Double-header imminent at Solander: Works on Paper

Solan­der Gal­lery: Works on Paper is Wel­ling­ton’s con­tem­por­ary works on paper gal­lery. I have a soft spot for print­mak­ing and being a gal­lery that – not exclus­ively, mind – spe­cial­ises in this dis­cip­line with a con­sist­ent rota­tion of strong shows from tal­en­ted New Zea­l­and print­makers, Solan­der has become a favour­ite space of mine to vis­it. They also run work­shops on book­bind­ing and print­mak­ing tech­niques.

Open­ing on Wed­nes­day night, their new­est exhib­i­tion fea­tures a double-head­er show of new work by paint­er Inge Does­burg and by print­maker Ben Reid. There is ostens­ibly no con­nec­tion between the two shows. Does­bur­g’s Above Water series explores the power­ful sym­bol­ic nature of water. Accord­ing to one source, the expres­sion ‘above the water’ rep­res­ents spir­itu­al enlight­en­ment, and this links well with a poem by Goethe that is a favour­ite of the artist. Ges­ang der Geister über den Wassern dis­cusses the cir­cu­lar­ity of life and death and arbit­rar­i­ness of fate. Does­bur­g’s view­point is often from an elev­ated pos­i­tion with an expans­ive view of sea and sky. Her paint­ings reflect upon the divi­sion between the nat­ur­al and super­nat­ur­al worlds.

Mean­while in Ben Reid’s Para­dise Lost the artist com­bines ref­er­ences to spe­cif­ic loc­al envir­on­ment­al his­tor­ies while main­tain­ing a wider appre­ci­ation for the big­ger pic­ture of the con­ser­va­tion move­ment. Reid describes the works as ‘small stor­ies for those pre­pared to listen’, gentle remind­ers of the fra­gile nature of our envir­on­ment and how eas­ily these vul­ner­able eco­sys­tems are des­troyed by human inter­ven­tion.

I say:

Reid’s prints ambi­tiously com­bine the some­what appos­ite tech­niques of wood­b­lock relief and dry­po­int etch­ing and I am curi­ous to see how suc­cess­ful this has been. Based on the pro­mo­tion­al photo (right) he’s clearly a tal­en­ted image-maker but can he pull off this com­plic­ated print­ing pro­cess con­sist­ently enough? One really has little way of know­ing until the chance arrives to see the works up close. What addi­tion­ally intrigues me are the “small stor­ies” he is telling and wheth­er they man­age to find good bal­ance between whimsy and over-sen­ti­ment­al­ity, between reas­on and didacti­cism, between instruc­tion and excess­ive mor­al­ising. I may also dis­cov­er a more robust con­nec­tion to Milton than I can ima­gine at this moment; plus some­thing about the image of a small bird sel­lo­taped to a wall just tickles me fancy.

Based on the single pro­mo­tion­al image (above) Does­bur­g’s paint­ings appear to wor­ship at the church of land­scape paint­ing in New Zea­l­and, your High Priest Sir M. Toss­will Wool­a­ston. That is not to say at all that this is is a bad thing but it’s a for­mid­able tra­di­tion to be asso­ci­ated with. I’m also inter­ested in the suc­cess of her con­vey­ance of “spir­itu­al enlight­en­ment … the divi­sion between the nat­ur­al and super­nat­ur­al worlds,” which frankly is anoth­er for­mid­able sub­ject to approach. Finally I must con­fess scep­ti­cism about paint­ing – or mixed media – on paper, so this will be anoth­er aspect to pon­der when the work is on the walls.

The exhib­i­tions Above Water and Para­dise Lost open at Solan­der Gal­lery: Works on Paper on Wed­nes­day 4^th of May at 5.30 pm. The show runs from the 5th of May – 11^th of June, 2011.

Solan­der Gal­lery: Works on Paper, 218 Wil­lis Street, Wel­ling­ton.

Gal­lery open­ing hours:
Tue – Fri: 10.00am – 5.30pm
Sat: 10am – 4.00pm
Phone: 04–920-0913

For more inform­a­tion vis­it their web­site or email the gal­lery.