall the cross-stitch of embroidery. Ireland has a longstanding fascination with the traditional sampler, a piece of embroidery or cross-stitching produced as a demonstration of skill in needlework. ‘They’re beautiful and often touching objects’, he says.

Ireland has used this distinctive cross-stitch device in his paintings since the 1990s, in an ongoing series of ‘Sampler’ paintings. Compared to those earlier works, which addressed attitudes to the land, and were often provocative and ironic, his new Frances Hodgkins Samplers are quiet and intimate in tone. We could be overhearing a conversation – two painters swopping stories across time, ruminating on their lot.

Ireland has selected quotations from Hodgkins’ letters that reflect on the challenges of the artist’s life, hence the title of the exhibition. ‘I could do with less admiration and more sales’, reads one. ‘Think well before you embark on an art career’ is another.

The exhibition is full of such rueful reflections, but the overwhelming impression is the inherent joy in painting – in being alone in the studio, immersed in the mysteries of line, form and colour. Peter Ireland’s radiant and engaging paintings are a fitting tribute to the courage and commitment of Frances Hodgkins.

Peter Ireland on Frances Hodgkins RNZ interview with Lynn Freeman, click on link below to hear interview

https://www.rnz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=2018798638

The Gisborne Herald July 03, https://www.gisborneherald.co.nz/entertainment/20210701/the-artist-life/

7 August till 11 September

Scott McFarlane

Scott McFarlane was born in Wellington in 1966 and lives in Northland. He completed a Diploma of Fine Arts, (Honours in Painting) Otago School of Art in 1993. He has exhibited regularly in New Zealand in private and public galleries and has works in numerous private and public collections.

Opens April 9,2021

All works are individually priced the larger are $350 and smallest are $80 and others are in between. Feel free to email, text or call for individual prices.

Show closes 24 December

Statement

while we wait

there has been a lot of waiting and wondering going on this year it is nice to finally have something to show for it

Catherine Macdonald 2020

Artist Statement:

Aotearoa Dreaming -Peter Donovan

“Folk and pop art , by its very nature, falls outside the art system (establishment). This art is made by people who feel no obligation to established art worlds, but seek to create art rooted in personal experience and life stories. This art is intellectually stimulating and visibly challenging. It represents the heart of the people. Folk and pop art does not follow any prescribed art chronology but leaps in many directions as the artist chooses. Folk artists include Toulouse Lautrec, Rousseau, Picasso, Modigliani, Dali, Roy Lichenstein, Andy Warhol and David Hockney”

My paintings represent the life and times of the people of Hawkes Bay seen through the eyes of one family who lived in the area 1895-2005. The paintings are not concerned with colonization rather individuals, (human beings), and their ability to maintain their pride, their integrity and their spirituality during a turbulent period of history. Folk art is international.

Peter Donovan 2020.

Jo Blogg- The Easy Way Out

6 Sept-30 Oct

Review by  Tryphena Cracknell

‘The Easy Way Out’ traces a thread of reds, yellows and blues through Blogg’s oeuvre. It also chronicles something of a personal and private retrospective, sketching out a storyline that the audience might not recognise, and neither should we, because it’s none of our business.

Given 6 weeks to vacate the studio she had spent 14 years working in forced Jo Blogg to confront the gathered detritus of her creative space, and also presented the opportunity to reflect on more than a decade of her arts practice.

Shifting the collected materials, ideas, sketches, notes, artworks – a creative history – out of the studio, into the car, into her house, out of the house, to roadside, bin, op-shop; uncovered, as Blogg puts it, “gems and junk, concepts and crap, brilliant ideas and idiot bullshit.”

The serendipitous rediscovery of a set of enamelled lapel pins from her days as an art school student in London inspired the exhibition title, ‘The Easy Way Out’. At that time, Blogg’s decision to pare back the palette to primary colours for these, elicited a response from her tutor, “That’s the easy way out Jo.” The pins, aptly titled, ‘The Origin’ became the keystone for this show, offering premise, colourway and quantity.

The exhibition development coincided with a period of change in the artist’s personal life and this disorder could also be seen as a driver underpinning Blogg’s ordered approach to this show. Do the instructions and bold directions provide a compass by which to progress through a time of instability - summed up by Bell Biv DeVoe’s lyrical, ‘Future’s hazy, I don’t know, Shit’s crazy’?

