Parnel :: The Creative Quarter

Late Night Art, Parnell

Second Thursday of every month

Late Night Art on Thursday November 9th, 2011 has galleries on Parnell Road open until 7.30pm.

Take an art (de)tour before dinner in Parnell! Parnell galleries are serving up a tempting smorgasbord of New Zealand art - the perfect entrée to a night in Parnell.

ARTIS Gallery

Group Show - Spring Selection

ARTIS Gallery presents a selection of paintings and sculptures in its latest exhibition. ARTIS Gallery would also like to welcome three new artists to the gallery: Richard Mathieson - sculpture. Nicky Foreman & Elizabeth Rees - paintings. Their works will he showcased in the Spring Selection Exhibition.

  • open: Mon - Fri: 10am - 5.30pm; Sat: 10am - 4pm; Sunday by appointment.
  • address: 280 Parnell Road phone: 09 303 1090
  • web: www.artisgallery.co.nz

Jonathan Grant Galleries

19th & 20th Century Art
Jonathan Grant Galleries is currently exhibiting Peter McIntyre OBE. And acollection of 19th & 20th century New Zealand and British paintings. The collection brings together some of the galleries finest works of art, in an exhibition that is sure to inspire art lovers of all ages.

  • open: Mon- Fri: 10am - 5.30pm; Sat: 10am - 4pm; Sunday by appointment.
  • address: 280 Parnell Road phone: 09 308 9125
  • web: www.jonathangrantgalleries.com

Parnell Gallery

Matt Gauldie and Sofia Minson

From birth to burial, life is a series of connections.  The threads that form our connections join people, land, history and the natural world - we rejoice when connections are made and oft times, grieve when they are broken.
Connecting Threads, the upcoming joint exhibition of new works by Matt Gauldie and Sofia Minson, is a visual representation of this theme:  Gauldie and Minson individually explore the context of family lineage, mixed whakapapa and culture and the codes or expectations which are consciously, or unconsciously, passed down from one generation to the next. 
Gauldie’s paintings depict the lives of an extended Maori family, living and working in a seaside village – a village that belongs in any rural New Zealand landscape. 
With each piece capturing a different family member and their contribution to daily life, the work engages, drawing you into the threads that weave the people and the land that shapes and sustains them.
Gauldie creates a sense of place in his work by including the physical: his use of old car panels and paraphernalia found scattered around the local community provides a tangible link between the people and their landscape. 
Sofia Minson’s mixed Maori (Ngati Porou), Swedish, English and Irish ancestry, has shaped her exploration of how we relate to the culture of our ancestors in a contemporary world.
Her portrait of New Zealand musician, Tiki Taane, with painted moko, is a powerful image of the connection he forges between himself, his whakapapa, and looking forward, his children.  Taane has worn his moko previously as artwork:  inspired by C.F. Goldie portraits, he presents himself with full facial moko on the cover of his Past, Present, Future album.

The design of moko based on whakapapa new and old, is one that Minson sees echoed in “He taura whiri” or “plaited rope”, a concept beloved by Maori orators, describing disparate elements combined in a unity without loss of their individual identities - the thread of looking back and looking forward to discover how we are shaped.
Minson: “I feel there is no better time than now, after Tiki’s strength and amazing attitude in the face of the media attention on his legal issues over the last few months, to create this portrait.  In this painting he will proudly wear his moko, an outward sign of his inner growth and resilience”.
  • open: Mon - Fri: 9.30am - 5.30pm; Sat- Sun: 10am - 4pm
  • address: 263 Parnell Road phone: 09 377 3133
  • web: www.parnellgallery.co.nz

Pierre Peeters Gallery

Harry Wong: Interception

In Interception, a bold new series of geometric abstract works, Harry Wong revisits his longstanding preoccupation with the expressive and perceptual power of colour, shape and composition.
New Zealand Chinese artist Wong Sing Tai, aka Harry Wong, returns to the medium of paint, in his vivid new exhibition, Interception, at Pierre Peeters Gallery. After he won the first Benson and Hedges Art Award in 1968, Colin McCahon described one of his works as New Zealand's "first Pop Painting". Yet Wong now employs his signature graphic, hard-edged style now for solely abstract concerns.
Following a 25 year hiatus during which Wong was involved in writing and producing films, and then a recent battle with cancer, Wong is on a clear mission to resolve some of those painterly concerns he had explored in the late 1970's.
"This experience has resulted in a wakeup call. An urgent reminder to finish those things I started."
Interception, with its assured exploration of relationships of colour, shape and the subtle perceptual reverberations that result, tap into his longstanding interest in the contemplative potential inherent in these formal elements.
"From a painting perspective, the content of colour, balance, concrete form and subtlety are concepts that excite me."
Certainly one of the earliest in New Zealand to paint onto Perspex, Wong returns to this 20th century support which signals his Pop heritage and his interest in its transparency and effect on colour.
Wong, the older brother of artist Brent Wong, was one of 10 artists featured in the exhibition section of the Auckland City Art Gallery Ten Big Paintings Project which also featured work by Ralph Hotere, Colin McCahon, Don Driver, and Milan Mrkusich. His vivid geometric abstraction nods appreciatively to such Modernist Abstractionists as, Klee, Malevich and Charchoune. Wong's paintings and screen-prints are represented in public collections including Te Papa, Auckland City Art Gallery, the University of Auckland Collection and the Hocken.

 

  • open: Mon - Fri: 10.30am – 5pm
  • address: Habitat Courtyard, 251 Parnell Road phone: 09 377 4832
  • web: www.ppg.net.nz

Sanderson Contemporary Art

Martin Selman - Sculpture

Carrara marble is the stone made famous through its use in Renaissance statuary. This art historical association defines the context of Selman's work, and much of his recent output has been concerned with exploring the contemporary artistic potential of marble. His practice places him in an unusual position, utilising a process that has remained relatively unchanged over millennia to produce works with modern relevance.

With Sculpture, Selman has recovered found objects from the streets of Auckland, investigating the debris of the city as the subject for his work. Through rendering this discarded detritus in marble, Selman's work becomes site-specific, embodying and responding to a particular time and place. The contrast between the worthless objects he selects and the valuable marble he uses in his work emphasises the incongruities between his work and the values of Western society.

The appearance of marble immediately connotes the universally recognised sculpture of Michelangelo and Bernini, which in turn references the sculpture of the ancient Romans. Selman's place in this historical continuum is a key theme. For him, marble is "always new", liberated from the burden of its own history and full of potential.

Through its historical use, marble has come to be associated with mythology and monuments. Selman playfully subverts this tradition by using marble to depict common and objectionable objects with the same illusory quality prized by Renaissance masters. These unexpected objects—crushed cans, cartons and bottles—are faithfully modelled; however, the weight and hardness of the stone and the removal of imperfections and identifying marks of the object prevents them from becoming entirely illusionistic. His works become emblematic rather than representational, emphasising the juxtaposition of 'the domestic' with the Classical.