Inside and Out

Past Exhibitions

17 Apr - 12 May 2020

online exhibition

Inside and Out is an exhibition that has a direct conversation through the ‘lens’ of artist’s perceptions with the ‘new’ duality of our daily worlds. It is about being inside and out, night and day, reality and dream, denied and allowed: it mixes the past, future and present.

The exhibition catalogue has been presented in a format which acknowledges the important observations and discoveries that happen in an art gallery visit where the works come to have a conversation amongst each other because of placement.

In this manner, Inside and Out is presented as a sequence of walls and inter-relationships.

CLICK ON THE ARTWORKS BELOW TO VIEW ADDITIONAL IMAGES. EACH WORK OPENS IN A NEW WINDOW.

gallery one / wall one

Wall One commences with the lenticular photograph of New Zealand’s next Venice Biennale representative Yuki Kihara. This immersive work talks to the considerable cultural connections between Ngati Kahungunu of Hawkes Bay and Samoa which first began with the Takitimu canoe voyage from there.

Yuki Kihara, Houngarea Marae, Pakipaki (2017)
lenticular print, edition 3/5 + 2 AP
frame: 1097 x 1533 x 60 mm

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Lisa Reihana’s master of the night sky Ranganui (2007) from the important Digital Marae series complements the deceptive depths, infinite darkness and flounder pattern of current Wallace Premier Prize recipient Robert Jahnke’s neon Navarra Patiki Ma (2014).

Lisa Reihana, Ranginui (2007)
crystal flex on aluminium, edition 4/5
panel: 2000 x 1200 x 28 mm

Robert Jahnke, Navarra Patiki Ma (2014)
wood, paint, neon, one way glass, mirror, electricity
size on wall: 1463 x 1465 x 137 mm

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Omai and Obeera / Hawaiian Hula / Chiefly Pursuits (2017) reminds us why Lisa Reihana has been identified as one of the most influential artists of the decade (by Michael Brand, Director, Art Gallery of New South Wales, in Artnet News) (1). Drawn from the internationally acclaimed In Pursuit of Venus video, acknowledged as the single most important work of New Zealand art this century, Reihana constructs a redolent, multi-layered, day in Pacific history.

Lisa Reihana, Omai and Obeera / Hawaiian Hula /
Chiefly Pursuits (00000 / 00525) (2017)
pigment print on paper, mounted on aluminium dibond
behind acrylic glass, panel: 762 x 2137 x 6 mm

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Yuki Kihara’s Mass Grave, Viamoso (2013/14) places Salome (a constant figure in Kihara’s oeuvre) wearing a Victorian mourning dress at the mass grave site of Samoa’s 1918 influenza epidemic. This significant work has special poignancy in the context of the recent measles epidemic and the current Covid-19 pandemic.

Yuki Kihara, Mass Grave, Vaimoso (2013/14)
pigment print on paper, edition 1/2 + 1 AP
frame: 1438 x 1929 x 60 mm

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1. Artnet News, 23 December, 2019. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/most-influential-artist-of-the-decade-1728387 (Accessed 14/04/20)

gallery one / wall two

Wall two focuses on the portrayal and questions of identity.

At the centre of Lisa Reihana’s multi-disciplinary practice is a dialogue (re)presenting mytho-historical narratives. In the unnervingly beautiful Pelt - Aquila (2010) a private moment is captured which seems to be both of this world and somehow separate.

Lisa Reihana, PELT - Aquila (2010)

pigment print on paper

available in two sizes:

edition of 5 + 2 AP, frame: 1705 x 1705 x 55 mm

edition of 10 + 2 AP, frame: 1290 x 1290 x 55 mm

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Yuki Kihara in Nose Width with Vernier Calliper (2015) provocatively uses the wrong tool to measure a man’s nose and in doing so ignites conversation about racial stereotypes and hierarchy, eugenics and the world of professional sport.

Yuki Kihara, Nose Width with Vernier Caliper (2015)

c-print mounted on dibond aluminium

available in two sizes:

edition of 5 + 2 AP, panel: 800 x 1000 x 4 mm

edition of 11 + 3AP, panel: 536 x 670 x 4 mm

In Diva (2007), Lisa Reihana deliberately transgresses and reconstructs cultural boundaries as a Maori Madonna reaches for the Holy Spirit revealed to be a fluttering tui.