Blogg has always been a patternmaker, attracted to patterns and colour. The works in the show resonate with this aspect of her practice, and with her penchant for salvaging discarded items of the everyday; picking up rolling pins, plastic tiles, fairy irons and repurposing them to carry her narrative layers. Blogg’s exhibitions have most often presented works in the multiple, especially by the hundred, ‘The Easy Way Out’ simplified to sets of three. This austerity is further emphasised in the work ‘Less (-) is (=) More (+)’ inspired by a post by @bauhaus.movement. Blogg’s works are inspired and informed by diverse sources. The mandala form is one of these, as in ‘And then there was one’ Pop art is another constant, and this meets impressionism in the creation of Blogg’s meticulously pixelated reproductions of Thomas Gainsborough’s c.1770 The Blue Boy. Small rectangular brush strokes, emphasis on light, a subject made ordinary by mass reproduction (maybe your Nana had one?).

I N T R O D U C T I O N 

This exhibition of 18 recent paintings by Peter Ireland is in three parts, corresponding to the walls of the gallery: on the left-hand wall are six images from his ongoing Icon series, which employs images from Byzantine and early Italian painting (all necessarily religious in origin) “updated” with references to the New Zealand landscape and developing Pacific culture.

The end wall features three works from his new Regional Wallpaper series, and there exist now just three with several more planned. This series derives from his earlier Waitangi Wallpaper series of the 1990/2000s, but is more geographical in temper than the political thrust of the Waitangi works.

The right-hand wall contains nine new images from his revived Sampler series, beginning in the 1990s and now numbering over a hundred works. They have their origins in the sewing & embroidery traditions of late medieval  Europe when young women learned these crafts, presenting a formal sample of what they had achieved, usually in the form of alphabets and numbers, and increasingly, pictures from nature of animals, birds, trees and landscapes. From the later 17th century this combination began to feature favourite quotations and “improving” sayings from sources such as the Bible & Shakespeare.

Ireland has picked up on this aspect and used it to comment on the “state of the nation” and mock the lazy – and environmentally dangerous – assumptions around the landscape painting tradition in this country.

(All works are oil on paper and framed)

 My White Ship is a video art work by Fane Flaws and Ashley Cox, with words by Sam Hunt and music by The Bend.

Opening 20 October 2018 for ‘White Night’, Hawkes Bay Arts Festival.

Please note house numbers are not given on this site, feel free to contact the gallery if you would like more information about the works.

RICHARD WOTTON - THE TATTOO PORTRAITS

This series of portraits of tattooed people had its genesis in a series of black and white architectural interior images photographed in the mid-1980s. One of the main subject groups from that period was tattoo studios.

In 2009, after a 20-year break from my personal photography, I began photographing architecture again but this series was focussed on building exteriors. After nearly five years I once more put my camera aside but within a few months my trigger finger became itchy and I began to cast about for new subject matter. Inspiration didn't exactly jump up and shout "Here I am!" so I started to think again about something that was somewhat familiar: tattoo studio interiors.

It took a very short time to realise that the satisfaction I derived from this subject matter 25 years ago was no longer there. Somehow - subconsciously, I think - I made the leap between photographing the places where the ink is applied to the places where it ends up.

My first subjects were two tattoo artists from a Wanganui studio, and my portrait of one of them, Tracey Bardell, remains my favourite image of the series. Quite a number of subsequent sitters were either tattooists or their customers, who I got know through visits to local studios. Others were referred by friends and colleagues or found as I walked around town, always scanning passers-by for ink. Outdoor coffee drinkers at Victoria Avenue cafes were also quite a rich source of subjects. I got the occasional refusal but most of the people I approached were very keen to participate in my project.

My first portraits were made in the late 1970s and I occasionally made more up to the time I ceased photographing, in the late 1980s. Throughout this decade, my subjects were usually strangers I saw in the street, chosen because one way or another they stood out from the crowd.

When I began photographing tattooed people it wasn't with the specific intention of creating a large series; I just kept photographing until one day I realised it was growing into a major (?) sizable (?) body of work.

I've been asked a number of times why I chose to make black and white prints of such colourful subjects. Since 1975, I've made almost all of my photographs in black and white, preferring its semi-abstract - almost sculptural - nature to colour. This series is primarily about the people rather than their tattoos, but even though their tattoos are physically (visually?) and psychologically a large part of who they are, I feel that in many cases the amount of coloured ink had the potential to overwhelm the person I was trying to portray. Also, the decision to use a plain gray background and black and white printing was to remove any form of visual distraction from the surroundings and focus the viewer's attention solely on the subjects.

From the earliest portraits I've made, I've always enjoyed the interaction of subject and photographer working together towards the common goal of making good images. The results achieved in this series are due in large part to the patience of all the people who gave up their time - and in a few instances overcame nervousness - to place themselves in front of my camera.

