Three styles of art in exhibition
New works from three local artists
Three very different styles of art are being exhibited at Community Arts Centre in ashow titled New Work.
Lysha Brennan, Russell Brown and Mike Marsh have combined their individual talents for the show.
“On my day job I went to Turakina School where Lysha teaches and she said she’d booked this gallery and asked, ‘Why don’t you come in with me?’ ” says Russell. It’s the first time they have exhibited together.
Russell’s series of photographs are on Japanese washi paper.
“It’s the first time I’ve done photographic on paper,” he says.
“I won’t do anything involving water or electricity,” he says. “I’ve always been interested in art. I exhibited for years at shows like the Rotary Fine Arts Exhibition in Palmerston North, but that was just a hobby. I was forced to retrain in 1997 so I ended up going right through to a Masters degree at Wanganui School of Design.” He spent as much time doing hands-on work with print, paint and wood as he did on the computer.
“I spent a lot of time in the print room with Marty [Vreede]. I could never work in commercial design so I just do my own stuff, selling it to galleries around the place. My work has always been a combination of working with things I love, like typography, paint, print and wood. But I just had this thought I’d like to do pure photography on paper.”
“It’s such a beautiful gallery,” says Lysha. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from UCOL in Whanganui.
“My degree is in printmaking so this is completely new work. I make jewellery for the market so I was thinking how to incorporate the techniques into the art.” Among several smaller pieces, Lysha has created wire sculptures which “wear” large pieces of jewellery. She has used cast glass and china surrounds to make cameo brooches for her “wire women”.
“A lot of work was about the different ways of displaying. There’s quite a technique to drawing the wire: it brings in that idea of knitting, sewing, weaving, all those old techniques but in a modern way.”
Mike Marsh got a Fine Arts degree through UCOL.
“I’ve been exhibiting most years at Space Gallery in solo and group shows and I’ve done Open Studios for six or seven years. I normally paint but I’ve just started to get into collage this year.”
Mike took a free Certificate in Graphics at UCOL to gain design skills. The collage work came out of the physical cut and paste of visual diaries. He put collages onto plywood, then coated it with a clear resin.
“The resin flattens out the collage and fuses it to look more integrated.”
New Work is on at Community Arts Centre until December 30.