Past Exhibitions

Peter James Smith

Navigator

23 Jun - 19 Jul 2005

Exhibition Works

A View Of Milford Sound With Notes From The Acheron Journal, 1851
A View Of Milford Sound With Notes From The Acheron Journal, 1851 (2005)
Heart & Frozen Armature (Rob Roy Glacier, Western Arm of the Matukituki Valley) (2005)
Heart & Frozen Armature (Rob Roy Glacier, Western Arm of the Matukituki Valley) (2005)
Disappearing Falls, Milford Sound
Disappearing Falls, Milford Sound (2005)
A View Of Dusky Bay, 25 March 1773
A View Of Dusky Bay, 25 March 1773 (2005)
Navigator
Navigator (2005)
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (2004)
Dumont D'Urville at French Pass (2002)
Dumont D'Urville at French Pass (2002)
Tess Of The D'Urbervilles
Tess Of The D'Urbervilles (2003)
Folding Distance
Folding Distance (2005)
The Struggle & The Need To Achieve Grace
The Struggle & The Need To Achieve Grace (2004)
Shadows Standing In Our  Eyes (Evidence & Belief) (2004)
Shadows Standing In Our Eyes (Evidence & Belief) (2004)
A Song of Anita Bay
A Song of Anita Bay (2005)

Exhibition Text

Peter James Smith’s exhibition Navigator combines science and art, history and perception, location and event.

The duality at the centre of Smith’s work is fundamental to the character of it. He uses the paradox of contradiction to forge intellectual, emotional and visual connections.

The South Island landscape – Central Otago and Fiordland, in particular – has constituted a major subject focus in Smith’s works for a considerable period. In these works he is examining notions of the sublime, romanticised landscape while utilising a visual language that involves mathematical symbols and/or hand-written text that is strongly suggestive of graffiti or writing on a blackboard.

By “challenging the boundary between pictorial representation and abstraction” Smith is combining “orders of thought and experience.” The results are both true to the place while enabling various entry points through the images and the words.

Peter James Smith is ‘charting’ a direction that no other New Zealand artist has. These works are painterly in character while calling up the human realm of experience and scientific thought as amplification of this.