Lisa Reihana, Diva (2007)

crystal flex on aluminium, edition 4/6

panel: 2000 x 1250 x 28 mm

gallery one / wall three

Wall three begins and ends with the saturated, contained palette and constructed rooms of Graham Fletcher. Here the conversation is about diverse artistic idioms and the distinctly different visual languages of various cultures. The works powerfully coalesce with strong diagonals activating the colour fields while ironically animating the representational elements physically present and those implied by constructed space.

Graham Fletcher, Untitled (Figure + Green Painting) (2019)
oil on canvas
stretcher: 1068 x 1529 x 38 mm

Graham Fletcher, Untitled (Head, Chair + Red Shade) (2019)

oil on canvas

stretcher: 1065 x 1526 x 37 mm

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Mervyn Williams, in the aptly titled diptych Summers to Come (1997), captures the essence of sunshine and verdant landscape, with their cloth-like softness, in a remarkable feat of illusionary skill.

Mervyn Williams, Summers to Come (1997)

diptych; acrylic on canvas

overall size: 1535 x 1590 x 31 mm

Russell Moses (with cap tilted to Colin McCahon’s Titirangi paintings) builds pattern using mirrored light and lyrical absence to provide glimpses, mysterious spaces and the moving, mutating sensations of early light – is it sunshine or moonlight? - on water.

Russell Moses, Night Fishing, French Bay II (2011)
49 pieces; acrylic on mirrored stainless steel
size overall: 1970 x 1475 x 2 mm

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Neil Dawson’s Reflection – Milford (2017) is a sculptural drawing in space which presents the realities of global warming. The reflected outline of a drowning building is the ironic stage set for Mitre Peak, Milford Sound.

Neil Dawson, Reflection – Milford (2017)

powdercoated & painted steel

size on wall: 1036 x 1012 x 153 mm

gallery one / wall four

Karl Maughan invents “outside”, composing landscapes where civilisation resides. With deft suggestion, fleeting presences, compositional energy, and the languages of architecture and flowing shapes, adroitly delivered tone and hue and the sensations of colour, light and scale, Kauri (2019) and Kauri Bay (2019) are imbued with reality’s majesty.

Karl Maughan, Kauri (2019)
oil on linen
stretcher: 2002 x 2002 x 39 mm

Karl Maughan, Kauri Bay (2019)
oil on linen
stretcher: 2000 x 2001 x 38 mm

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Dick Frizzell has a remarkably broad visual vocabulary. In Doubtless (17) – A Sam Hunt Poem (2011) the painterly, descriptive power of words carries a loaded message. In the similar but ultimately markedly different Welcome Welcome (2009) the words function as signifiers of a community and its culture, commercial values and produce, and the passing of time.

Dick Frizzell, Doubtless (17) - A Sam Hunt Poem (2011)
oil on canvas
stretcher: 1051 x 1200 x 37 mm

Dick Frizzell, Welcome Welcome (2009)
oil on canvas
stretcher: 1802 x 2204 x 39 mm

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Out from Outram (2019) presents a layered sequence of intersecting rhythms. Frizzell, always alive to the chops and changes of the farmed landscape, further animates the panorama: the understated presence of the road introduces different observations, questions and mystery.

Dick Frizzell, Out from Outram (2019)
oil on linen
stretcher: 1260 x 2000 mm

gallery one / wall five

Paul Dibble’s Godwits do Fly (2019) functions as a poem of farewell and a celebration of a dun-coloured yet distinctive bird which undertakes the greatest migratory flight in all nature to be here. Literary in character, pictorial in scope, Dibble establishes a visual metaphor with the elliptical frame: suggestive of a diurnal clock and the oceans of the globe, below the horizon line sits the estuarine mud flat of its salvation and destiny.

Paul Dibble, Godwits do Fly (2019)

cast bronze, 24 karat gold gilding, AP 1/1 + edition of 2

size: 2000 x 1040 x 600 mm

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The symbolic White Painting (1988) by Jeffrey Harris examines the altering fragilities of a relationship. Clearly together yet apart, separated by memory and interceding events where the imagined is more real than reality itself, Harris’s autobiographical, parabolic-driven narratives elevate his work to universal commentary on the human condition.

Jerffrey Harris, White Painting (1988)

oil on canvas

stretcher: 2130 x 1524 x 37 mm

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A Collage of Features (2017) has three distinct sides and numerous viewing positions. At once it is a hand, the negative profile of a forehead nose and lips, and a narrow portion of a face. Terry Stringer mixes the figurative with transformative illusion and masterful tricks of perception.

Terry Stringer, A Collage of Features (2017)

cast bronze, edition 1/2 + 1 AP

size: 2868 x 612 x 611 mm

gallery two / wall one

Chris Heaphy’s The Floating World (2017) is an all-seeing eye, a mandala, filled with rotating, reflected and repeated motifs which spin in a circular pattern. At once lyrical and meditative, it is an astonishingly complex work of numerous silhouetted motifs, parts and worlds. Positive and negative spaces reinforce the individual patterns and simultaneously coalesce into a painting of great beauty and simplicity.

Chris Heaphy, The Floating World (2017)

acrylic on Belgian linen

stretcher: 2000 x 2000 x 38 mm

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Joanna Braithwaite’s Grand Times (2013/14) turns the endangered Otago skink into an anthropomorphic symbol imbued with human characteristics, foibles and psychological narratives. Looking directly out with the insouciance of another time’s privilege, they hold nuggets of gold like they are swaddled babies. Braithwaite inverts the situation: the skinks stand in judgement on us.

Joanna Braithwaite, Grand Times (2013/14)

oil on canvas

stretcher: 1984 x 1679 x 22 mm

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Nga Manu a Maui: The Birds of Maui II (2009-12) uses the devices of a target and rifle scope to depict the serious plight of our unique species. Employing a grid structure, repetition, stencilled text and the silhouette outline of iconic birds Robert Jahnke builds a cultural lament for who we really are and the yawning gulf between action and spoken sentiments.

Robert Jahnke, Nga Manu a Maui: The Birds of Maui II

(2009-12)

lacquer on stainless steel

panel: 1000 x 1000 x 35 mm

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A symbol of purity, the white swan becomes a biblical double headed snake. Redolent with Joanna Braithwaite’s unmistakeable point of view and embracing of the illogical, A Twist of Fate (2003) juxtaposes the impossible and the improbable into a prescient metaphor of our times, where for example virus jumps across species.

Joanna Braithwaite, A Twist of Fate (2003)

oil on canvas

stretcher: 1375 x 1679 x 22 mm

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Chris Heaphy’s Rummo Waits (2016) returns us to a world of sharp spatial and scale alterations, time collapse and culturally diverse image-rich narratives. Visually ambiguous, genre subverting, silhouetted images - many drawn from the artists own unique vocabulary -sit in an indeterminate painterly space where partial dialogues of conflict and resolution emerge.

Chris Heaphy, Rummo Waits (2016)

acrylic on linen

stretcher: 907 x 1203 x 37 mm

gallery two / wall two

Michael Hight’s outstanding painting Tapuaenuku: The Watcher (2018) is considerable in scale and achievement. It turns the carefully tended apparatus box of a blade shearer into a memento mori, as if a rural altarpiece. The side panels depict a selection of Kaikoura alpine landscapes reminiscent of Victorian wall plates. These ‘portholes’ sit above cabinets of curiosities.

Michael Hight, Tapuaenuku: The Watcher (2018)

oil on linen

stretcher: 1802 x 2403 x 38 mm

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Meanwhile, Towards Port William (2016) is a passage, a surreal dream, an object-specific moonlit ode to Stewart Island. It is night: a tiny island is completely contained inside a ring on a ledge. Beside it a dimorphic cabinet provides the stage for shafts of light and shadow to reveal wind-shaped trees; the accordion – in pride of place – abandoned, un-played, above. Alongside stands the frail, used metal frame of a sheet music stand. Every object is alive with allusive possibility.

