No Straight Lines: Evan Woodruffe

28 o Āperira - 16 o Hūrae 2023
28 April – 16 July 2023

Waihangahia ai e Evan Woodruffe ngā taiao peita ngangahau.  Ko āna mahi he pēnei me te ‘mahere’ – he waihanga papa pārekareka, he taiao tūrehurehu, ka mutu, he nui ngā āhuatanga hei whakakorikori i ngā hinengaro o te minenga.

Ko tā No Straight Lines he whai i ngā kōrero o te peita me tō tātou taiao, mā te āwhata whakamiharo me te kakano. Kua hangaia e te ringatoi he toi piripiri i ōna hāte tawhito ki ētahi o ngā kānawehi, ka mutu, kua whakamahia tāna i kite ai me ngā rauemi o te ia rā - pēnei i te rino papatahi, te kirihou whaikano, ngā rau maroke, uku me te huruhuru - ki te tukanga peita.

Ko ngā toi a Woodruffe ka toro i te peita ki te kānawehi, i ngā mahi whakaniko peitatanga pikitia - i ētahi wā ka toro i ngā papanga, ngā hoahoa whare, ngā waka, ngā taputapu, ka mutu, ētahi atu rauemi.  E ngākaunui ana ia ki te whakamahi i ngā āhuatanga o te wheako me te whakarākei i te peita, ā, tana mahi i tō tātou ahurea ataata.

Kitea ana i No Straight Lines, te ngākaunui o te ringatoi ki te āheinga ā-auahatanga o ngā toi papariki, paparahi-rau anō hoki - e piri tahi ana ngā hoahoa hanganga ki ngā tohu kōpekapeka.  Ko tā Woodruffe mō tētahi toi peita kua hangaia ki ngā rawa huhua “kāore he tirohanga motuhake… kei te āhua o te hoahoa o te whare, ka piko i ngā koko… ka huri i te kaimātakitaki kia mataara te kitenga mōwaho”.

E noho ana, ā, e mahi ana a Evan Woodruffe i Tāmaki Makaurau. He MFA tō Woodruffe mai i Elam School of Fine Arts, kā mutu, kua whakaaturia e ngā whare toi tūmatanui puta noa i Aotearoa, tae atu ki Toi Tauranga, Dunedin Public Art Gallery me Whakatāne Museum and Arts. I whakaaturia āna mahi ki Beijing Biennale (2019) me te perēhitanga tuarima o Auckland Triennial (2013).

Evan Woodruffe creates lively, painterly environments. His visual language has been likened to ‘mapping’ – creating luscious surfaces and abstract landscapes with multiple points of departure for viewers.

No Straight Lines pursues dialogues between painting and our everyday surroundings, embracing immersive scale and texture. The artist has collaged fabric from his old shirts onto some of the canvases and incorporated found and commonplace materials – such as flattened metal, coloured plastic, dead leaves, earth and fur – into the painting process.

Woodruffe’s artistic practice spans painting on canvas, to works which play with reproductions of painted imagery – sometimes extending into textiles, architecture, cars, furniture and other objects. He embraces the experiential and decorative functions of painting, and its role in our visual culture at large.

In No Straight Lines, the artist is specifically interested in creative possibilities of tiled and multi-panel works – pushing against rigid architectural structures with meandering mark-making. Woodruffe describes a painting made of several pieces has “no fixed perspective … it can follow the architecture of a room, folding itself into the corners … around the viewer to encompass their periphery”.

Evan Woodruffe (b. 1965) lives and works in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Woodruffe has an MFA from Elam School of Fine Arts and exhibited in a range of public galleries throughout Aotearoa including Tauranga Art Gallery, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, and Whakatane Museum. His work has featured in the Beijing Biennale (2019) and the 5^th Auckland Triennial (2013).