Blue Lies
Amanda Hewlett & Cathy Carter
Main Gallery
2 – 25 March
'The wind is writing what it knows in lines upon the water’.
What image does this statement evoke in the mind of the reader? How might it be represented visually? The ‘Blue Lies’ exhibition by Amanda Hewlett and Cathy Carter seeks to address those questions. Using a series of statements about water, Hewlett and Carter have independently created a series of works that express and offer their interpretation of what the writer had in mind.
Does it match yours?
Homage
Amanda Hewlett
'...lest we resemble sea-birds which perch upon a rock, when the tide flows, the rock is covered by the sea, and the birds take flight, for they have no resting place'.
These words written by Wiremu Kingi Te Rangitake over 150 years ago, apply today to people separated from their turangawaewae. Hewlett's exhibition 'Homage' is inspired by these words.
Fluid Realms
Cathy Carter
This exhibition features nine large scale photographs that explore bodies of water as physical, cultural, social and unique environmental ‘landscapes’. Carters practice investigates our often complex psychological relationship to water through different perspectives and geographical locations to create new ways of experiencing these spaces.
Jana completed a degree in Fine Arts at the University of Pretoria (South Africa) in 2008. She worked as a full-time artist and enjoyed giving art classes in her studio until she relocated to New Zealand, with her husband and two boys, in 2016.
In her previous work she explored the possibility of 'weaving' with paint as a metaphor for flesh with reference to the Book of Psalms. Her interest in the flesh; as a physical manifestation of humanity; universally bound by time and always in a state of change, has continued to influence her work.
Her recent experience of being submerged in an entirely new environment and subsequently meeting hundreds of new people in a very short period of time has prompted a new direction in her work.
She has become acutely aware that 'the flesh' is much like 'the character' in that it is in a constant state of change and development. Our human experiences and interactions are so complex and layered; often guarded and often staged; frustrating and restricting our ability to know each other.
Currently, she is exploring the notion of ‘Being Known’ through a series of portraits. She is drawn to the tension of creating an impression of something or someone, whilst celebrating the mediums used as the ‘fabric’ of the impression - the paint, the brush and the canvas.
Her painting process involves building the picture plane with brush strokes, whilst leaving parts of the canvas undeveloped emulating the effect that the progression of time has on our ‘character’. She aims to enable the viewer to trace her brush, offering them a ‘window’ into the past whilst illuminating the obscurity of it. Her constructional process further allures to the manner in which situations and moments in life might influence, build and shape us.
Seun
Jana Branca
Oil
$3500