Fearless fish on show

Elizabeth Thomson is one of Aotearoa’s leading contemporary artists whose distinct style occupies the boundary where visual art meets the natural sciences.

With the scientist’s eye for detail and the artist’s resolve to experiment with different media, Thomson creates works evocative of natural phenomena.

Thomson was born in Auckland where she also attended Elam School of Fine Arts, graduating with an MFA in 1988. She has exhibited widely since, in both group and solo exhibitions, and her work features in many of the country’s major art collections.

Cellular Memory is a survey exhibition which centres on Thomson’s probing exploration of natural forms and patterns and their intersection with the formal languages of art, through which the artist suggests an eternal entanglement between human beings and the non-human world. Her attention to surface texture is a key feature of this exploration.

Thomson’s works might be covered with tiny glass beads or made to gently undulate like an early-morning sea through layering of media or forging methods. Through these effects, the artist suggests a kinship coded in the minute and the detailed, in the cells which form our bodies and consciousness, which constantly shed and renew, and which embed us in the natural cycles of the earth.

The Fearless Five Hundred, 1989, consists of 500 cast-bronze fish sculptures, affixed in a shoal shimmying across the gallery wall. Each is painted with media like silver-leaf and shellac which make them glint, giving the impression that the gallery is flooded with water through which the light refracts.

Elizabeth Thomson will be discussing her artwork at the Aigantighe Art Gallery next weekend.

Cellular Memory is exhibited until May 9.