SENSE OF PLACE

Dear Garden by Cristina Silaghi

28 July 2012 - 9 September 2012

Sense of Place explores the relationship between art-making and place from the perspectives of four contemporary artists. Celia Wilson, Kim Lowe, Helga Goran and Cristina Silaghi draw, paint and make prints as well as photographs, often combining some of these approaches in their respective practices.

From the various places she visits, Wilson collects natural pigments which she transforms into paint and employs in her works on paper and canvas. Lowe examines the contrasts between her Pakeha and Chinese heritage, and addresses the effects of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake in her recent works and projects. Photographing often disregarded urban locations, or natural environments where structure and form become visible, Goran creates digital collages that present the same place from a multitude of perspectives. Silaghi allows place to take shape intuitively in works that echo the rhythms of natural processes and surroundings. 

Taking the interdisciplinary investigations of Wilson, Lowe, Goran and Silaghi a step further, this exhibition offers the artists an opportunity to set their works in spatial dialogue – in other words, to create a meeting point of artistic reflection so as to illuminate various facets of place, as experienced through living and making.

Okains Bay Road No 5 by Celia Wilson

Master Iron Door waiting outside the gate with scales and a basket to buy Beancurd by Kim Lowe.

Detail of composite 7-2 by Helga Goran