This month’s selection serves to illuminate our spirits and inspire our souls to envision a brighter, more harmonious world. It highlights the profound connection between nature and human creativity, in celebration of life’s cyclical beauty.
TWO ROOMS
Lighting the Path & The Tidy Behavior of Matter
Gretchen Albrecht & Helen Calder
11 Nov – 21 Dec
An exhibition of vintage and new works, Gretchen Albrecht is one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s preeminent abstract painters. Albrecht’s sensuous colour palette and stained canvas’s act as a generous counterpoint for rhythmic patterns of gestural movement, form and scale. The tactile quality of the work, with its assured swirling brushstrokes, resonates strongly with Albrecht’s allusions to an inward sense of order engaged in a perpetually dynamic relationship with the underlying rhythms of a natural, mythological cosmos. Helen Calder’s practice actively teases out the problem of painting’s identity, through dissembling the medium to its constitutive parts: pigment, surface, support, site. Surfaces and supports have been cleaved apart, with paint and armature reconfigured to suggest new relationships.
16 Putiki Street, Grey Lynn.
MELANIE ROGER GALLERY
Chart Of Aotearoa V
Stanley Palmer
25 Oct – 18 Nov
New work by renowned New Zealand painter Stanley Palmer continues his exploration of his beloved Aotearoa in this new series of oil paintings. These are quintessentially New Zealand places captured by one of our most admired landscape artists. This exhibition will feature nine new works – the fifth in his ambitious series revisiting and charting his favourite locations throughout the country.
444 Karangahape Rd, Newton.
ANNA MILES GALLERY
Reverse Monopoly Big Wigs
Richard Stratton
28 Oct – 16 Nov
A new exhibition of twisted and rebuilt wares from the “Teapot meister of Karori’, Richard Stratton. Stratton’s abundant ceramic stream of consciousness is the result of encyclopaedic knowledge of industrial pottery technologies and unrestrained curiosity about any controversy in the social fabric. In this new series, wild clay and mowed verges meet cronyism and nuclear cooling towers.
10/30 Upper Queen St.
OPEN STUDIOS
Waitakere
Various artists, including Maria Owens
18-19 November
Maria paints intuitively and gets inspiration from her surroundings, music and the mood she is in. She paints to lose track of time, to be totally absorbed, to be mindful of shapes, colours and lines. “Open Studios is my favourite time of the year,” she says. “It’s a great way to have a chat with artists in their home/studio. I will have new mixed media paintings available, a few vessels and sculptures. Plus I will have a sale on my earlier works.” Every time a painting is sold Maria donates to Trees That Count so a native tree in New Zealand will be planted in the region the buyer is from.
31 Kopiko Rd, Titirangi.
STARKWHITE
Star Stare Start
Bonco
20 Oct – 19 Nov
The artist’s first solo exhibition with Starkwhite, this show investigates the unseen world through eye popping works, each of which took roughly 100 hours to paint and embody metaphor in their physicality. Bonco uses geometric painting to explore the existential questions through metaphor and process.
94 Newton Road, Newton.
BERGMAN GALLERY
Five Painters
Roy Good, Gavin Jones, Louie Bretana, Rhea Maheshwari, Llenyd Price
16 Nov – 21 Dec
Five Painters features five diverse intergenerational New Zealand painters, who each use a unique approach of applying acrylics to their paintings. From Roy Good’s very carefully applied sleek colours to mark-making styles of Gavin Jones. From Indian dreamscapes of Rhea Maheshwari to ancient Filipino celestial deities covered in glitter and glass crystals by Louie Bretaña, and Llenyd Price’s landscapes derived from drawings, photographs, and memories that are distorted and layered.
2 Newton Road, Grey Lynn.
MAKERS GALLERY
Precious Vessels
Rosie Parsonson & Richard Darbyshire
19 Nov – 2 Dec
Since 2013 Whangārei based artists Rosie Parsonson and Richard Darbyshire have collaboratively developed their practices together in the ceramics discipline. In this exhibition, the engraved lines and brush work composed by the hand and mind of Rosie, sits over and around the vessels and forms thrown and sculpted by Richard.
143 Marua Rd, Mt Wellington.
THE ARTS SOCIETY AUCKLAND
Io Saturnalla: Happy Christmas the Roman Way
Gillian Hovell, UK
8 Nov 7:15pm-7:30pm
Gillian Hovell, an expert in ancient and classical history, gives a lecture showing how pagan habits are intricately linked with our Christmas traditions. Her lecture revels in art which is both ancient and modern. Tickets: $35.
Venue: The Rialto, 167/169 Broadway, Newmarket
