Nar­ra­tive Play­grounds is a group exhi­bi­tion at Pix­el Ink Gallery of visu­al works by emerg­ing and estab­lished New Zealand artists. The com­mon theme of the show is that the work is inspired by sto­ries and the imag­i­na­tion.

Collage of images from the show
A col­lage of images from Nar­ra­tive Play­grounds

Gallery direc­tor, Ros­alind Clark, said the exhi­bi­tion is all about trans­lat­ing the imag­i­na­tion onto a blank can­vas. The artist’s brief was to cap­ture the essence of a dra­mat­ic scene play­ing out in their mind and based in a famil­iar nar­ra­tive or a cre­ation of their own imag­i­na­tion. The only require­ment was that the works con­tain a sto­ry unfold­ing around char­ac­ters, set­tings or objects.

The group show fea­tures work in dif­fer­ent dis­ci­plines and media by Ani Fourie, Autumn McGrail, Rebec­ca Robin­son, Car­men Rogers, Char­lotte Ellayne-Welch, Devon Smith, Flo­rence Thorn­burn, Jinx in the Sky, KIRAN‑X, Lucy Yu, Melis­sa McDougall, Rachel Walk­er, Trevor Kohing and Ros­alind Clark, who are based in Welling­ton, New Ply­mouth, Taupo, Tau­ran­ga and Hamil­ton.

I say:

Con­sid­er­ing an inten­tion of a lot of pic­to­r­i­al graph­ic and visu­al art would already be to con­vey a nar­ra­tive of some descrip­tion, the the­mat­ic empha­sis for this show real­ly gives the artists “their head” and a lot of free­dom to push some bound­aries. Points of dif­fer­ence would be that the nar­ra­tive must pre­sum­ably be con­veyed with­in a (sin­gle?) work rather than a series or body of work; and that this cura­to­r­i­al impe­tus removes the dual­i­ty of allu­sion and the tra­di­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ty for the view­er to add by infer­ence and / or inter­pre­ta­tion their own nar­ra­tive / mean­ing.

The result­ing work in this show will be inter­est­ing both from the point-of-view of how suc­cess­ful it is on its own mer­it and also how well the work man­ages its sin­gu­lar sto­ry-telling role. Are the sto­ries worth telling? Is it going to mean that if you (or I) “don’t get it”, that we real­ly don’t get it? Of that you (and I) will have to be the judge!

The exhi­bi­tion Nar­ra­tive Play­grounds opens at Pix­el Ink Gallery on Fri­day 29th of April at 5.30 pm. The show runs from the 30th of April – 29th of May, 2011. Work in the show will be avail­able for sale.

Pix­el Ink Gallery, 219 Cuba Street, Welling­ton

Gallery open­ing hours:
Mon – Sat: 11.00am – 5.00pm
Sun: 11am – 4.00pm
Phone: 04–385-9136

For more infor­ma­tion vis­it their web­site or email the gallery.