Diffused realities catalogue

Diffused Realities 10 December 2013 - 1 February 2014 pierre peeters gallery 251 PARNELL ROAD HABITAT COURTYARD PARNELL AUCKLAND +64 9 3774832 WWW.PPG.NET.NZ

Diffused Realities ‘The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.

It is the source of all true art and science.’ Albert Einstein Pierre Peeters gallery is proud to present Diffused Realities, an exhibition of new work by our 12 gallery artists and an introduction into the work of four new emerging artists to our gallery.

The prominent reoccurring theme seen in the works featured is our perception of reality and the world around us.

1. Lorie Dugardyn Un homage Ă GaudĂ­ photographic print on acrylic, edition of 8, 1120 x 840 mm

2. Lorie Dugardyn Antonyme: citĂŠ - nature photographic print on acrylic, edition of 8, 1120 x 840 mm

French born Lorie Dugardyn, began working as a photographer 10 years ago and has carried on her career explorin poetic world. Dugardyn says “It´s a new vision which allows people to take another glance at places they may have fe Melbourne based, Ollie Lucas’s latest series of works ‘Digital Landscapes’ focus on semaphore and abstract communic a world where colour and light are used extensively to transform advertising, architecture and ultimately life.

Inspiration through colourful advertising and neon cityscapes and has led to a creative take on the industrial functio communicative function to explain new kinds of urban consciousness via constellations of arresting, bright colours a brazen, with the same instantaneous impact as advertising.

In this exhibition, the artist represents her feeling about what Auckland is evocative of. Travelling on her own to disco 60’s), and their theory of the dérive: an experimental mode of behaviour which is linked to the conditions of urban so sense of personal and political liberty. It can be revolutionary to move through urban spaces, taking notes as ones dr Full of imagination, buildings get new shapes, people are transformed, roadwork become artistic, life seems totally m

Reflections, created by the sun, offer amazing colours and surprising compositions. The pictures are not reworked on unique and can never be revisited. « Diffused Realities » : real life in a mirage !

3. Lorie Dugardyn Méditation sur l´évolution photographic print on acrylic, edition of 8 840 x1120 mm

ng different facets of the medium. Mainly focused on urban landscape, she likes to combine industrial sites with a elt familiar with and which generally are considered heavy and restricting urban environments.” Ollie Lucas cation. These shimmering, geometrical and neon environments are painted then manipulated digitally to mirror

on of flags and signals that direct travel of trains, planes and ships, known as semaphores. Lucas harnesses this and geometric patterns. This neon effect conveys modern life as fast paced and electric as well as grungy and

over the movement of the city and the unknown, in a manner like that of the Situationist International’s, (1950 ociety and believes in the potential of drifting through a city as a means of identifying oneself more closely with a rifts through the city. modified.

n software, and change according to the time of the day, the situation and the weather. The picture taken is

4. Brent Wong Cloud / Coast acrylic on board, 380 x 570 mm

In 1969 Brent Wong had his first one-man show in Wellington. This suite of works, meticulously painted, conveyed in sea and colonial dwellings. These powerful images were regarded as surreal. For the public, these incredible forms s motifs embodied intense states of mind; they were emotional carriers.

Wong’s paintings from the late 1960s to the mid 2000’s are all characterised by their painstaking application and all a been painstaking, meticulous and resolved at length. Exacting and exhausting, few have been available on the mark tic surreal style. Cloud / Coast (1998) and then Massed Clouds & Field (2003), follow on and remain intensely autobiog being.

Wong studied at the Wellington Polytechnic College and throughout the early 1960s drew on a number of inspiratio templative visions of English Romantic watercolourist Joseph Mallord William Turner and the emotionally loaded pai Wong has works in the collection of the Auckland Art Gallery, The Dowse Art Museum and the Museum of New Zeal

5. Brent Wong Massed clouds+ field acrylic on board, 350 x 450 mm

n vivid terms, disquietingly quiet worlds where fantastical; monolithic conglomerates of masonry hover over land, seemed to, and still do, cast an isolated but familiar island country into a strange and new realisation. For Wong, the

are underwritten by a quest for light, tranquillity and expansiveness. His compelling and meditative paintings have ket since then. Harmonium (Massing Clouds) dates from 1984, one of Wong’s first breaks away from his characterisgraphical and visionary. These works are not a description not of a literal place but of a state of mind and spirit; of

ons: Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky with their emphases on the spiritual and intuitive, the mesmerising and conintings of American painter Andrew Wyeth. land, Te Papa.

