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Matthew Browne
Don Peebles
Roy Good
Denys Watkins
Kathryn Stevens
Mark Braunias
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| Other Worlds: a playful take on abstraction |
| 5 - 23 September 2007 |
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This exhibition includes work from artists whose work fits into the abstraction category but not necessarily always with a formal approach.
Mark Braunias seems to live in a world populated by creatures from an animated dimension, a place where loosely shaped bodies and heads, not necessarily connected, exist - a lot. Braunias creates installations that are a lot of work, more like worlds than exhibitions, a lot of different shapes and sizes and a lot of colour, big colour.
The forms are often expressionless, devoid of the means to create an expression, like a mouth or a brow, and they are strangely isolated just floating against a monochromatic ground.
‘ The shapes and tones suggest, as well, a very specific and idiosyncratic read on the history of abstract painting...His airport lounge colours suggest a gonzo stylistic variant on the graphics and decor of the 1960’s and 70’s, the decades Braunias grew up in.’ Justin Paton, Funny How?, Gank Mark Braunias, Exhibition Catalogue, 2001.
He is currently working on the inaugural exhibition for the Tauranga Art Gallery to be opened in October this year. This will incorporate site-specific work with video projection.
Matthew Browne is in celebratory mode with his work Candour. With no suggestion of a figurative element to this work bulbous shapes filled with surprisingly contrasting colour sit on a powder pink ground. The titles of Browne's works are usually a good lead in to his paintings and this illustrates the point.
As recent recipient of the Arts Foundation Icon Award Don Peebles relishes the thought of exhibiting his work with colleagues. This work incorporates elements of what Peebles is well known for such as working on unstretched canvas.
Denys Watkins Spiny Pufferfish comes at you full-frontal, but slightly off beam, with a large fish swimming towards you in a green sea. Sections look as if they could be made from stamps, each shape used repetitively over the body of the fish, but there is a slight fragility and innocence about the subject suggestive of maybe an ominous influence, of events beyond its control such as environmental effects.
Kathryn Stevens creates somewhat elusive optical effects with her painting, utilising gradations of colour and line to alter the viewers perception of each picture plane.
'My interest is in the way we understand and use space,
both in our world, and within the the two dimensional
surface that is a painting.
I am intrigued by how space is marked out in our urban
environment and that can affects the way we use it.'
Roy Good enters into the spirit of the exhibition with a considerably less formal work than is the norm exhibiting a small relief painting.
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