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.