6. Brent Wong Harmonium/massing clouds acrylic on board, 700 x 790 mm

7. Mark Cross

Mokohinaus oil on canvas, 400 x 370 mm

Mark Cross began drawing and painting in his teens. He was living in Auckland, the largest site of Pasifika peoples i during these early years that he established a strong philosophic and stylistic foundation. He felt disillusionment with tion, lack of distraction and necessary clarity, needed to develop his work in an individualistic way. For some time, Cr

He returned to New Zealand in 1982 and has since developed a reputation as one of the South Pacific’s leading realis emerged from extended immersion in a small, isolated, water-bound, natural environment. Cross produces a timeles toring or lecturing. The paintings’ scintillating and compelling detail, light and colour, seduce the eye whilst the brai

Cross’s figurative paintings are the most explicit in terms of celebrating or querying that which what is often absent i tendency to see humankind as the centre of the universe, to the detriment of the environment and its other creature works warn of the dire ecological imperatives that face both a small island and a planet.

Mark Cross has achieved through his work a uniqueness that avoids the trappings of regionalism, so often associated tion in his community with the establishment of a sculpture park in the rain forest in the east of Niue. A collaboration an installation inside a shipping container that toured Australia, New Zealand and Rarotonga. Paintings by Mark are

8. Mark Cross Swimming in Cyan Champagne oil on canvas, 530 x 780 mm

in the world. At the age of 23 he moved with his family to his wife’s village, Liku, on the island of Niue and it was h the institutional oriented nature of the art scene in New Zealand. The isolation of Niue provided both the inspiraross has worked on the ‘periphery’, in a sense.

st artists. Cross now divides his time between studios in Niue and New Zealand. His paintings over time have ss, world, a lateral universe of sorts, where his figures act out and question the foibles of humanity. There is no hecin engages gradually.

in ‘Western’ culture; a unity and respectful synergy between nature and the human species. Implicated is that es. Niue becomes the atmospheric stage for these allegorical communications. In their ethereal, visionary way, the

d with realism, and replaces them with an acutely perceptive worldview. The artist has also supported art producn with his wife and several other artists, crafts people and musicians, saw the creation of the Shrine to Abundance, to be found in many private and corporate collections in Australasia, America and Europe.

9. Mark Cross Head land, Mokohinaus oil on canvas, 500 x 500 mm

10. Mark Cross Cave Bathe oil on canvas, 500 x 750 mm

Harry Wong has exhibited for nearly five decades, since he was first recognised and awarded the premier Benson an Leavey gallery, and he focused on vivid geometric abstraction inspired strongly by Klee, Mondrian, Malevich and Cha

Wong has since retained his interest in working with the medium of perspex - for its slick / highly polished surface. Th Wong was one of 10 artists featured in the exhibition section of the Auckland City Art Gallery Ten Big Paintings Proje

Wong’s paintings and screen-prints are represented in public collections including Te Papa, Auckland City Art Gallery

11. Harry Wong Carnival #1 acrylic on perspex, 1630 x 2000 mm

nd Hedges Award in 1968. During the late 60’s and 70’s when Wong was represented by Barry Lett and Peter Mcarchoune.

hrough Wong’s ongoing reinvention of pure intense colour he is securely placed within the contemporary canon. ect which also featured work by Ralph Hotere, Colin Mc- Cahon, Don Driver, and Milan Mrkusich.

y, the University of Auckland Collection and the Hocken.

12. Harry Wong Muriwai acrylic on perspex, 2000 x 1500 mm

13. Carl Foster River Inlet

oil on canvas, 660 x 530 mm Carl Foster is best known for his exquisitely modulated grey, green, blue and earth tones contained within immaculate and lyrical shapes which undulate, glide, swoop and fall. Foster listens to jazz and the blues. He loves the blues singer Robert Johnson.

