Roger Mortimer Exhibitions

Studio 18D

24 Feb - 11 Mar 2024

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Artists

Exhibition Works

Gold Peace
Russell Moses Gold Peace (2023)
Bloom
Jenna Packer Bloom (2024)
Archipelago
Jenna Packer Archipelago (2024)
Hop, Skip, Jump
Jenna Packer Hop, Skip, Jump (2024)
67 Orange Falcon // North Dunedin
Elliot Love 67 Orange Falcon // North Dunedin (2023)
Nissan Navara Wreck // Dunedin Wharf
Elliot Love Nissan Navara Wreck // Dunedin Wharf (2023)
Ford Laser // Westhaven
Elliot Love Ford Laser // Westhaven (2023)
Covered Car // Point Chevalier
Elliot Love Covered Car // Point Chevalier (2023)
Blue Peace
Russell Moses Blue Peace (2023)
Night Watcher (Ruru)
Nigel Brown Night Watcher (Ruru) (2023)
Ruru: Beyond Finer Details
Nigel Brown Ruru: Beyond Finer Details (2023)
Two Wings
Nigel Brown Two Wings (2021)
Te Ipapakereru
Roger Mortimer Te Ipapakereru (2023)
Kenepuru
Roger Mortimer Kenepuru (2023)
Te Towaka
Roger Mortimer Te Towaka (2023)
Manawa
Roger Mortimer Manawa (2023)
Green Peace I
Russell Moses Green Peace I (2023)

Exhibition Text

Roger Mortimer’s compelling tapestries are part-map, part-illuminated chart, part-interior monologue which traverses back and forth across multiple times and places. "Different and divergent memories" are juxtaposed, the presence and stylistic conventions of medieval manuscripts are harnessed, in a multi-layered conversation which reaches deeply into the literary narratives of Dante while also spilling up and out of it. We see ‘a cultural cartography,’ events in progress, experiences underway, where a very particular "New Zealand psyche," a "unifying DNA" and "connective identity" is witnessed in process.1

Central to Jenna Packer’s paintings has been a narrative where time is collapsed, where vignette moments of a complicated, contested, history are depicted. In that manner, Packer has demonstrated how the "local" has been determined and affected by aberrant, selfish, behaviour and the geo-politics of capitalism’s mendacity, its rite of ceaseless consumption and territorial avarice. In this new series of notably optimistic works, we see a wallpaper-like archipelago of islands, comprised of "small idealised scenes"2 strongly suggestive of the Pacific, where metaphors of interconnectedness emerge. Significant messages of hope and faith are delivered by the bright, warm palette, blooming flowers and the pervasive rhythms of pattern.

Emphatic realism, tinged with elements of intrigue and developing mystery, and a celebration of the mundane urban environments where we witness time’s inexorable passages amongst a self-evident nostalgia for cars of the 1980s and ‘90s, posits Elliot Love’s paintings in a well-known tradition. What sets him apart is a rare compositional command (the role performed by the pervasive rhythm of thirds, for example), a soft, deft tonal dexterity and understated symbolism.     

In a new suite of works, Ripple Effect, Russell Moses explores the triptych form as he calls for peace in the world and responds to the war in Ukraine, the tragedy of Gaza and the consequences of climate change. Imbued with significant structural and architectural presence, plus sensations of landscape filled with the serendipity of light as well as the fugitive modulations of it, these new works significantly extend Moses’ conversations about the formal values of colour-field abstraction. Shimmering and luminescent, the vibrations and ambiences of rippling water and fractured light produce wondrous ever-altering melodic harmonies.

In three new works extending his recent Identity series, Nigel Brown continues to explore nurture and the intersection between humankind and the natural world. Using the pathos of loss and increments of doubt, Brown reminds us that the ruru, part-tohunga, part-guide, is a portal between darkness and light, linking the material and spiritual worlds.
 
1. Corentin Celbert-Chaudet, “Inside the Mind of Roger Mortimer” in Apocrypha: The Maps of Roger Mortimer, Index, Auckland, 2021, p. 35.
2. Jenna Packer, Artist Notes, email correspondence, February 8, 2024.

Exhibition Views