Scoop

Graffiti Lounge

Graffiti turns private into public: it places an individual’s expression onto a privately-owned space to display to the community their contest of space. Graffiti is a reaction against the visual occupation of public space by companies’ and individual’s use of advertising billboards and Brutalist architecture; graffiti is a direct action in the contest of ownership of public space. 

With each exhibition, the white walls of a gallery are ‘tagged’ by a succession of artists’ works. However, rather than a contest of space between artist and gallery, it is a collaboration to contest the visual space of our culture. Gallery and artists work together to present and represent their ideal supremacy over the visual pollution that invades our everyday. Like graffiti, the exhibition is transient and fluid, with each one applied over the last, jostling for space and asserting ownership: graffiti and exhibitions grow in palimpsest.

Though serious in its challenge, the curation of this exhibition lounges; Gisborne in the height of summer is ground-zero for sauntering, and Graffiti Lounge reclines with a relaxed, confident attitude. It is not a clean, formal show, as it instigates a variety of aesthetics that reflect the chaotic nature of graffiti. Evan Woodruffe and Kimberley Annan have approached it with the method of graffiti crews, producing works separately and collaboratively, and inviting artists to join them in a show that contests the ownership of our visual space. Welcome to the Graffiti Lounge.

GRAFFITI LOUNGE ARTISTS:
Evan Woodruffe
Kim Annan
George Hajian
Sue Dickson
Virginia Leonard
Richard Darbyshire
Teresa Lane
Eloise Cato
Glen Hayward

CREDITS:
Film: Damon Meade
Photography by Tom Teutenberg @2TEN
Music: Melon Twister
PAULNACHE Productions © 2015

PAULNACHE presents Peter Adsett at The Melbourne Art Fair

Room with a View @MAF, IMG X Tom Teutenberg

Peter Adsett in conjunction with PAULNACHE, Gisborne (NZ) presents…

PETER ADSETT
ROOM WITH A VIEW
PAULNACHE, Stand E125, Ground floor
Melbourne Art Fair, 13 - 17 August, 2014, Royal Exhibition Building, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Melbourne, Australia

Shouldn’t there be more artists today who could make us look at painting in terms of its co-operation with the surrounding architecture?

The view offered in this room is not the contemplative distance that we require when we behold figurative work.  These abstract paintings are without the perspectival trajectories that focus the eye on central point. And they don’t ‘stay’ inside their frames.  Instead, the elements of the painting closely interact with the wall – and in fact, with all the architectural elements.  

The MAF gallery walls have been treated in such a way as to make this idea inescapable.  Torn wallpaper speaks to collage elements in the work, while holes and raw linen acknowledge the wall behind.  Black paint does what it has to in working against shadow and depth.  Layers of material peel away to expose undersides and reverses.  All the works, walls included, are in an ongoing process of exposure. 

Peter Adsett has challenged our perception in confusing the ground of painting.  Wall, linen, paper and paint all compete to be identified as ground or figure.  In the end we conclude that the only ground is the one where we stand.  So the perspective we attain is actually one we are inside.

Mary Alice Lee

ROOM WITH A VIEW: A CONVERSATION BETWEEN ARTIST PETER ADSETT, ARCHITECT SAM KEBBELL AND ART HISTORIAN MARY ALICE LEE
SATURDAY 16 AUGUST 11AM | ART, TALKS AND WALKS
Melbourne Art Fair ticket holders.
In 2009, NZ-born, Melbourne based painter Peter Adsett collaborated with NZ architect Sam Kebbell to build ‘Humbug’ studio/house, creating a “dialogue between painting and architecture.” This is the direction currently being explored in Adsett’s site specific installation and works exhibited at the Fair.
Royal Exhibition Building, Stand E125

ARTIST STUDIO AND PRIVATE COLLECTION TOUR: PAULNACHE PRESENTS PETER ADSETT'S HUMBUG
SUNDAY 17 AUGUST | 9:30AM -12:30PM
Collector Pass holders only. Login to RSVP.
Join this private collection and artist studio tour of Humbug House, a collaboration between Peter Adsett (artist), Sam Kebbell (Kebbell Daish Architects) and Mary Alice Lee (art historian/ writer), and discover how architecture and painting create a dialogue to something extraordinary.

Read Matt Ward's review in Australian Design Review

Biography

Born in Gisborne, New Zealand, in 1959, Peter Adsett has lived and worked in Australia since 1982, developing his painting practice. He exhibits regularly in both countries, and has had shows overseas in New York and Boston. 

