Chasing a moonbeam
Rebecca Wallis’ abstract artworks have a magical feel to them.
conduit for the interaction between materials’ was the phrase that set me thinking. I stumbled over it in the artist’s notes for the exhibition by Rebecca Wallis, showing at Zimmerman Gallery for the month of June, and I couldn’t quite get it out of my head.
Conduit almost suggests a magical Sharman-like presence of the artist, taking some sort of unseen spiritual substance and, like the trick of a medium, making it earthbound.
In some respects it does describe Wallis’ work well. She has an interest in materials, of paint and canvas – moving it about by misting, dripping, splashing and blobbing it on – using thin canvas in an earlier show so you could discern the wooden framing behind, or this time, round glazing them to a smooth sheen.
She attempts to make physical the immaterial, almost as if chasing a moonbeam, trying to fix what can’t be fixed, making the ephemeral into an image.
As with much of abstract art, it is difficult stuff to articulate. Often it is created by a method more based on instinct. The artist, and even the viewer looking on, just knows when the slight drip or the thickness of paint has somehow landed right, even though there may not be a logical basis to explain it.
This is why it feels magical as it is not an analytical mind that makes it happen.
This way of working is always a part of Wallis’ practice. But over time, the works have changed considerably.
The previous exhibition showed a more guttural response, highly gestural studies – the celebration of paint, created with the sweep of an arm or a sudden flick.
In these newer works, it is a quieter play with the misting of one paint film across another or with carefully poured drips. And so it is with the mood it creates, of bigger thoughts more than reaction, artworks with more depth of colour and subtlety.
But, with this, some of the earlier, raw energy is also lost. These works are far more polite –they don’t provoke. They are careful and finished.
With this sort of work it is a difficult balance. Slight changes can have a marked effect on the mood and atmosphere it creates, and it is difficult to be all things. All of it takes a fair bit of confidence and verve. Wallis is skilled not just in the use of paint, but in thinking through the scene she wishes to create.
So what do you see when you look at the works? They contain misty clouds, images that could be taken from a telescope of distant stars with a splash of vapour spilling out, or a fog that has settled over a distant dark landscape not able to be made out.
Splashes of paint turned upsidedown become odd, luminescent plants growing into a dark sky, or wave patterns of an unseen sound.
So however each person reads the imagery, they have become more than paint and canvas.
It is Rebecca Wallis’ third exhibition at Zimmerman Art Gallery. Titled ‘‘The Otherness of Ourselves’’ it runs for the month of June.
Te Manawa
❚ The Exquisite Wound: photographs and video, exhibition runs until October 8. ❚ Nga Kete Toi, students, graduates and tutors of the Bachelor of Maori Arts degree in weaving at Te Wananga o Aoteara in Palmerston, exhibition runs until September 24.
Taylor Jensen Fine Arts
❚ The Primacy of Gesture, new paintings by Ross Whitlock, exhibition run until June 14. ❚ The Spaces Between, paintings by Anne Morris, exhibition opens on June 17 and runs until July 12.
Zimmerman Art Gallery
❚ The Otherness of Ourselves, paintings by Rebecca Wallis, for the month of June. ❚ The White Room ❚ Tree Fullas, new works by Tame Iti and A R Newbery. Exhibition runs until the end of June.
Square Edge Arts Centre
❚ Topp Twins Exhibition and 80’s memorabilia of Square Edge until June 20. ❚ Andrew Ross has a collection of his works on show at the Scottish Society Hall, 52 Princess St., from June 12-16.