Allen Maddox

Allen Maddox's work stands out from that of his peers. Although only in his early fifties at the time of his death in 2000, Maddox remains an important and powerful figure within the history of New Zealand painting. His ardent and impassioned paintings established him as one for the most noted Abstract Expressionists this country has produced.

In his lifetime Maddox produced a comprehensive body of work that is broadly characterised by an uncompromisingly bold and expressive style, and a seemingly obsessive use of the cross and grid motifs. His persistent combination of a formal structural element - the cross and or grid - with free gesture has numerous interpretations, but it is the paradox buried in the relationship between order and expressionism that lends Maddoxs works their seemingly boundless dynamism. Also paramount to Maddox's legacy is the romantic notion of the struggling artist who above everything was dedicated to his artistic practice.

This exhibition brings together a collection of paintings and works on paper that span several decades and different series within his career, some of which will be exhibited for the first time.