His academic credentials include an MFA from the Northern Territory University, and a PhD from Australian National University. In 2001 he was awarded a grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and enjoyed residencies in the International Studio and Curatorial Program in New York, and the McDowell Colony in New Hampshire. Adsett’s work is held in institutions and museums in Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

Adsett has devoted twenty years now to an investigation of abstraction, and like such iconic figures as Richard Serra and Robert Ryman, he proves the enterprise to be one of great, untapped potential. One could even view Adsett’s art as a critique of abstract painting from the early 20th century to today, a task that became further complicated when he confronted the art of Indigenous Australians - what many believe is the most powerful painting produced today.

In 2000 he completed a series of large-scale acrylic paintings in collaboration with the Gija artist, Rusty Peters. The resulting exhibition of fourteen works (seven each), titled Two Laws, One Big Spirit travelled around Australia and New Zealand.

In 2009, Adsett built a house/studio in southern Victoria that was the fruit of another collaboration, this time with a New Zealand architect, Sam Kebbell. The innovative and much admired building (now housing Adsett and his family) is regarded as a “dialogue between painting and architecture.” 

This is the direction currently being explored in the works for the 2014 Melbourne Art Fair. Whilst he would maintain that his paintings always “take on the wall”, Adsett’s recent work engages with this proposition explicitly. Furthermore, in Room with a View the viewer will discover a degree of wit and humour, latent in much of his earlier work, but now coming to the fore with zest.

View an advanced preview of the exhibition online or request a list of works by clicking HERE.

Tickets to the Vernissage and day tickets can still be purchased HERE. 

Catalogues will be accessible to those attending the fair, however copies may be requested following the event. Please contact the Gallery for further information. 

We look forward to seeing you all at the Melbourne Art Fair. 

James R Ford's inaugural solo with Gisborne dealer PAULNACHE

James R Ford in conjunction with PAULNACHE, Gisborne, NZ presents... 

lol·ly·gag

  • intransitive verb \ˈlä-lē-ˌgag\
  • : to spend time doing things that are not useful or serious : to fool around and waste time

Forever playfully exploring the intimate relationships between physical media and everyday life: James R Ford’s investigations into, and reflections on, existential nature and the use of conventional materials and modes of presentation reveal countless nuanced contradictions as well as a fascination with process and the filling in of time. While mostly a creator of laboured drawings, well considered objects and videos, Ford also provides us with scenarios that have us pondering over the mundane and/or acting out the absurd as he invites us to look deeper into his works and what is taking place around us.

There are several strands to the concept behind these works, but all question the nature of the artwork and our perception therein. The exhibition title, Lollygag, was chosen as the works on show may appear to be foolish or useless on first glance. The idea here is to look at how we spend our time, what is considered a waste of time, and how thought alone can bring worth to something seemingly “worth nothing”.  Nothing as in empty, or the act of doing nothing (being idle, waiting, worrying), or the relative importance of an gesture or the worth of the artwork itself (nothing to offer, waste of time, pointless).

Bertrand Russell, from the essay  “In Praise of Idleness”, says “Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” This can be applied to the time spent producing the artworks, or the time used by the viewer in looking and contemplating them. Where do “wastes of time” sit in your hierarchy of needs? Maybe we all need some things we don’t need for the subsequent virtue or pleasure they can bestow. The exhibition will consist of a new body of work including film, drawing and object assemblage. With Hat Stand (Waiting for Godot) Ford invites viewers to try on and swap the hats on display, assuming other identities or personas, especially if you find yourself waiting for something. 

  • Opening: Friday, 4th of July, 6:00PM at PAULNACHE Upstairs 89 Grey St Gisborne,  NZ
  • Exhibition: 4th-26th July 2014

James R Ford (b. 1980, UK) studied at Goldsmiths College in London and currently lives and works in Wellington. He has exhibited widely throughout New Zealand and overseas and in 2013 was winner of the inaugural Tui McLauchlan Emerging Artist's Award from the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts. In 2014 Ford published a book of selected works, with accompanying texts, interviews and essays from 2008-2013, entitled Fail Better.

Slug und Lettuce

Upon recent return from Europe, artist Matt Arbuckle will be exhibiting works produced in Germany. Matt is based in Berlin, however will be showing throughout New Zealand during early 2014. His solo exhibition ‘Slug ind Lettuce’ opens at PAULNACHE 3 January 2014. Film shot and cut by Motif films and the artist.