The exhibition runs until the 25th of October and will be open for veiwing between 10am and 5pm daily.
The exhibition runs until the 25th of October and will be open for veiwing between 10am and 5pm daily.
Never leave a bag of sea tulips in the lounge. The full bodied odour of decaying marine organism can put a severe strain on family harmony.
After such an incident I decided to photograph the carcasses of these magnificent creatures on location. The specimens displayed here were gathered at Riverton, in Southland. Sometimes many thousands of these creatures are washed up on the eastern beaches of the South Island.
I imagine they are called sea tulips because of the way they generally grow in huge colonies, all swaying in the current like a field of tulips. Intriguingly they are more closely related to you and me than they are to terrestrial tulips.
They are part of the Phylum Chordata which also includes mammals and birds. This connection with us drew me to take a closer look. On closer inspection I found many that resembled, in a slightly cartoonish way, older rock stars. The lives of these sea tulips (Pyura pachydermatina) are not as frenetic or famous. They start out as tadpole like larvae, swimming about trying to find a suitable location to take up residence for the rest of their lives. A prime spot could be a rock, wharf pile or any piece of solid sea bed. Once found, this location will have to provide “the right” conditions that will allow the filter feeding siphons of the animals access to an abundance of planktonic food in the surrounding water. To secure the position the larva adheres itself to the spot and starts to transform into an adult. During their one - two year life span they can grow up to 50cm, most of this is stalk. The ‘flower’ heads are about 20 - 80mm.
I exhibited the ‘Rock Stars’ at CoCA gallery in Christchurch earlier this year.
This grouping is called ‘Board Members’. The names have been generalised from many companies boards of directors, any likes to anyone living or dead is purely accidental!
- Maurice Lye
The exhibition of Board Members is currently showing online until September 7th
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Sarawut Chutiwongpeti - http://www.chutiwongpeti.info
GILT is honoured to have been host to the work of international photographer, sculptor, painter and film-maker Sarawut Chutiwongpeti during our One Night Stand exhibition ‘Between the Eyes’ (June 12th 2009).
We are really interested in the unique perspective that various media and cultural influences can bring to otherwise familiar themes-such as the ever evasive landscape of the subconscious, and the mechanics of ‘the dream’, as seen in Chutiwongpeti’s filmic triptych ‘Untitled’ (wishes, Lies and Dreams)
Born in Bangkok, Thailand, Sarawut Chutiwongpeti received his BFA, with a photography major, from The Department of Fine and Applied Arts at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, in 1996.
Since Graduation Chutiwongpeti has been the recipient of multiple international awards and prizes for his work, and has received a vast number of international artist’s grants that have allowed him to continue the development of his artistic practice and research worldwide.
Chutiwongpeti’s exhibition history spans multiple continental and cultural territory. In 1999 the artist was invited, by the Japan Foundation Fellowship Program, to undertake 6 months of artistic research and practise within Japan. Since this residency Chutiwongpeti has exhibited extensively, in both solo and group shows, in countries such as Canada, the United States of America, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Austria, Italy, Germany, Egypt, Singapore, Malaysia, Korea and Japan.
Chutiwongpeti currently lives and works in his home land, Bangkok, Thailand, though wishes to continue to travel as an artist, with plans to work this year in the United States of America, Spain and Norway.
While ‘Between the Eyes’ is the first exhibition of Chutiwongpeti’s work in Christchurch, the artist has previously exhibited in Dunedin at Blue Oyster Art Project Space, and plans to visit and exhibit in New Zealand again in the near future.
The artist can be contacted via email at utopia1998@gmail.com
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Filmic triptych 'Dreams, Wishes and Lies' along with Gigantic insects and ethereal figures, lurking in the bowels of the Christchurch Art Centre's SOFA Gallery- Nibelheims]]>Below is a section from 'The Malborough Express' on the exhibition winners:
"Cardinals, saints, vines, taps and valleys all caught the attention the the judges at an art competition in Blenheim.
The Peters Doig Art Awards is a national competition for artists in any medium, with the works then exhibited in the Marlborough Art Gallery and Society in High St.
The winners were announced at a function on Saturday night at the gallery.
First prize of $2500, donated by Peters Doig Chartered Accountants, went to Wilhelmus Ruifrok of Christchurch for his Iconoclast - The Cardinal, The Saint, The Reaper and That Gate.
Judges John Parker and Richard Ponder agree this piece of work is a "gem".
They say the swirling subtlety and intriguing mysterious composition grows on you as it changes in different lights, giving the figures life and movement.
