Walking Back To Happiness

Dick Frizzell 11 Nov - 5 Dec 2008 Lorne Street [2008 - 2021] 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). Read more

Dale Frank

14 Oct - 7 Nov 2008 Lorne Street [2008 - 2021] Gow Langsford Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new work by Australian artist Dale Frank. Frank, who first exhibited in New Zealand in 1997, has an international career that has spanned more than 20 years. The breadth of his practice was recently showcased in an extensive monograph... Read more

Spring Catalogue 2008

Gow Langsford and John Leech Galleries 19 Sep - 10 Oct 2008 Auckland City, Lorne Street [2008 - 2021] The Gow Langsford Gallery tradition of the Spring Catalogue is well established. This year, along with significant contemporary and historical works by New Zealand artists, contemporary works from Asia are included. The cover features Feng Zhengjie’s China No. 21 and works by Kim Joon and Shen Qi are also featured. Read more

Nicky Hoberman

26 Aug - 12 Sep 2008 Lorne Street [2008 - 2021] During the mid 1990s advertising magnate and contemporary art collector Charles Saatchi announced the new wave in contemporary art with an exhibition and publication entitled The New Neurotic Realists. This new school signalled the return to traditional materials and created a context for contemporary figurative painters; namely Marlene Dumas, Peter... Read more

Sea of Tranquility

Chris Heaphy 29 Jul - 22 Aug 2008 Lorne Street [2008 - 2021] Exhibiting his first solo show at Gow Langsford since joining the gallery in 2007, Chris Heaphy has produced a bold series of works which will challenge viewers to consider the sum of their parts through a rich cornucopia of colour and pop imagery. Chris Heaphy’s broad appeal derives in part... Read more

Scales of Economy

Sara Hughes 1 - 25 Jul 2008 Lorne Street [2008 - 2021] Having just returned to New Zealand after a year in the United States undertaking two international art residencies, Sara Hughes returns to Gow Langsford Gallery to exhibit new paintings in Scales of Economy. The works in this exhibition explore the artist’s interest in patterns of behaviour and configurations of consumerism.... Read more

Paradise

Paul Dibble 3 - 27 Jun 2008 Lorne Street [2008 - 2021] Over the past two decades Paul Dibble has emerged as a significant figure in contemporary New Zealand sculpture. His bronze works are eagerly sought after locally and with his successful commission of the New Zealand Hyde Park Corner Memorial in London (2006), Dibble has gained an increasingly strong international following.... Read more

Gow Langsford Gallery Lorne Street Opening

Group Exhibition 26 - 31 May 2008 Lorne Street [2008 - 2021] Gow Langsford Gallery opened the doors of its new gallery premises at 26 Lorne St, Auckland on 20 May 2008, with a group exhibition; the highlight of which is a work by infamous UK artist, Damien Hirst. The work entitled Sacred XIV (2005) consists of a dagger piercing a pig’s heart and suspended in a tank of formaldehyde. Read more

Scout 2008

Tim Hawkinson 8 Apr - 16 May 2008 Auckland City Tim Hawkinson's work defies easy categorisation. Ranging from drawings and paintings to multi-media constructions, his pieces can incorporate sound, kinetic elements and computer programming. Though meticulously designed and delicately constructed, such works have a definite air of DIY technology: like a science project gone horribly wrong, or fantastically right. Unlike many contemporary practitioners who outsource production, Hawkinson usually constructs even the most labour-intensive of his projects. He integrates scavenged and ephemeral materials and is most well known for the bizarre results that this mix of elements produce. Read more

Pukapuka

Darryn George 4 - 28 Mar 2008 Auckland City Gow Langsford gallery is pleased to present the first solo show of its 2008 calendar with new works by Christchurch-based painter Darryn George. The occasion also marks George’s inaugural exhibition with the gallery having joined Gow Langsford recently in 2007.

Entitled Pukapuka this collection of paintings operates on numerous levels. George’s geometric forms may be read as book shelves, a collection of books or a library of sorts - the word ‘pukapuka’ being the Maori transliteration of ‘book’. Within these arrangements a basic assortment of symbols and iconography is interspersed- fragments of maps and bridges are enlisted as metaphors to encompass the notion of ‘salvation’. Within this context the idea of a ‘book of salvation’ naturally generates associations with the bible and by extension Christian theology. Whilst references to the Old and New Testament may be insinuated, George’s paintings are not bound by them, offering the viewer freedom to explore alternate possibilities. On another level, George fuses the traditions of customary Maori art forms with Western abstraction extending the dialogue first established by Gordon Walters in an innovative and thoroughly engaging way. The artist employs generic kowhaiwhai and moko motifs to enrich the layers beneath broad bands of colour. These customary curvilinear designs functioned as an expression of one’s whakapapa. In George’s paintings they become the foundation upon which he composes his own geometric interpretations motivated by the rhythms and cadences evident in traditional designs. In many cases George experiments with the axial orientation of kowhaiwhai so that text, letters or motif combinations are flipped, rotated and reflected. While these paintings acknowledge a formalist aesthetic, on close inspection they reveal surprisingly rich texture. Alternate bands of colour are often realised with a controlled application of thick impasto leaving three dimensional impressions that emulate the chisel ridges formed in Maori wood carving. Many of the patterns chosen by the artist signify ‘mana’ a concept which denotes characteristics such as power, strength and prestige. One particular recurring kowhaiwhai motif employed by George is the ‘Mangotipi’- a design influenced by a creature of formidable strength and resilience- the great white shark. George’s paintings represent a thoughtful consideration and consolidation of diverse cultural, artistic and theological dialogue. Read more

Pink and White Terraces

Nova Paul 19 - 29 Feb 2008 Auckland City Pink and White Terraces is a 16 mm film that reflects on the delicate construction of the domestic environments and public places in the cityscape of Auckland, New Zealand. Using an optical process technique 'three-colour separation', the film makes visual several moments simultaneously. In red, green and blue layers, colour-coded auras hold a record of time like a geological accretion. In and out of phase, actors and environment focus and fade, making palpable filmic time, and gently unfolding the politics and poetics of the sites explored.

The film is comprised of a series of static shots where the same place or action has been recorded three times, making tangible that no location is fixed, people move through space, and qualities of light and weather change. From barren trees in winter afternoon light through to a hot summer day on a front porch with friends, washing dishes at night or getting dressed to go out, shopping at a busy Sunday market to popping in to the dairy. The soundtrack by Rachel Shearer uses atmospheric sound recorded during the shoot mixed with a palette of sounds derived from the colour presence on screen, a union of the abstract and the figurative. Pink and White Terraces traces little happenings, things we do without acknowledging them as 'significant', but which collectively speak clearly about who we are individually and collectively. Read more