Dick Frizzell

Dick Frizzell is a perpetual student, always revisiting and re-evaluating art history. The origins of his recent exhibition can be traced back to his university days when he travelled to Europe on sabbatical in the early 1990s. Having previously relied on images in books he delighted in seeing works in the flesh. As he toured galleries and museums, he collected postcards as mementoes of the masterpieces he had admired.

An exhibition of works from Dick Frizzell.

Considered two of New Zealand’s most prominent living artists, close friends Karl Maughan and Dick Frizzell have joined forces once again. Their sold out 1998 joint exhibition aptly titled Landscapes will be revisited 20 years later as both artists draw on the New Zealand landscape as a mutual point of inspiration. It is what Frizzell calls “The reunion tour …getting the band back together”.

Eccentric artist Dick Frizzell needs no introduction. Easily one of the most recognisable artists of our time, Frizzell has brought us iconic imagery, and design through painting for the past...

There are no epic vistas or sublime sunsets in Dick Frizzell’s latest series of landscapes. The subjects in Up the Road are intentionally somewhat unspectacular. They are familiar, belonging anywhere; his farm gate could be my farm gate, it could be your gate, if you have a farm. Although there is a hint of that Frizzellean naivety, the new works are too “good” to fall strictly into his self-proclaimed “bad landscape” genre. These works are the result of the Man on the road; noting the landscape’s attractions and distractions as he goes, before working them into these wondrous (albeit at times awkward) homescapes. He takes no prisoners in defending his portrayal of everyday environments in this manner; Frizzell has long since distanced himself from the critical fraternity.

The Wrong Gallery was conceptualized by Maurizio Cattelan, Ali Subotnick and Massimiliano Gioni in 2005. It is a 1:6 scale reproduction of New York’s smallest exhibition space of the same name, which they founded together in 2002. Subsequent versions have been shown all over the world including at Tate Modern (2005). Our rendition of The Wrong Gallery will be installed in our Kitchener St Gallery and will, fittingly, be filled with miniature artworks by gallery artists.

It’s been a big twelve months. We moved back to Auckland after nine years of bucolic splendour in Hawkes Bay. And I turned seventy. One of these events prompted an...

New work by Dick Frizzell spans both gallery spaces in Rugby, Rhyming and Here. Covering three themes Frizzell's new works are inspired by New Zealand's devotion to Rugby, the poetry of Sam Hunt and our rugged, unique landscape.

Infamous for his eclectic styles, Frizzell has emerged as an icon of New Zealand Visual Culture and his Four Square Man has become a distinct image of Kiwiana itself. Fittingly, Frizzell was selected as the official artist for RWC 2011 and created a series of images that encapsulate our culture and Rugby’s place within it. Along with his limited edition boxed sets and imagery used on official tournament apparel Frizzell has created a suite of paintings around the Rugby idea. Ranging from his infamous 'Tiki' (which courted such controversy when unveiled in the 1990s in the midst of a national debate about biculturalism) to a nostalgic image of half-time oranges for sustenance, bootlaces in the shape of New Zealand and an animated strip of the haka, these works are quintessentially Kiwi and typically Frizzellean.

A second grouping of paintings in Rugby, Rhyming and Here can loosely be called text based works as they take their basis in words by legendary poem Sam Hunt. While some fall within the category of Frizzell’s ‘sign works’ others seem to recall Colin McCahon’s written paintings and drawings of the late 1960s.

The ‘sign’ based works are particularly interesting in relation to the series of more traditional landscapes which make up the third grouping included in Rugby, Rhyming and Here, as the sign works can be understood as an extension of landscape painting. The ‘sign’ series began in the early 2000s as Frizzell, having recently moved from Auckland to the Hawkes Bay, began to treat the signage of his new environment in the same way he would any other object in the landscape. What resulted were groupings of seemingly unrelated slogans and icons together within a single composition, all the yellow signs or all the fruit signs for example, giving the effect of being a single placard. Frizzell affectionately referred to these early sign works as "close up" landscapes so close that "all you can see is the sign on the gate" (Dick Frizzell: The Painter (2009), pg. 243).
The exhibition brings together three distinct elements of New Zealand culture and can be understood as a celebration of all three. Rugby, Rhyming and Here runs across two gallery spaces - at our Lorne St Gallery and our gallery on the corner of Kitchener and Wellesley Sts.

The Spring Catalogue has become an annual tradition at Gow Langsford Gallery. This year the catalogue exhibition boasts a stellar line up of works. Spring Catalogue 2011 brings together significant works from the local secondary market including paintings by Colin McCahon, Don Binney and Ralph Hotere, works by prominent contemporary international artists including Ai Wei Wei, Damien Hirst; shown alongside works from artists in the gallery stable, including Tony Cragg, Bernar Venet, John Pule, Max Gimblett and Judy Millar.

Inspired by shop front signs and placards The Gloves Are Off brings together a series of typically Frizzellean sign paintings.

Dick Frizzell’s 2008 exhibition at Gow Langsford Gallery returns to the interests of the artist’s self-proclaimed ‘misspent comic-book youth’. Entranced at an early age by comics, Frizzell remarks that it was this source material that originally taught him to draw. As a boy he would spend hours copying from his favourite comic artists. He was drawn particularly to the sharp, graphic, gritty style of several American comics like Batman, superior in the artist’s mind to the heavily illustrated and ‘prissy’ comics such as The Eagle. Above all others however, it was Lee Falk’s 1936 creation: The Phantom, which for Frizzell, encapsulated all that a comic should be (replete with hairy-knuckled baddies).