Music transports the listener; it excites, soothes, and speaks to the heart. In Foster’s painting, we see him go to a place imaginatively and with an acute sense of movement.

The experience of the actual is transmuted into a vision that moves; in both senses of the word. In a style reminiscent of Don Binney, Foster captures the New Zealand landscape as a land of rolling hills, rocky outcrops and soft curvelinear bays – there are no straight lines here.

14. Carl Foster Bethell’s oil on canvas, 670 x 570 mm

15. Alison Granville Tempo #2

acrylic on wood, 400 x 300 mm

Alison Granville’s intricately detailed works have echoes of pointillism with viewers moving up close to see the expl In her recent works tiny dabs, some forming daisy shapes, create jewel-like galaxies against variegated colour fields. H tical associations.

The viewer is enticed by the luminous painstaking detail and intimacy of the works, and yet also by the paradoxical e Granville explores the stimulating possibilities of intricate detail, vivid colour relations and the repetition of motifs. H 1970’s fabric design, the polka dot Queen Yayoi Kusama, and molecular forms, as well as aspects of the macrocosm o

An artist drawn to the works of abstract American expressionists, particularly Cy Twombly, she explores elements of a Granville graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Arts from Auckland University in 2005. Her work is held in the Universit ings, which in the words of one collector “somehow inveigle you in”.

16. Alison Granville Linked acrylic on wood, 200 x 300 mm

17. Alison Granville Untitled acrylic on wood,, 200 x 300 mm

loded detail and stepping back to see the overall effect.

Hazy effects suggestive of the celestial and larger ‘islands’ of colour further resonate with organic, cellular, and mys-

enormity they suggest.

Her inspirations include nostalgia for the small glass flowers of the millefiori she fell in love with as a girl, colourful or larger world: topography, maps, charts and galaxies.

abstraction through the tension between the deliberate and the accidental. ty’s drawing collection. She exhibits regularly and is steadily attracting attention with her evocative layered paint-

18. Ollie Lucas Semaphore One (2013) Mixed Medium on Board 29.3cm x 23.5cm

19. Ollie Lucas Semaphore Two (2013) Mixed Medium on Board 29.3cm x 23.5cm

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20. Ollie Lucas Semaphore Three (2013) Mixed Medium on Board 29.3cm x 23.5cm

Ollie Lucas

Melbourne based, Ollie Lucas’s latest series of works ‘Digital Landscapes’ focus on semaphore and abstract communi world where colour and light are used extensively to transform advertising, architecture and ultimately life.

Inspiration through colourful advertising and neon cityscapes and has led to a creative take on the industrial functio municative function to explain new kinds of urban consciousness via constellations of arresting, bright colours and g with the same instantaneous impact as advertising.

21. Ollie Lucas Semaphore Four (2013) Mixed Medium on Board 29.3cm x 23.5cm

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22. Ollie Lucas Semaphore Five (2013) Mixed Medium on Board 29.3cm x 23.5cm

23. Ollie Lucas Semaphore Six (2013) Mixed Medium on Board 29.3cm x 23.5cm

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ication. These shimmering, geometrical and neon environments are painted then manipulated digitally to mirror a

on of flags and signals that direct travel of trains, planes and ships, known as semaphores. Lucas harnesses this comgeometric patterns. This neon effect conveys modern life as fast paced and electric as well as grungy and brazen,

24. Gareth Price The Entomoligists Nightmare acrylic on canvas, 1360 x 1000 mm

25. Gareth Price Insomnia acrylic on canvas, 1000 x 1000 mm Gareth Price’s paintings contain mysterious and enchanting narratives. In ‘The Entomologists Nightmare’, Price explores the relationship between peoples obsessions and their daily lives. “From the addictive appeal of drugs and alcohol through to sex and work, virtually any behavior has the potential capacity to overtake a seemingly ordinary life and turn it into chaos. Having personal experience with overcoming such issues, I saw them as a fertile ground to confront through my art practice.”