Michael Hight, Towards Port William (2016)

oil on linen

stretcher: 1110 x 1980 x 35 mm

Andy Leleisi’uao’s Waking Up to the Obscurity People – Part III (2014) is like a linear tapestry or a wall hieroglyph where pagan rites and the rituals of work are being enacted. There are two guards, one animal another human, overseeing the many. A politicised conversation emerges about what we do with our lives and who controls what with what.

Andy Leleisi’uao, Waking Up to the Obscurity People – Part III (2014)

acrylic on canvas

stretcher: 760 x 1521 x 34 mm

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Utterque People of Arytipidal (2016) at first glance appears to be orderly and structured like a board game or a cartoon reading left to right. It is apparent there is a social inventory and commentary logic to it all but how do we find what it is saying? Posing more questions than answers, a sense of purpose and joy of discovery emerges as we witness multiple interactions and mythologies, pictograms of industry across time, mass produced idols and the jigsaw puzzles of life.

Andy Leleisi’uao, Utterque People of Arytipidal (2016)

diptych; acrylic on canvas

overall size: 1520 x 1524 x 37 mm

gallery two / wall three

No Frizzell landscape is like anybody else’s yet it is everybody’s. He finds the universal in the regional, style in the substance, New Zealand in the local. He emphasises lines and rhythms, complications and patterns, sees the hand and values of man, and lets light talk. There is a profound sense of going somewhere and pausing long enough to see a distinctive landscape where it is. Late Sun (2019) is a classic example of just that.

Dick Frizzell, Late Sun (2019)

oil on linen

stretcher: 750 x 1050 x 36 mm

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Jeffrey Harris’ Compassion (1988) is no small fugue. It is operatic. Emotions raw, heads bowed, dreaming passed each other, the snakes of despair and loss forever separate a couple while they also share a comingled past rich with human sadness and the merciful wish to free each other from the pain of a child and dream lost.

Jeffrey Harris, Compassion (1988)

charcoal, oil stick, synthetic polymer paint & collage on paper

frame: 1165 x 1655 x 37 mm

Jump Point (2017) by Neil Frazer delivers a close-up bird’s eye view of the Southern Alps that has such volume, senses of cold, height and heft it seems that the painting is composed of the alpine landscape itself. Shafts of light filled with the refractions of moisture reveal the downdraughts of invisible air. The absence of a painted sky sharpens further the literal focus.

Neil Frazer, Jump Point (2017)

oil & acrylic on canvas

stretcher: 1529 x 1525 x 26 mm

gallery two / wall four

Chris Charteris is a stylistically fluid, culturally broad sculptor who is having a conversation with the fundamental properties of the material first and foremost. He seeks that to directly inform the carved pattern and its form. In Awaken (2017) there is a considerable dialogue with tradition; that we are all on a journey of pertinence and spiritual consequence.

Chris Charteris, Awaken (2017)

andesite

size on wall: 689 x 329 x 90 mm

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Urban Warrior (2007) by Lisa Reihana specifically acknowledges the mana whenua of Ngati Whatua. The rope of Harbour Bridge lights behind establishes the place; the disposition of the figure references Molly Macalister’s 1967 work ‘Maori Warrior;’ and the direct gaze establishes a one-on-one connection with the viewer. Thus the work moves between the past and present, occupying the space between light and dark, between sea, land and sky.

Lisa Reihana, Urban Warrior (2007)

crystal flex on aluminium, edition 3/5

panel: 2000 x 1200 x 28 mm

Maui Descending a Staircase II (After Duchamp) (2015) by Yuki Kihara is an important video work which explicitly references Duchamp’s famous nude and returns Kihara to Muybridge’s use of sequential motion and the history of photography. Revealing multiple layers of narrative content including art, politics and social dialogues, Kihara builds a visual allegory using her trademark repetitive fragmentation and the power of gaze to directly elicit the viewer’s participation.

Yuki Kihara, Maui Descending a Staircase II

(After Duchamp) (2015)

single channel digital video, full HD, silent, 6 min 9 sec