‘‘Loveliness Extreme’’, curated by Lucinda Bennett
(Dunedin Public Art Gallery)
Curated by Lucinda Bennett, the gallery’s 2017 curatorial intern, ‘‘Loveliness Extreme’’ is a considered exhibition that does not look like a debut. It is at once grand and quotidian, historical and contemporary, familiar and strange. It looks like an intervention, which, in some instances, it is, given that Bennett worked closely with artist Charlotte Drayton, who designed the architectural sequence that quite literally frames Bennett’s pleasingly spare selection of works from the gallery’s collection. Drayton’s architectural intervention is situated in a corridor on the first floor of the gallery. The intervention creates a space that is bookended by a sequence of four arches at one end and a partially pulled floor to ceiling swing blind at the other. In between the aspirations of both features, Drayton has installed a faux marble lino — another aspirational decor. Yet none of this feels mocking. It is, however, a challenging environment to introduce works from the collection into, yet Bennett’s astute selection makes for some unexpected, if surprisingly affective, juxtapositions between the introduced works themselves and
Drayton’s architectural intervention. A cityscape painting by Peter Siddell echoes the way Drayton’s arches ‘‘open’’ the exhibition, while a detail from Kim Pieter’s painting — a small 3D cube drawn in pencil — produces a similar spatial movement. ‘‘Loveliness Extreme’’ is replete with many such conversations.