Prices’ previous work has been set outside in landscapes and he had wanted to explore the interiors of houses for more intimate scenarios. Here, Price collaborated with the artist and textiles designer Pearl Sutcliffe, whose work has been concerned with the reinterpreting of the complex interplay of interlocking lines and forms found in floral patterns. The resulting work resembles antique-style wallpaper-type patterns of great beauty. The subject in the painting has become completely enveloped by her entomological world.

Price’s work continues in the tradition of Magical Realism, a style which originated as a literary term in 1925 when German art criticism, specifically that of the writer Franz Roh, began to focus on the mystery of life behind surface reality. It is a type of realism portraying everyday life in new and unfamiliar ways and often with a twist of the bizarre and unusual which acted as a portal to Surrealism.

While dreamlike and fantastic elements are added to the art, the subject matter always remains within the realm of the possible, which is where it differs from surrealism. It is best illustrated by the art of Giorgio de Chirico (18881978). Price also utilizes elements of symbolism and pathos to draw the audience in and give them a sense of wonder, beauty and danger.

26. Kristina Berends Rock the Red Sea acrylic on board, 580 x 440 mm

My painting explores the expressive and connotative power of several combined forces: Surrealism, Photo Realism, Religious Symbolism, Graphic Design and Tattoo Art. This current suite of works relates to contemporary issues of self discovery, self expression, identity and freedom of speech.

The juxtaposed and unusual imagery originates from earlier collages I have made created out of National Geographic cut-outs. Retro matchbox labels, early Soviet propaganda posters and other pre-digital posters from Eastern Europe are further cultural sources I use for their graphic power. These resources are referred to directly as I paint as I aim to recreate the details of the source images with an interest in optimal precision.

The quirky compositions and odd combinations of imagery reference society’s clichéd oppositions between life and death, good and evil, and peace and violence. They also contain the personal and anecdotal; ‘inside’ jokes, visual pranks and remembered comical experiences. Regardless of my own referents and preoccupations, these works may generate different meanings and associations for the individual viewer; and this is as it should be.

27. John Badcock Figure in Landscape III oil on canvas, 1000 x 900 mm “My experience with oil paint as a medium to produce the portrait began with an emphasis on drawing to achieve likeness, and in using oils to model that likeness in colour.”

This exhibition however challenges that process of mainly predetermined outcomes driven by drawing, and places the focus on the media of oil paint.

When looking at my work it is easy to dismiss it for its apparent lack of drawing but within the cyclic process of constructing and deconstructing an image, drawing is always present, imbedded in and on the gestural applications of oil.

Drawing has to somehow co-exist within the gesture, and within the paint, challenging our perception of what a portrait should look like.

These works show figures completely emmersed in their surrounding landscape as the title suggest.

“As a painter I have a great love of oils as a medium. It is a sensual and provocative medium, offering its fragrance, its gooeyness, it freshness and its immediacy to me as an artist. These works put me in my world of paint and remind me of the sensory experience involved in painting them.”

28. Richard Boyd Dunlop Butterfly Effect mixed media, 790 x 780 mm

Napier based artist Richard Boyd-Dunlop makes work that reflects the nature of the contemporary human condition and our innate preoccupation with death and dying.

In ‘Butterfly Effect’ the human skull, which is a prominent motif seen throughout art history is juxtaposed against a layer of shimmering, holographic butterflies. From the 16th and 17th century the vanitas mortis or memento mori - was a prominent medieval funerary art style in Flanders and the Netherlands.

Memento Mori is Latin for “Remember your mortality” or “Remember you must die”. Works such as Pieter Claesz’ Vanitas still life (1630) are the type of symbolic still life painting which featured skulls as a reminder of the certainty of death, decaying flowers and rotten fruit - all symbolising the meaninglessness of earthly life and the transient nature of all earthly goods and pursuits.

