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Darfield Artweek 2022
TE HUANUI - THE STUDIO
Christchurch artists Viv Kepes, Bianca Scrimgeour, Stephanie McEwin and Vicki Mangan, are connected by a shared studio space, as well as collaborative working practices. The Studio exhibition reveals the intersections between looking and seeing. Vicki’s wide abstracted landscapes in flood speak to Bianca’s more intimate contemporary pastoral settings, where detail and textures are more described but still textured. Viv and Stephanie’s are a more engaged gaze, speaking to an emotional and human landscape, addressing wider societal issues in a powerful yet beautiful way. The exhibition presents ways of seeing the ordinary through new eyes. The Studio Exhibition opens on Friday, September 30th and runs until Thursday, October 27th, at Te Huanui. Viv Kepes - Visual Compassion, Visual Support: Representations drawn from the fifty one paintings of the 2021 Tribute Bouquet exhibition. Viv’s work elevates tiny aspects of the flowers given as tributes to the victims, and their families, of the Christchurch March 15th Mosque attacks. The semi-abstract oil paintings were created with the opposite sentiments to the attacker’s intentions. The works, individually and collectively, consider the love, unity, empathy, solidarity, support and compassion of the people of Canterbury towards the affected community. This overwhelmingly strong community response manifested in a massive outpouring of tributes, placed in prominent places in Christchurch, outside the two mosques and in front of the Botanical Gardens on Rolleston Avenue. These immense displays of tributes reflected the strength of conviction of the people of Canterbury, that the affected community must feel they are loved and supported. Bianca Scrimgeour, Simple Green Trees: Living more in the focused moment, painting what appears to be simple cool tree paintings is a current theme in Bianca’s work and is played out in exaggerated shades of nuanced green. The paintings are romanticised interpretations of modern ‘green spaces’. Working predominantly with watercolour and raw paper, Bianca’s work is a balance between layered paint, preserved paper and their interaction depicting negative and positive space. Stephanie McEwin, Figuration & Hyper-figuration: Stephanie seeks to process the masses of disparate data we are exposed to daily, through drawing and painting collections of un-relationships and suspended movements and meanings. She paints multi-layered collisions and collisions using repeated figurative prototypes set within painted worlds, seeking to use either a known place, a sculpture or monument, to infuse a subconscious sense of the familiar when set within a painted world. By using these familiar elements along with repetition, exaggerated abstraction and a gestural, joyous application of colour, the work becomes expressionist, pushing the edges of reality, to find a space for the figures to inhabit. Vicki Mangan, Palimpsest: Grounded in long-standing interests in the intersections between language and the natural world, Vicki is concerned with traces of previous use and glimpses of past layers, which like flood waters shift and change to conceal or reveal the ground. Current works are a response to the landscape and a search to explore the issue of flooding through the materiality of painting; adding and removing layers of paint on recycled supports, including any of her own works which don’t achieve their intended purpose - they become part of the process.
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Below: The People by Stephanie McEwin.
Above: A Path More Present by Vicki Mangan.

DARFIELD ARTWEEK
Mark your calendar and plan to visit the 41st annual Darfield Artweek exhibition. Paintings, photographs, sculptures, jewellery and much more will be on display at the Darfield Recreation Centre during Darfield Artweek 2022. This year again organisers are expecting over 300 art works by local artists. The exhibition will be judged by Dorle Pauli, and the Awards will be presented at the Opening Night on Friday, October 7th. The ticket price includes refreshments and a catalogue. Local businesses and supporters have generously donated the prizes. Again, this year there is a Youth Category for artists aged thirteen to twenty one. All art works are available for sale. Darfield Artweek is an event to be enjoyed by the whole community. Families are welcome. Entry to the exhibition is free. The exhibition is open from 10am - 5pm Saturday, October 9th to Saturday, October 16th, and 10am - 4pm on Sunday, October 17th. An additional exhibition, The Studio, will be at the Te Huanui Art Gallery on South Terrace during Artweek. Darfield Artweek is proudly presented by the Malvern Arts Council and is made possible with the support of volunteers.
