now at lumiere.net.nz
Works on Paper
Via Bryce Galloway’s zine, and the etchings of Julienne Francis and Maree Horner, MARK AMERY finds new dimension in the medium of paper.
“Eternal Realities – chair”, Maree Horner, 2006
RECENT YEARS have seen the art pamphlet thrive on Wellington’s streets. Art found in cheaply printed multiple ephemera; reflective of contemporary arts’ expanding cultural and community reach.
Bryce Galloway’s zine Incredibly Hot Sex with Hideous People has been a constant in this scene locally since 2002. The wry humour and incongruity of that title is indicative of the publication’s patchwork post-punk streaming together of Galloway’s uncomfortably personal diaristic rambles, charming wiry doodles and fresh, cheap surreal collisions between invited artists’ contributions.
Ironically, Galloway’s publication of his dedicated struggle in various roles through life – questioning his own worth as he openly limps from one issue and idea to the next – has gained strength as artistic conceit over time.
High time then for a Galloway exhibition proper, with the perfectly-titled Mumbling Through to the Chorus at Massey University’s The Engine Room. Best known for self-consciously awkward art-pop group Wendy House, Galloway turns the gallery into a reading room with free coffee, zines and music.
At Solander, a new gallery for works on paper in Lyall Bay, Margaret Silverwood’s ‘mini-comic’ Paradise Lost is on sale. Similar in its folded A4 format to Galloway’s zine, it also shares a wry, self-deprecating ‘Crumb-esque’ humour and intimate, autobiographical personality. Both thrive on a surreal elevation from everyday domestic existence. Silverwood literally as we slowly follow her in dressing gown in fractured perspectives (first person and third person) through garden and thought to an elevator in the shrubbery. The drawings have the quiet and spare personal meditative quality of the work of Joanna Margaret Paul.
Alongside her etchings currently showing at Solander, Julienne Francis notes that subversive ideas and satirical images were printed onto paper and distributed freely in the nineteenth century and earlier: Goya’s attack on manners and customs in ‘Los Caprichos’ and Hogarth’s dramatic narrative cartoons being famous examples.
“Nursery Rhymes for 21st C #4 [tinker tailor soldier sailor]”, Julienne Francis, 2006
Francis’ ‘Nursery Rhymes for 21st Century’ are modern takes on nursery rhyme illustrations as social commentary. The etchings don’t necessarily seek to illustrate specific rhymes so much as to extend politically off these ideas. An African women is in missionary Mother Hubbard dress, pointing on a map to the famine plagued Sahel area of Africa, the words “to get her poor dog a bone” below her and her dog. Humpty Dumpty is represented by a man slumped under brimmed hat, the initials WMD (weapons of mass destruction) on his shirt. Below him in naïve perspective a group of solider figures do a conga.
Francis works loosely and expressively, creating a wide range of rich, ragged surface effects with some strong but varied results. At best there can be a beautiful range of tones and compositional juxtapositions which animate the compositions and their agitated subjects, such as in ‘this little piggy went to market’ where as gallery owner Kyla Cresswell comments the pigs have a gorgeous “fatty translucency”.
Nearby in Maree Horner’s series Eternal Realities, donkey’s are posed like male photographic models in contained areas within the home: in an opened wardrobe one moment, feet on a plush chair or poised miniature in a fireplace in another. In an ongoing series of works Horner opens out for questioning the symbolism of domestic settings and gender roles with intriguing, surreal recontextualisation of stock props. The surface of the etchings is squared as if they have been unfolded, encouraging an unpacking of meaning, while the still subjects are coolly dramatised by shadows and shading.
Solander is a welcome addition to the local gallery landscape, the diversity and high quality of the thirty or so artists’ work represented (see excellent website www.solandergallery.co.nz) proof enough of the space in Wellington for a works on paper dealer. Cresswell has taken up where Carole Charles’ excellent Grodentz gallery in a house in Newtown left off when it closed last year, with many artists from Charles’ stable finding a new home here.
Mumbling through to the Chorus, Bryce Galloway, until March 16, The Engine Room.
Nursery Rhymes for the 21st Century by Julienne Francis and External Realities by Maree Horner, until March 31, Solander Gallery.
