ARTS & CULTURE

Peter James Smith

An artist, traveler, and mathematician, highly celebrated, deeply emersed in the landscape and the stories it can tell us, Peter takes his paintbrush, maths and poetry into the Milford and Dusky Sounds to capture the waterfalls in all their glory.

Not only does he take us there but also out to Lord Howe Island to measure the wind forces of cyclones in the painting ‘Curvature of the Wind.’ These are paintings where mathematics, history, and romanticism connect us to the wonders of our world.

Open: Tuesday – Saturday 11am to 5pm.  PN

Falls, Nine Fathoms Passage, Dusky Sound. 61 x 91cm $9500

Curvature of the Wind, Lord Howe Island. 64 x 86cm $9500

Clothing Maketh the Man: Oliver King (4 June – 25 June)

Whether we’re dressing up, or dressing down, outward appearances are a social contract for many of us. There’s a stark contrast, for example, between our comfy evening gear and how we present ourselves in more formal settings. And it’s this latter formality that Oliver King explores in his latest show at Scott Lawrie Gallery.

Using large-scale collaged assemblages, often using his father’s clothes, Oliver upsets this exchange so the paintings can’t ‘keep up with appearances’, try as they might. They are magnificent explorations of abstraction. Yet the artist does make it easy for us to subjectively ‘like’ them. And that’s exactly the point.

Oliver is questioning not only the role of clothing as a mask to conceal reality, but its formal uses to project notions of power, stature, and authority. It’s something of an obsession for the artist, who explores the second skins and masks we wear to reinforce our sense of presence by presenting ‘the best side of ourselves’ rather than who we actually are. As formal paintings, they work brilliantly. Wrestled materials clash with contrasting paint stripes, folded and crushed forms compete for visual authority, and the clothing is stripped away from its function to serve as raw materials for composition and movement. These are exciting and visually demanding works. There are, of course, deeper and more personal meanings in this show. To expand on these, Dina Jezdic has written an insightful essay.

In it she says, ‘We all know what it is to want from our parents, and how much of that wanting is a desire to be seen, loved and accepted. As children this is how we learn to be vulnerable and to openly ask for things we need. When we are denied that primal want, we pretend to want something else entirely, to avoid the shame of rejection, supplication and insignificance.’ The show is on at Scott Lawrie Gallery in Mt Eden and opens on Saturday 4 June from 11am-5pm (drinks between 2pm-4pm). All welcome!  PN

Persister 2022 (detail), vintage taxidermy quail, porcelain, polymer clay, crystals, wood base and glass dome

Angela Singer - 'Imagine What You Dread', 9 June - 3 July

A bold colourful future where flora and fauna lose their boundaries by adapting to survive fills Angela Singer’s new exhibition of arresting stitched wall works and sculptures of handmade and found materials, including vintage taxidermy.

Beautiful yet also captivatingly strange, her work imagines how animals and plants might create new forms of life through unusual mutations to survive the human assault on the planet. Pairing the recognisable with abstract, she conjures mutable boundaries transforming under the pressure of sped-up unnatural cycles of creation and destruction, bloom and decay.

Angela Singer’s work was featured in a solo exhibition Second Sight, Dowse Museum in (2020/21), and included in exhibitions Curious Creatures & Marvellous Monsters Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (2018), and Dead Animals, or the Curious Occurrence of Taxidermy in Contemporary Art, David Winton Bell Gallery, List Art Center, Rhode Island, USA (2016).

Please join Angela at the exhibition opening on Thursday 9th June, 5.30-7.30pm, free admission, all welcome.

{Suite} GALLERY, 189 Ponsonby Road, T: 09 218 4399, www.suite.co.nz

Heidi Brickell at Grey Wanda Gillespie at Grey Detail of Peata Larkin's work at Grey

While the negative connotations of isolation currently plague most of us, for artists the opportunity to dedicate weeks alone on the wild west coast is a boon for their creative drive.

Grey is the place in Grey Lynn where artists and arts organisations can present exhibitions, run by the effervescent Jade Bentley, who also owns Art Associates. Last month, Grey hosted a show by the 2021 Karekare House Artists in Residence: Heidi Brickell, Peata Larkin, Tira Walsh, Richard Adams, Louise Menzies, Reece King and Wanda Gillespie.

The Residence is a partnership between Eden Arts Trust and Karekare House Trust operating since 2017, and offers artists a three month stay in the historic home of author Dorothy Butler.