29. Paul Hartigan Revolution XVII (Van Gogh - Chroma) neon on 350mm black tondo Paul Hartigan remains one of New Zealand’s most intriguing and inspirational artists. Recognized for his arresting large-scale public neon commissions, his dramatic orange monochrome Colony at the Faculty of Engineering on Symonds St won Best Public Sculpture Metro Awards in 2006.

“Newmarket was ablaze with neon advertising when I first visited Auckland during the summer of 1968 – I was completely captivated… I wanted to paint with light!”

Known for creating unique neon artworks that bridge the gap between sculpture and lighting design, Hartigan also produces for exhibition related paintings, photographs and fine art prints from his Grey Lynn studio.

“As a young artist I moved quickly from Picasso to Warhol, then onto Flavin and Indiana who used fluorescent and neon light to make art” With a career spanning four decades, his artistic roots can be traced back to the forerunners of the American and British Pop movement. Hartigan’s progressive attitude, quirky sense of humour and mastery of an assorted range of media ensure that he continues to hold a central place in the New Zealand art scene. His current work such as Revolution XVII (Van Gogh – Chroma) continues to push boundaries and challenge conceptions of both society and self in a visually arresting and timeless fashion.

“Light and illumination are key elements in all that I do – Light is my artistic manifesto, my raison d’etre ­“ Paul Hartigan attended Elam School of fine Art 1971-73 with painting teachers Colin McCahon, Robert Ellis and Garth Tapper and sculptors Adrian Hall, Greer Twiss and Jim Allen. He is represented in public and private collections throughout New Zealand including Te Papa Tongarewa, The Hocken and National Library, Auckland Art Gallery, Govett-Brewster and Sarjeant Art Gallery; The Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Australia.

30. Alvin Xiong 7 Songs mirror, canvas, wood, 410 x 260 x 80 mm

Alvin Xiong ‘light creates the power and magic of a painting, its richness, eloquence, sensuality, and beauty.’

Otto Piene, Light Ballet

I was inspired by the process of long exposure photographic techniques to create images, which I used by moving a h that light could be used as a painting medium instead of traditional techniques. I had thought that the photographic ‘ the action of tracks of light moving, but does not show the actual light itself. Otto Piene’s Light Ballet gave me a new w Space Modulator was the unmistakable forebear of light ballets’ and that ‘the instruments were my (Piene) primitive li

The idea of my works are to convert the photographic technique to be a painting concept that which is light itself is to traditional painters use pigmented paints to create their images. I want to use my work to investigate the relationship and every moving point (= line) became equally alive and revealed its should to me.’

1 Light Ballet, 1928, Cambridge, MA 2 Man Ray ‘Space Writing’ (self-portrait), 1935, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick 3 Light Ballet, 1928, Cambridge, MA 4 Light Ballet, 1928, Cambridge, MA 5 Light Ballet, 1928, Cambridge, MA 6 Kandinsky, 1993, Thames and Hudson, London

31. Alvin Xiong Improvisation mirror, canvas, wood, LED, dimensions variable

hand-held light source or by moving the camera. Man Ray’s ‘Space Writing’ (self-portrait) influenced me to think ‘light painting’ had limitations in that it was only represented in two-dimensional surface. Photography captures way to think about the possibility of using a spatial construction to make my work. Piene said, ‘Moholy’s Lightight instruments, which in good time I turned into light sculptures and light machines.’

o be the medium. I use the elements of light, colour and mirrors to create the images in my works differing from p between the viewer’s body and inherent beauty of point and line in a dark space. As Kandinsky said: ‘Every still

32. Cat Balfour Synesthesia Interactive VideoC

Cat Balfour

Synesthesia is the involuntary connection of senses. The real information of one sense is accompanied by a perceptio

To approach this in an objective manner (as I am not a Synesthete), I have decided to allow the outcome of the imag forms the sound we hear to visible imagery, I will be transforming the audio signal into a video signal.

The microphone is placed in the gallery space for the audience to view and interact with if they choose to do so. In re imagery is generated.

Alongside the interactive screen, is a publication that demonstrates people’s Synesthetic experiences. This documen highlights the connections I have identified to arrive at my own response to Synesthesia.