 I thank them all.

Woodfiring.

Woodfiring means sleep deprivation, stinking of smoke, dirty, hot and very cold, hungry, but is addictive, and all consuming. Feeding a fire, watching the flame, listening to the noises of the kiln and smelling the heat, while thinking about the movement of the flame through the kiln.

Each firing takes over 24hrs, reaching 1300 degrees celsius in most parts of the kiln.

Woodfiring involves the gentle and long exposure of pots to the flame, smoke and ash of a fire, making each piece unique. Wood is basically continually fed into the firebox for the duration of the firing. The smoke and flames from the fire are pulled through the chamber holding the pots, by the draw from the chimney. Ash is carried with the flame, gently landing on the work on its way through the kiln.

Take your time to look at the pots. The surfaces are rich in colour and texture, with no two  works exactly the same.

The ash tends to settle on rims and down the front (facing the fire) of the pieces. Some pieces may feel slightly rough in places from ash not fully melted.

The peach/apricot blush is part of the reaction with the atmosphere in the kiln, the shino glaze on the piece, and the clay itself. Small marks on the base of the pots are made by wads of fireclay and sand that the work sits on in the kiln.

I have used porcelain and stoneware clays, adding sand, and sometimes shingle from the beach near my home in Clive. Driftwood from the beach was also used throughout the firings hoping to add salt from the sea, which creates its own glaze.

These pieces have been fired in my train kiln, ‘Pico’.

Opens 10 June 2022, more images to come after the opening…

Peter Donovan is a self-proclaimed folk artist; he was born in Hawkes Bay and now lives and paints in Wellington. He has had solo shows at the Judith Anderson Gallery in Napier, the Hastings Art Gallery, and many times since the early 1990’s at the Christopher Moore Gallery in Wellington.

Happy Trails- Artist Statement by Peter Donovan

Mamma don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys

They never stay home and love to roam

Tonto I always wondered what does kemosabe mean?

It means wrong brother

Billy there are guns across the river aiming at you

Lawmen on the trail would like to catch you

Bounty hunters don’t like you to be so free

Up to Boot Hill they would like to send you

Sleeping out on the veranda, playing cards till dawn in the hacienda

They have hired Pay Garrett to get you, doesn’t it make you feel so low down, hunted by the man that used to be your friend

Billy you are so far away from home

The gypsy queens are singing your grand finale

Down in the Rio Pecos Valley

Billy, you have been running for so long

“I thought the bull riders were heroically insane or insanely heroic” Billy Connolly after attending a Texas rodeo

Crow Song

In a sacred manner I live. To the heavens I gazed

In a sacred manner I live. My horses are many

Crowfoot-what is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night, it is the breath of a buffalo in the winter, it is the shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset

Ma take this badge off of me, I can’t use it anymore

It’s getting too dark to see, I feel like I’m knocking on heavens door

Ma take these guns off of me I can’t shoot them anymore

A long black cloud is following me knock knock knocking on heaven’s door

Courage, self-reliance and backbreaking work were the cowboy way. A firmness of character and boldness of vision.

Hi Yo Silver

AWAY

Wide Open Country

The title of this exhibition is slightly tongue in cheek because all of the works were created in the cosy confines of the studio. So the idea of a “wide open country” refers to a country of the mind, the imagination, a wide open interior world.

The original intent of this series was to explore colour. I wanted to make images that were intensely red, deeply yellow or overwhelmingly blue.  What happens to a shadow in a yellow place? Why is purple so evasive? When is blue cold and when is it warm?

 Along the way, I also wanted to create scenarios that I had never seen before, images that would surprise me. This exploration of the unexpected is interesting territory: intuitive, sometimes playful, enigmatic and often uncertain. Occasionally I begin with a set idea but often I put objects next to each other and they begin to tell stories. Objects talk to each other and become the fodder for strange narratives, fairy tales and psychological inquiry.

Another question I have is “What is it like to be the “other”?  In this case I am thinking about the natural world of plants and animals: the mountain goats on the ledge, the log that was once a tree, the deer packed closely together, the pine cones in a pine forest, a bush…

I think when we imagine being something else it can lead to a sense of connection, increased understanding and appreciation for the natural world. The idea of a “wide open country” acknowledges both interior and exterior worlds.

All works an edition of  2 (plus one for Public Art Gallery collections)

All works printed on Ilford Gold Fibre Silk Paper, 310gsm, framed in black