Much activity in the visual arts sector this month, including a new gallery on the block! Bergman Gallery from Rarotonga has opened a branch in Auckland’s Art District of Karangahape Road, well worth a visit to welcome the new space and check out its opening exhibition featuring the stunning work of Telly Tuita, amongst others.
Bergman Gallery
Te Atuitanga – Between Our Cloak of Stars
Group Show on until 16 July
Artists: Mahiriki Tangaroa, Andy Leleisi’uao, Sylvia Marsters, Telly Tuita, Nina Oberg Humphries, Michel Tuffery, Benjamin Work, Raymond Sagapolutele and Kulimoe’anga Stone Maka.
Suite 3, 582 Karangahape Road, Newton (entrance on 2 Newton Road)
Trish Clark Gallery
The Song Remains The Same
Stella Brennan
On until 16 July
Stella Brennan prises open history, interrogating colonialism, industrialisation, and computerisation. Her practice incorporates video, sculptural constructions, photography and found objects, raising questions about the state of geopolitics, big media, the human condition, and our relationship to place. Works include interplanetary-style flybys of laptop packaging, and video from a home-made subatomic particle detector.
142 Great North Road, Grey Lynn
Masterworks Gallery
Te Matapihi
Group show on until 16 July
Artists: Jamie Berry, Neke Moa, Isaac Te Awa, Victor Te Paa, Shainey Moreli, Miriama Grace-Smith, Gina Kiel, Xoë Hall, Suzanne Tamaki, Terence Turner, Keri-mei Zagrobelna, and Stevei Houkāmau. Curated by uku artist Stevei Houkāmau, Te Matapihi offers a glimpse into the world of a group of artists who are based or have spent considerable time in Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington Harbour). Developing connections to the whenua and moana, Poneke has been a home away from home and they feel forever changed by the mauri (life force) of Te Whanganui-a-Tara. Stevei has brought together a group of artists across a diverse range of materials.
71 upper Queen Street, Newton
Melanie Roger Gallery
Recent Painting
Jennifer Mason
27 July – 20 August
Jennifer Mason draws inspiration for her practice from the depiction of the female nude in art history. The paintings are delicate and refined technically using traditional painting techniques and processes. The works are both concerned with compositional and painterly techniques that place emphasis on the body as a lived experience, as well as being concerned with ideas about beauty. Her current area of interest is the depiction of Mary Magdalene and the legend of her time spent in France. This is Mason’s first solo exhibition with Melanie Roger Gallery.
444 Karangahape Road, Newton
Starkwhite
Huggong-Monologue
Seung Yui Oh
Mid July – Mid August
Bowl takes the form of a monkey, the latest in a series of anthropomorphic sculptures that toy with scale and oscillate between adorable and curious. Oh has created animal forms that have metaphorical or metaphysical implications. They initially appear as playful, oversized objects of innocence, but closer looking revels forms that slide between naivety and wisdom. Oh is known for a practice that explores properties of space and experiments with materials and movement. His inflatables float elegantly or define unnoticed architectural space, orchestrating relationships that were formally invisible.
510 Karangahape Road, Newton
Artspace Aotearoa
Finding Pathways to Temahahoi
Anchi Lin/Ciwas Tahos
On until 6 August
Lins’ artwork takes us on a journey into Temahahoi; a legendary place where only women live. Lin recalls memories, dreams, and stories with elders of Temahahoi in her multimedia installation of performance, moving image, and cyberspace to interrogate sovereignty, and ways to imagine a space for connection in the wake of displacement and disconnection.
292 Karangahape Road, Newton
Gow Langsford Gallery
Asking For A Dream
Grace Wright
On until 23 July
Grace Wright’s paintings emit energy. They invite the viewer into a space tangled with coiled brush strokes that tighten and release. Space expands and contracts, in what could be viewed as expansive, post-apocalyptic worlds, or minute, interior landscapes. Wright cites influences on her thinking as diverse as 17th century religious paintings, and the tempestuous rhythms of the natural world. In her latest body of work, Asking For A Dream, Wright draws more closely upon the concept of a garden, and the relationship she sees between the cultivation of a garden and the act of painting.
Corner of Kitchener Street and Wellesley Street East, Auckland Central
Foenander Galleries
Mellifluous Aurora
Cathy Carter
On until 14 July
Carter’s work explores the relationship of individuals to bodies of water. Her work offers alternative vantage points to what we see and experience, drawing our attention to the evidence that these liquid ecosystems are significantly threatened. Carter’s practice navigates our complex psychological relationship to water, through different perspectives and geographical locations. She explores bodies of water as physical, cultural, and unique environmental ‘landscapes’ that offer the opportunity to reconnect emotionally with the natural world, as well as make connections with internal worlds.
455 Mt Eden Road, Mt Eden