“Eternal Realities – chair”, Maree Horner, 2006
RECENT YEARS have seen the art pamphlet thrive on Wellington’s streets. Art found in cheaply printed multiple ephemera; reflective of contemporary arts’ expanding cultural and community reach.
Bryce Galloway’s zine Incredibly Hot Sex with Hideous People has been a constant in this scene locally since 2002. The wry humour and incongruity of that title is indicative of the publication’s patchwork post-punk streaming together of Galloway’s uncomfortably personal diaristic rambles, charming wiry doodles and fresh, cheap surreal collisions between invited artists’ contributions.
Ironically, Galloway’s publication of his dedicated struggle in various roles through life – questioning his own worth as he openly limps from one issue and idea to the next – has gained strength as artistic conceit over time.
High time then for a Galloway exhibition proper, with the perfectly-titled Mumbling Through to the Chorus at Massey University’s The Engine Room. Best known for self-consciously awkward art-pop group Wendy House, Galloway turns the gallery into a reading room with free coffee, zines and music.
At Solander, a new gallery for works on paper in Lyall Bay, Margaret Silverwood’s ‘mini-comic’ Paradise Lost is on sale. Similar in its folded A4 format to Galloway’s zine, it also shares a wry, self-deprecating ‘Crumb-esque’ humour and intimate, autobiographical personality. Both thrive on a surreal elevation from everyday domestic existence. Silverwood literally as we slowly follow her in dressing gown in fractured perspectives (first person and third person) through garden and thought to an elevator in the shrubbery. The drawings have the quiet and spare personal meditative quality of the work of Joanna Margaret Paul.
Alongside her etchings currently showing at Solander, Julienne Francis notes that subversive ideas and satirical images were printed onto paper and distributed freely in the nineteenth century and earlier: Goya’s attack on manners and customs in ‘Los Caprichos’ and Hogarth’s dramatic narrative cartoons being famous examples.
“Nursery Rhymes for 21st C #4 [tinker tailor soldier sailor]”, Julienne Francis, 2006
Francis’ ‘Nursery Rhymes for 21st Century’ are modern takes on nursery rhyme illustrations as social commentary. The etchings don’t necessarily seek to illustrate specific rhymes so much as to extend politically off these ideas. An African women is in missionary Mother Hubbard dress, pointing on a map to the famine plagued Sahel area of Africa, the words “to get her poor dog a bone” below her and her dog. Humpty Dumpty is represented by a man slumped under brimmed hat, the initials WMD (weapons of mass destruction) on his shirt. Below him in naïve perspective a group of solider figures do a conga.
Francis works loosely and expressively, creating a wide range of rich, ragged surface effects with some strong but varied results. At best there can be a beautiful range of tones and compositional juxtapositions which animate the compositions and their agitated subjects, such as in ‘this little piggy went to market’ where as gallery owner Kyla Cresswell comments the pigs have a gorgeous “fatty translucency”.
Nearby in Maree Horner’s series Eternal Realities, donkey’s are posed like male photographic models in contained areas within the home: in an opened wardrobe one moment, feet on a plush chair or poised miniature in a fireplace in another. In an ongoing series of works Horner opens out for questioning the symbolism of domestic settings and gender roles with intriguing, surreal recontextualisation of stock props. The surface of the etchings is squared as if they have been unfolded, encouraging an unpacking of meaning, while the still subjects are coolly dramatised by shadows and shading.
Solander is a welcome addition to the local gallery landscape, the diversity and high quality of the thirty or so artists’ work represented (see excellent website www.solandergallery.co.nz) proof enough of the space in Wellington for a works on paper dealer. Cresswell has taken up where Carole Charles’ excellent Grodentz gallery in a house in Newtown left off when it closed last year, with many artists from Charles’ stable finding a new home here.
Mumbling through to the Chorus, Bryce Galloway, until March 16, The Engine Room.
Nursery Rhymes for the 21st Century by Julienne Francis and External Realities by Maree Horner, until March 31, Solander Gallery.
Mark Amery's visual arts column courtesy of the Dominion Post, Friday March 16, 2007.