References: Steen, Carol. (1997). Synesthesia and the Synesthesia Experience. Retrieved from: http://web.mit. edu/syn

on in another. This is regarded by the Synesthete as real, and often outside of the body (Steen, 1997).

gery be driven by properties of sound, such as frequency and amplitude. Akin to the process of how the brain trans-

ealising this project, I intend to question the audience’s perception, as well as prompt them to question the way the

nt entitled ‘Sensory Connections’ functions as a distillation of the research I have undertaken over the past year. It

nesthesia/www/

1. Lorie Dugardyn

Un homage à Gaudí

photographic print on acrylic, edition of 8, 1120 x 840 mm

$2,750

2. Lorie Dugardyn

Antonyme: cité - nature

photographic print on acrylic, edition of 8, 1120 x 840 mm

$2,750

3. Lorie Dugardyn

Méditation sur l´évolution photographic print on acrylic, edition of 8, 1120 x 840 mm

4. Brent Wong

Cloud / Coast

acrylic on board, 380 x 570 mm

$24,000

5. Brent Wong

Massed clouds+ field

acrylic on board, 350 x 450 mm

$18,500

6. Brent Wong

Harmonium/massing clouds acrylic on board, 700 x 790 mm

POA

7. Mark Cross

Mokohinaus

$6,500

8. Mark Cross

Swimming in Cyan Champagne oil on canvas, 530 x 780 mm

9. Mark Cross

Head land, Mokohinaus

oil on canvas, 500 x 500 mm

$9,500

10. Mark Cross

Cave Bathe

oil on canvas, 500 x 750 mm

$18,500

11. Harry Wong

Carnival #1

acrylic on perspex, 1630 x 2000 mm

$24,000

12. Harry Wong

Muriwai

acrylic on perspex, 2000 x 1500 mm

$26,000

13. Carl Foster

River Inlet

oil on canvas, 660 x 530 mm

$2,650

14. Carl Foster

Bethell’s

oil on canvas, 670 x 570 mm

$2,650

15. Alison Granville

Tempo #2

acrylic on wood, 400 x 300 mm

$1,450

16. Alison Granville

Linked

acrylic on wood, 200 x 300 mm

$950

17. Alison Granville

Untitled

acrylic on wood, 200 x 300 mm

$950

18. Ollie Lucas

Semaphore One (2013) Mixed Medium on Board 29.3cm x 23.5cm

$425

oil on canvas, 400 x 370 mm

$2,750

$18,500

19. Ollie Lucas

Semaphore Two (2013) Mixed Medium on Board 29.3cm x 23.5cm

$425

20. Ollie Lucas

Semaphore Three (2013) Mixed Medium on Board 29.3cm x 23.5cm

$425

21. Ollie Lucas

Semaphore Four (2013) Mixed Medium on Board 29.3cm x 23.5cm

$425

22. Ollie Lucas

Semaphore Five (2013) Mixed Medium on Board 29.3cm x 23.5cm

$425

23. Ollie Lucas

Semaphore Six (2013)

$425

Mixed Medium on Board 29.3cm x 23.5cm

24. Gareth Price

The Entomologists Nightmare acrylic on canvas, 1360 x 1000 mm

$14,500

25. Gareth Price

Insomnia

acrylic on canvas, 1000 x 1000 mm

$12,500

26. Kristina Berends

Rock the Red Sea

acrylic on board, 580 x 440 mm

$1,850

27. John Badcock

Figure in Landscape III

oil on canvas, 1000 x 900 mm

$12,000

mixed media, 790 x 780 mm

$2,850

28. Richard Boyd Dunlop Butterfly Effect 29. Paul Hartigan

Revolution XVII (Van Gogh - Chroma) neon on 350mm black tondo

$16,500

30. Alvin Xiong

7 Songs

mirror, canvas, wood, 410 x 260 x 80 mm

$1,450

31. Alvin Xiong

Improvisation

mirror, canvas, wood, LED, dimensions variable

$2,850

Synesthesia

Interactive Video

$2,500

32.. Cat Balfour

251 Parnell Road; Habitat Courtyard; ph 09 3774832; www.ppg.net.nz