Second prize of $1000 donated by the Marlborough Art Society went to Anna-Marie Kingsley of Carterton, third prize of $500 donated by Mark Stevenson First National went to Vicki Knudsen of Darfield and fourth prize of a $250 voucher for The Drawing Room went to Suzanne Herschell of Wellington." More of the article is available at the Malborough Express website
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GILT are proud to announce that we are now official supporters of Oculus 'Postgraduate Journal for Visual Arts research'.
OCULUS is a peer-reviewed journal. The first and current issue (available in Christchurch at Scorpio Books and The Christchurch Art Gallery Bookshop) was produced entirely by postgraduate students from the University of Canterbury Department of Art History and Theory (Christchurch, New Zealand), and focuses broadly on research in the field of visual arts and culture.
Oculus are currently looking to extend their scope of Visual Arts Research around tertiary institutions in New Zealand and will be open to submissions from postgraduate students New Zealand wide.
Further details on Oculus and details on how to submit material to Oculus for consideration for the next issue are available here.
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]]>Gaby Montejo’s work demonstrates Adorno’s conception of art’s inherent (conventional) non-functionality as basis for political statement. The conventional means of engagement with flour and the photo-reactive are subverted in favour of the unintentional and spontaneous. The capturing of the real temporal ephemerality of the flame’s image reopens questions of power and control, moving beyond the drive toward closure in favour of ongoing discussion. Experiment as performance here joins with the disavowal or problematization of the ego through unintentionality pioneered by Fluxus practitioners such as John Cage and Jackson Mac Low.
Zhong Hao Chen's work is characterised by excess and overflow. Grotesque luxuriance permeates his treatment of the canvasses, implicating the viewer in an economy of gluttony. The earthy, brutal palette contributes to this treatment of unease, as staple foodstuffs are destroyed in a rage of gestural, antagonistic brushstrokes, and conflated with scatological textures and tones in an unnerving conflation of sustenance and excrement.
Shannon Williamson’s work operates as an unveiling, a tearing open of the skin to unveil the libidinal impulses lurking below the surface, those of muscle, tissue and organ. The folds of flesh operate as points of contact and problematized sites of difference, where the differentiation between bodies and their constitutive parts are complicated by contact and penetration, rupture and permutation, and the conventional notion of body as site for autonomous subjectivity is erased.
Oscar Enberg’s practice involves a proto-modernist network of complex over-coding and associations, resulting in dense, hermetic works that resist entry. These drawings pertain to a mechanical or (a-) functional allegory of sexuality, production and conceptual relationships through the construction and deconstruction of thought experiments. Enberg weaves a trail of wreckage, using the iambic foot as a chassis for his war machine, exploiting and pillaging the resources of history. This is a performance of irresponsibility as social work, a deconstruction and subversion of the discourses of history, visual art and theatre, leaving a trail of destruction through the narratives of western artistic canons.
--Ross Brighton
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Cuban-American sculptor J. Gabriel Montejo "Gaby" tends towards food as art media. Universally, these materials can open a dialogue about anything from cultural taboos to international trade. Though, in an artistic context, the appeal of food-stuffs, as art objects, lies in their ability to change over time. Gaby has worked with food-as-media extensively, using stuff such as melons, oranges, pumpkins, bread, cheese, meats, bananas and carrots. His works demonstrate a conceptual concern for hierarchies...'the idea of a dominant thing trying to have control over something lesser'.
Gaby looks forward each day to cooking and playing with his two children, the youngest of which arrived within days of the opening of his last exhibition, "Before Dust". He is also severely colour-blind.
Born in 1974, Gaby grew up in Miami graduating with honours in 2000 with concurrent dual degrees from acclaimed art school, Virginia Commonwealth University.
Awarded a scholarship from the VMFA, Gaby was able to study overseas. He gained his postgraduate degree from Sydney College of Art in 2006 before moving to Christchurch, New Zealand, where he lives and works.
Gaby taught art for many years before coming to the University of Canterbury’s School of Fine Arts to run their workshop.
Artist's CV here.
Aside from "Before Dust", Gaby has most recently exhibited at Auckland's "Sculpture On Shore" and The Physics Room’s Kiosk in Christchurch.
The flat images displayed in 'Before Dust' were made using the photogram process in a specialized darkroom. The white sections of the prints mark the area where flour was piled above the light-sensitive paper. Alcohol was then poured over the piles and set on fire. The black portions show where the paper was exposed to light from the flames. Firelight also leaked under and through the flour in unpredictable ways (reds & blues) making the prints a memory of a unique event that cannot be reproduced.
For these pieces, the flour was arranged into geographical land-masses and coastlines of the world. Through the prescriptive burning of each location, a significant transformation was achieved (charred surfaces). The result on paper is the captured process of a destructive event.
"Before Dust" also displayed a 200kg mound of white flour with the burned silhouette of Banks Peninsula on its surface.
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