With the intention of going to get a coffee, I trip-trapped over the motorway bridge and down to Cuba Street and found myself inside Bowen Galleries.
SOMEONE has some ceramic works in the window space although I don’t recall his or her name, Bowen Galleries update your Goddamn website so I don’t have to rely on my memory please. I even looked in my artnews mag and the info wasn’t there, yeah, analog research. Bowen, one of us needs to get our shit together.
Inside were works from Kim Pieters (who also currently has a show running at Artspace with Anoushka Akel). They are delicate and clumsy all at once, like the artist stuck pencils in her eyes and drew it like that. The more I think about it the more I’m convinced that was the case. The pencil case.
Kim Pieters – Bowen Galleries
I’m not sure about the scale of these works, I sort of glazed over them. They are about a metre square if my excellent memory serves me correctly, and the lines are softly tiny arthritic whispers amongst wet pink pastel. Maybe they weren’t quite suited to that space, I have seen other smaller works in there that were easier to view and more engaging. The space really impacts the experience of these works, you can’t step back from them, I don’t feel like they were well lit. This was pre-coffee mind you so it is highly possible that my eyes were half closed, take that in to account.
It reminds me of Melanie Bell and Saskia Leek; that minimal, not-trying to be art, purposeful but not, undefined lines that are somehow still defined, pastel, but on a much larger scale, with the same amount of care. I would love to see these somewhere with a bit more natural light.
Hamish Mackay was next, I look forward to going up here but their current show John Nixon is… lame potatoes.
Description: A4-ish sized works x 8, shit glued to it, spray painted silver. It makes me think of some of the crap I see on friends walls (sorry friends) when they want to brighten up a room. Warehouse canvas, poster paint, geometry, hey presto! I actually hated it, it is hands-down-pants the worst show I’ve seen the whole time I’ve been in Wellington.
John Nixon
Silver Monochrome, 2010
enamel and wood on canvas 305 x 230 mm
“To the uneducated an A is just three sticks.”- A A Milne
Usually after an exhibition I go home and see what other information I can find on the artist; this exhibition did inspire me to do that to see weather I was missing something. Apparently he has been around for a while; average time spent looking at the first entry on him on Google < 30seconds.
amandalikesart 