Installation view. Photo: Cheska Brown
Kate Small, (from left to right), 'Muritai Road', 2023, 'Maybe Road', 2023, 'Black Road', 2023, 'Green Street', 2023. Courtesy of Anna Miles Gallery. Photo: Cheska Brown
Installation view. Photo: Cheska Brown
James Orsby, 'B (en rouge) LD #27' (left), 2019. Courtesy of PAULNACHE and private collector.
'Matawai' (right), 2023. Courtesy of the artist and PAULNACHE. Photo: Cheska Brown
Nephi Tupaea, 'If The Shoe Fits' (left), 2023. Private collection of Natalie Robertson. 'The Book' (right), 2023. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Cheska Brown
Installation view. Photo: Cheska Brown
Rob McLeod, 'Self Portrait' (foreground), 2021, and 'River' (background), 2019. Courtesy of the artist and Robert Heald Gallery Wellington. Photo: Cheska Brown
Lorene Taurerewa, Lonely Praire, 2022. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Cheska Brown
Installation view. Photo: Cheska Brown
Hannah Ireland, (from left to right), 'Black Wash', 2019. Courtesy of the artist. 'Wasting Time, Just a Little Bit', 2021, and 'More Space to Ourselves, 2021. Courtesy of the artist and Jhana Millers Gallery. Photo: Cheska Brown
Nephi Tupaea, Waikato Te Awa, 2021. Image courtesy of the artist
Whether it’s the neighbours you’ve never met, the cast of characters in old family photographs or the people you pass on the street; we come across the familiar faces of strangers every day. This sense of unknowing recognition is one of the reasons we are drawn to paintings of people even if we don’t know them?
This exhibition is an exploration of the painted figure shown through ten unique artist’s perspectives. Each has captured their own cast of characters and the environments they inhabit through a range of media. Some are based on actual spaces and faces while others are an amalgam of impressions either sampled from real life or plucked out of the imagination. There are towering cowboys, women inventors and sad flowers inhabiting miniature landscapes, windowpanes and shadowy stages. This is not an exhibition of formal portraits but a diverse celebration of ourselves reflected back at us in extraordinary ways.
The artists in this exhibition are Alan Ibell, Andrew McLeod, Hannah Ireland, James Ormsby, John Ward Knox, Kate Small, Lorene Taurerewa, Nephi Tupaea, Sam Mitchell and Ursula Bradley.