As we approach the introspective season, galleries quieten, allowing for deeper, more personal engagement with art. Juxtapose June’s cooler air with creative warmth, and take some time to contemplate this month’s selection of exhibitions.
BERGMAN GALLERY
Heralds
Lucas Grogan and Luke Thurgate
6 – 29 June
Heralds unites Australian artists Lucas Grogan and Luke Thurgate at Bergman Gallery Auckland. Grogan’s paintings explore home medicine cabinets, revealing existential anxieties, desires, and realities through collections
of used medicines, making a wry comment on the daily grind. Thurgate’s small-scale paintings, inspired by the late Renaissance, depict erotic male bodies in religiously inspired cloudscapes, covering themes of sexuality, romance, power, and identity, via a blend of parody, sincerity, menace, and vulnerability.
2 Newton Road, Grey Lynn
MELANIE RODGER GALLERY
Long Distance
Emily Wolfe
6 – 27 June
UK-based New Zealand artist Emily Wolfe’s new work continues her exploration of still-life painting, by piecing together old reproductions of landscape scenes and layering over segments of tracing paper and tape, referencing her archaeological experiences.
These paintings start with paper collages, which are photographed and then discarded. The raw material includes photocopies of landscape prints, coloured paper, cellophane, cardboard, and studio scraps. Larger paintings may feature collages as backdrops to found objects like old furniture, tools, and measuring implements.
Wolfe’s process draws parallels between painting and archaeological excavation, both involving layering and stratification to reveal narratives. Her intention is to balance the opposing ideas of addition and subtraction in her art.
444 Karangahape Rd, Newton
melanierogergallery.com
FÖENANDER GALLERIES
Holy Crops
Vishmi Helaratne
On until – 24 June
The inaugural exhibition for Föenander Galleries’ new exhibition space at 1 Faraday Street, Parnell Holy Crops presents sculptural paintings by Vishmi Helaratne. The artist explores colour theory and the intersection of painting and sculpture through their work. Helaratne creates three-dimensional forms on flat wood surfaces, using a piping bag to apply layers of iridescent paint, resembling cake decoration. The process evokes a sense of freedom and intergenerational trauma for the artist, layered and solidified through a meditative process. Helaratne’s practice integrates community, performance, and personal history by drawing on their Sri Lankan heritage and culinary background. Their work delves into themes around sex, identity, and multiculturalism.
1 Faraday Street, Parnell
STARKWHITE QUEENSTOWN
Behind Forward
Seung Yul Oh
5 June – 6 July
For this new body of work Seung Yul Oh’s painting practice takes a new direction, re-examining concepts of depth, perspective, and translucency the artist previously explored in his early sculptural work. Some paintings are otherworldly and diaphanous with uncertain perspective and compositional depth. Others offer a more dense surface with bold, undisguised brushstrokes and high-keyed, vibrant colour palette. Seung Yul Oh has created an instantly recognisable and idiosyncratic practice combining elements of East Asian popular culture with ironic references to high Western art history. He works across sculpture, painting, and public art.
1–7 Earl Street, Queenstown
SANDERSON CONTEMPORARY
Visual Linguistics
Kāryn Taylor
12 June – 7 July
In Visual Linguistics Taylor uses geometric form, colour and light as a descriptive language of the universe, describing unknowable ideas that are beyond our everyday thought processes, enabling us to link to a deep knowledge of self, existence and the underlying truths of reality. Her practice is informed by geometric abstraction, which stems from her interest in quantum physics. Finalist in the Fulbright Wallace Award, Parkin Drawing Prize, the Waikato Contemporary Art Award, and the Lola Anne Tunbridge Award. She lives and works in Māpua, Nelson.
Osborne Lane / 2 Kent Street, Newmarket
GOW LANGSFORD
Attraction and Transmission
David McCracken
15 June – 13 July
Attraction and Transmission presents a new exhibition of large-scale sculptures by Auckland based artist David McCracken. This body of works develops and extends themes from McCracken’s 2020 solo exhibition with Gow Langsford, Exalt in Transmission.
McCracken derives the forms of his sculptural objects from mechanical origins – one can detect underlying reference to engine belts, cogs, and other machine elements. These everyday objects are worked through an artistic process and transformed into monumental sculptures fabricated from Corten steel.
Gow Langsford Onehunga, 4 Princes St, Onehunga
ARTSPACE AOTEAROA
Joie noire: Jimmy Robert
Jimmy Robert
On until – 13 July
Each year Artspace Aotearoa orbits one question in the company of artists and through exhibitions. In 2024 we ask “do I need territory?” We continue our exploration of this question with Joie noire, the first solo exhibition in the Moana-nui-a-Kiwa region, of Guadeloupe-born, Berlin-based artist Jimmy Robert, our inaugural Goethe-Insitut visiting Practitioner. Breaking down divisions between two and three dimensions, subject and object, Joie noire is a reinterpretation of Robert’s seminal performance of the same title, debuted at KW Institute of Contemporary Art, Berlin in 2019, developed especially for Artspace.
Aotearoa.292 Karangahape Road, Newton