To remain creative, it’s important to have time for the mind to wander. The landscape at Karekare is made for blowing the cobwebs away, with its prevailing winds singing against the stony cliffs, and the drama of the Tasman walloping the black sands.

Its histories are just as dramatic, with early 19th Century battles between Te Kawerau and Nga Puhi, the Kauri logging, and here is one of the few places where pre-European textiles have been preserved.

All this is potent inspiration for artists. Heidi Brickell worked with rimurapa “bull kelp” in a playful way, yet the resulting sculptures represented ties to her tipuna and their relationship to the sea. Her canvas works feature stitched fabric pieces in sandy colours and swirls reminiscent of waves.

Wanda Gillespie created counting tablets with the Kauri cone pattern as a central design, suggesting the elasticity of time spent on the shore. For Peata Larkin in her net-like artworks, her frame of mind was at the forefront, suffused in the goldenyellow glow of her “happy colour”.

This exhibition demonstrates the work of artists given the time to think and feel their way into fresh work. Splendid isolation indeed!  PN

Reece King at Grey

EVAN WOODRUFFE, Studio Art Supplies www.studioart.co.nz

Melanie Lançon

Sunday 19 June 2.30pm, Conductor Josh Kirk. Soloist Melanie Lançon

United States born Melanie Lançon has been described as being a beguiling player, lauded for her dazzling performances and for producing a full lustrous tone on her flute. She was appointed Principal Flute of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra in 2018 and made her solo debut with the orchestra in 2020.

Ms Lançon has enjoyed a vibrant career abroad and here in New Zealand and will perform Mozart’s Flute Concerto No. 1 K. 313 in G, at this concert. This is a must go-to.

Joshua Kirk is an emerging New Zealand conductor. He has conducted a number of professional Australian and New Zealand orchestras, including the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, the APO, and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

St Matthew’s Chamber Orchestra is an accomplished orchestra performing a wide repertoire of music and is dedicated to providing performance opportunities for New Zealand musicians, composers and conductors.  PN

www.smco.org.nz

TICKETS Eventfinda or Door sales. EFTPOS or Cash.

Adults $30, Concessions $25, Children under 12 free, Student Rush on the day $15.

NB: attendees will need to comply with any Covid-19 protocols in place at the time of the concert.

ST MATTHEW-IN-THE-CITY, 132 Hobson Street, corner Wellesley & Hobson Streets, T: 09 379 0625, www.stmatthews.nz.

programme Ritchie, A Underwater Music Mozart Flute Concerto No 1 K313 in G Foote A Night Piece Haydn Symphony No 103 in E flat, “Drum Roll” soloist Melanie Lançon conductor Josh Kirk

We asked the owner of Artmount & Framing Matters to tell us her story...

Firstly tell us about your history.

I stumbled into framing in my early 20s. A student friend had a part time job in a workshop and said they were looking for help. My initial reaction was “framing, is that even a profession? What on earth?” However, after a few weeks I knew that I had found my place and tribe!

I first started my own framing business working from the basement of a friend’s house in Grey Lynn. An opportunity then arose to move into a workspace with Artmount on the Strand in Parnell, where I stayed for 27 years and purchased Artmount, changing the business name from Framing Matters to Artmount & Framing Matters. Earlier this year AMFM moved into 82 Newton Rd, which has been a great opportunity to create and design the space to fit my vision of my dream workshop. this really shines through with customers who appreciate the knowledge that we apply to their artwork - whether design or technically speaking. At present I have such a great team and am very proud of their accomplishments and skill.

I am also exceptionally lucky to have amazing loyal customers! Every day we get to meet interesting people, some of whom are only discovering us now we are on Newton Road. We frame for several key galleries so get to work alongside very talented gallery owners and staff who are so passionate and specialised at what they do. I am often amazed and inspired by these people!

What has been your biggest challenge of late? Relocating our business to the new premises was a massive undertaking, but we got there with the support of staff and close friends.

What is your favourite part of your job? The people and the art! I love our client’s reactions when they collect their work and see the transformation of their piece once it’s framed, awesome!

What do your customers say about you? I have been very fortunate to have worked with some amazing and very skilled staff over the years and I think Covid-19 has been a real challenge for myself and staff but we have adapted by constantly “hunting the good stuff”, and the support of our regular customers has been humbling!

We are now well versed at managing the supply crisis that had a massive impact on the framing industry and we are now stocked up and have the ability to meet our client’s deadlines in a post-Covid world.

ARTMOUNT & FRAMING MATTERS, 82 Newton Road, T: 09 309 2020, www.artmountandframingmatters.co.nz