Art by construction
Kate Elder’s previous exhibition at Zimmerman Art Gallery in Palmerston North consisted of paintings. Paintings may not be the right word to describe the artworks, for although they were painted in flat areas on their multi-faceted forms in a variety of soft hues, they were better described as constructed forms.
The painting backings featured raised areas built from flat planes.
Many also featured small ‘‘windows’’, some of which make an appearance in this latest exhibition.
They are holes that let you see through to the wall behind.
Some of the earlier works played with an interest in shadow – dowel projections mimicked with painted doubles on the painting surface.
The artist’s current exhibition at Zimmerman Art Gallery, on display for the month of October, feels like it has moved on.
The works are more complex. Roughly divided into two strands, two works stand out in recalling the earlier exhibition, but with projections that have multiplied, crowded and stacked, so they become a dollhouse city – a metropolis piled and heaped upon itself.
One is hung, with what looks like a slightly precarious suspension, on a wall with a small shelf, no longer on a square backing board, but as a series of unwieldly intricate networks.the second of these has sprung off the wall, jumping on to a plinth to stand in its own three-dimensional format, where you can walk around it and study the forms instead of seeing them as deep reliefs.
It is like architecture, a play with masses and shapes, and it is no wonder it has transformed into sculpture.
The second strand consists of cubes, with the appearance of having been made by using various triangular pieces – some clear, some painted – a proper green not as soft hue, but with a definite colour.
Then Elder has made a variety of supporting studies where it looks like she has used the cut-out pieces, but instead left them in a stacking or played with them on a picture board.
It indicates a strong interest in the process by which things are made, as does her title ‘‘Constructed, Deconstructed, Reconstructed’’.
For me, the microcities have a far more human quality.
Constructed, Deconstructed, Reconstructed, by Kate Elder, is on display at Zimmerman Art Gallery for the month of October.