Take home a piece of this exhibition
Several Degrees of Attention sits on the border between functional, amusing and entertaining art.
The new exhibition at GovettBrewster Art Gallery/len Lye
Centre in New Plymouth has on display a collection of never-beforeseen artworks and pieces from private art collections.
Born from the question ‘‘how do we make sense of what we inherit?’’, the exhibition is broken into four parts – split across four areas in the gallery – with each conveying a different artistic perspective.
The exhibition features more than 1000 works dating from the seventies to fresh and newlyproduced art from Aotearoa New Zealand.
It’s best to start in the first room, which is surrounded by a largerthan-human halo – an otherworldly work created by Maria Olsen.
A triple screen installation by Sonya Lacey brings visitors back to earth, and the soil, to a plant’s circadian rhythm.
The best thing that can happen to the public in a gallery is to be free to bring home a piece of the exhibition and this time you can – a short essay by Lacey.
The second floor blends together a special Kiwi interest in manual operations with otherness, avian and migration patterns.
Indonesia-born artist Rozana Lee says her batik works, a form of dyeing cloth, will entice the New Plymouth public with a sense of foreignness and exoticism.
The third section connects intergenerational legacies, using industrial and pale stars made of nylon, translucent black windowlike paintings and modernist capital letters.
Lastly, seven paintings by W. A. Sutton depict different instances of Te Tihi o Kahukura (Castle Rock, Christchurch). The repetition of the same landscape is reminiscent of Monet’s study of the Rouen Cathedral.
The green-coloured hills turning white and turning brown paint magnificently the seasonality of the environment and the change in the climate.
Several Degrees of Attention is at Govett-brewster Art Gallery/len Lye Centre until November 12.