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.

Inge Doesburg 'Above Water' promo image
Inge Does­burg ‘Penin­su­la (Dunedin)’ mixed media on ges­so on paper, 2011

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.

Ben Reid 'Paradise Lost' promo image
Ben Reid ‘Nat­ur­al Curiosi­ties’ dry­point and relief, 2010

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 4th of May at 5.30 pm. The show runs from the 5th of May — 11th 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.

Solander brand image