B.

Revelling in a kind of contemporary baroque, Miranda Parkes’ Slumper began as a three by nine metre piece of flat canvas, but – being too large for the studio floor – had to be folded into thirds before being painted and scrunched into this form. Having grappled with the problem of creating more objects in a world already filled with objects, Parkes negotiated a kind of truce with this dilemma, flipping it around and using spectacular excess as a potentially useful ingredient. While retaining an honest, at times iconoclastic stance, she is nevertheless drawn to the sensory aspects of canvas, colour and paint; elaborate costume, circus tents and over-the-top, opulent interiors are occasionally grist to her painter’s mill.

(As Time Unfolds, 5 December 2020 – 7 March 2021)

Peter Trevelyan’s choice of 0.5mm mechanical pencil leads as a sculptural medium, although unlikely, suggests three-dimensional drawing, thereby connecting his work to drawing’s traditionally defined role. The structure recalls topographical landforms as seen from a distance; the shipboard sketches of late-eighteenth-century European explorers. It also speaks of historical mapping systems; the recording of trigonometric points to describe geology and landforms.

(Above ground, 2015)

Automated Colour Field (Variation 4) is a kinetic sculpture made from a grid of battery powered alarm clocks. The artist has replaced the numbered panels that represent hours and minutes with coloured cards, which regularly flip over into new configurations. The work is in continuous motion, creating a constantly changing arrangement that tells its own time – and takes time to view. As you watch the cards whirr around, as they rise and fall, you become aware of the variety of colour combinations. You’re drawn to some, possibly repelled by others. Rebecca Baumann is interested in the emotional associations of colour. When she was making these works, she says, she was thinking about the wide range of emotions you feel in a day. “Everything is always about that perfect moment, but really life is just a series of many moments.”

(Now, Then, Next: Time and the Contemporary, 15 June 2019 – 8 March 2020)

Bill Culbert’s high school art teacher asked his students to stand in a dark room, then went outside. The sunlight streamed through the keyhole, projecting a tiny image of him – upside down and waving – on the room’s far wall. From that moment, Culbert was excited by light’s power to transform how we see the world. These sculptures were some of the first he made exploring the possibilities of electric light. In Celeste, he placed a lightbulb into a dark box full of tiny holes, then put that inside a bigger Perspex box so that it generates multiple ‘ghost’ bulbs on the outside. Reflection 1 tests the line between reality and illusion, as another bulb repeats itself into infinity. Culbert liked ordinary, everyday materials best, believing they left more room for the imagination.

(Wheriko - Brilliant! 17 May 2019 – 16 February 2020)

Paris-born Louise Henderson was one of the first Aotearoa New Zealand artists to address abstraction, and became interested in architectural forms during her two years living in the Middle East from 1956–58. Made after a visit to Britain, The Farmhouse in Cornwall shows her use of built structures as a starting point for generating complex and dynamic compositions. Here, an arrangement of hard-edged forms in earthy, subdued tones deftly leads the eye, never completely allowing it to rest in one place.

(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )