Butterfly Effect

Sara Hughes 23 Nov - 24 Dec 2016 Lorne Street [2008 - 2021] Building upon my last exhibition at Gow Langsford Gallery in 2014, I continue to develop my interest in the complexities of visual learning. In Butterfly Effect I combine influences from observing my children with languages of painting. Familiar images such as children's stickers, striped electrical tape and geometric shaped toys,... Read more

Liu Ke He Mogo Fakapa He Haaku a Moui

John Pule 23 Nov - 24 Dec 2016 Auckland City Return To The First Time of My Life / Liu Ke He Mogo Fakapa He Haaku a Moui was painted on the island of Niue, John Pule's homeland, where he has spent much of this year. It is the first time since he immigrated to New Zealand as a young... Read more

Lee Ufan

26 Oct - 19 Nov 2016 Auckland City Gow Langford Gallery presents a selection of works from the highly regarded, formative modernist painter and sculptor Lee Ufan. This will be his first solo exhibition in New Zealand. Read more

Escape From Salvation Part III: The Dick Frizzell Group Show

Dick Frizzell 26 Oct - 19 Nov 2016 Lorne Street [2008 - 2021] 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 50 years; with no sign of slowing down yet. When thinking about this solo exhibition and the preparation towards it,... Read more

Hugo Koha Lindsay

28 Sep - 20 Oct 2016 Lorne Street [2008 - 2021] Gow Langsford Gallery are pleased to exhibit new works from young, emerging Auckland artist, Hugo Koha Lindsay. Currently working towards a Master of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland, Lindsay is already making waves with a number of exhibitions throughout the country. Last year, at the 24th Annual Wallace... Read more

Dear Stranger

Graham Fletcher 28 Sep - 3 Oct 2016 Auckland City Dear Stranger sets the scene for strange encounters. Recalling first contact experiences between Western and non-Western peoples, thesenew works further examine aspects of the highly complex and dynamic relationships that develop when histories, cultures and identities collide and intermingle. From within these borderline environments, masks, totems, Van Gogh flowers and... Read more

Dale Frank

31 Aug - 24 Sep 2016 Auckland City Renowned Australian artist, Dale Frank, returns to Gow Langsford with a selection of new abstract paintings. The works in this exhibition are smaller in scale than the large scale paintings we have come to expect from Frank. The smaller size, however, in no way inhibits or restricts Frank. In these works Frank returns to a monochromatic palette pouring the thick coloured varnish onto mirrored Perspex. Many of the works have additional materials added to the surface such as crushed glass or globules of solid varnish which make them more complex both visually and structurally. While the controlled exploitation of varnish has been Frank’s signature of the past decades, the use of even more unconventional materials continues Frank’s ongoing exploration of the concept of painting.

Dale Frank is one of Australia’s leading pioneers of contemporary art. His works are held in numerous collections and institutes worldwide including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA, and all major public institutions in Australia. Read more

Turning the World Inside Out: 30 Years a Painter

Judy Millar 31 Aug - 24 Sep 2016 Lorne Street [2008 - 2021] While working on a group of new paintings during the summer of 2015 Judy Millar had a flashback to a work painted almost 30 years earlier. She was struck by the similarity between a work she had painted in 1987 and her new work both in palette and the overlaid drawn line used to establish depth in the image. Comparison between the works revealed the consistency with which she has worked over the past 30 years. It made evident her determined search to find a way to paint paintings that are both abstract and yet full of imagery. Read more

Plain View

David McCracken 3 - 27 Aug 2016 Auckland City David McCracken’s newest exhibition, Plain View, brings one of his ongoing concepts of the ‘bomb’ to fruition. In recent years, the bomb form has been an evolutionary process for McCracken, thematically and artistically, as well as through his own personal connection to the objects.

The bombs are based on the forms of early aircraft delivered bombs deployed in 1944; in particular the Tallboy and Grandslam models. Both of these famous bombs were designed by British aeronautical engineer Barnes Wallis. McCracken recalls the photographs of the bombs that he saw as a young boy and found himself drawn to the purity and the elegance of their form. It was following this that he delved into their historical use, development and deployment. Despite the destructive nature of these bombs and their historical context, these sculpture realisations have an inviting quality to them. On the surface, they are shiny and covetable; they entice the viewer in and reflect their surroundings back to us. They look luxurious and lavish, with the fear that should shroud them having been stripped away; their true purpose lost. They now take the form of these playful, aesthetic, inflatable toys that transcend their materiality; a stark contrast to the utilitarian objects that they have been derived from.

Their playful and whimsical quality does not, however, represent the labour intensive process that is undertaken to manufacture them. Each bomb is individually fabricated from McCracken’s own designs using stainless steel plates that are hydroformed under pressure to generate the organic wrinkles and folds, giving the material a lightness that realistically it does not have. They have subtle differences, unique to each bomb. The reflective finish is achieved by grounding and polishing the stainless steel, with a final lick of coloured industrial paint completing the sculptures. Read more

Resident

James Cousins 3 - 27 Aug 2016 Lorne Street [2008 - 2021] James Cousins' new exhibition, Resident, presents a series of new works developing upon earlier thematic ideals and painterly constructs. These rich works create visually active, stimulating paintings that carry an appearance or currency of transmitted data. In a completely digital age, Cousins' accumulated layers delay and compound acts of looking.... Read more

Exodus

Darryn George 5 - 30 Jul 2016 Auckland City Established Christchurch based artist, Darryn George, returns to Gow Langsford Gallery with his fifth solo exhibition, Exodus. Read more

Shadow V

Alex Monteith 15 Jun - 2 Jul 2016 Lorne Street [2008 - 2021] In August 1979 an IRA bomb was detonated aboard the 30ft fishing boat Shadow V over the reefs of the Mullaghmore coast, Co. Sligo, Ireland. The blast claimed the lives of Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma (aged 79), Doreen (dowager) Lady Brabourne (83), Nicholas Knatchbull (14), and Paul... Read more

Represented Artists

Group Exhibition 18 May - 11 Jun 2016 Auckland City To coincide and compliment Gow Langsford’s presence at the Auckland Art Fair, our latest group exhibition features a selection of Gow Langsford Gallery Artists.

Artists that will be exhibited include; Chris Heaphy, Darryn George, David McCracken, Graham Fletcher, Gregor Kregar, Judy Millar, Karl Maughan, Martin Ball, Paul Dibble, Reuben Paterson, Richard Lewer, Sara Hughes, and Simon Ingram. This exhibition will provide an overall scope of works from our own New Zealand artists and those based internationally. Read more

Return to the Miniature Garden

Michael Hight 18 May - 11 Jun 2016 Lorne Street [2008 - 2021] Michael Hight has shown with Gow Langsford Gallery since it opened in the late 1980s. Known widely for his realist landscape paintings, Return to the Miniature Garden follows Dreams of Children (2012) and Crossing The Line (2014) and is the third exhibition of newer ‘black paintings’ at Gow Langsford, which are gaining a momentum of their own.

As in earlier series’ childhood memory informs this body of work and a key reference for this exhibition is the miniature garden that countless New Zealand children had to make in the 1960s. Baking trays, tins and saucers were appropriated to make small, idealised versions of reality. The miniature garden was an act of making but also an act of scavenging and making do. Hight began his exploration of his now chosen technique of ‘black painting’ in 2008, noting a significant shift from his earlier iconic beehive paintings. The black paintings can be viewed as theatrical tableaux that feature memorabilia, historical moments and specific landscapes. Objects range from the absurd model of a C20 dreadnought battle ship to automata (wind-up toys) with their inferred staccato movements to an outdated telephone exchange. This series includes numerous scales with homely links to colonial kitchens and baking, and undercurrent issues of justice and the weighing up of how things were done.

Place is equally diverse. Kapuni Stream, a painting that juxtaposes kitchen scales with two pa sites, is the location of one of the earliest conflicts between Maori and Pakeha. Rakiura - Gog and Magog represents Stewart Island’s two remote mountains that were named after Celtic giants. Settings resonate from the rugged landscape of a central North-Island sheep station to a more picturesque view of Mt Taranaki from Pembroke Road. All paintings have an autobiographical element — none more so than Pohokura, which features the Aunt Martha’s ballpoint paint tubes that had mesmerised a young boy in the 1960s. Anecdote and memory circulate above both land and object to the extent the paintings are also the works of a storyteller who keeps secrets as much as he reveals. Yet standing before a musical toy or a green ridged hill is to step into your own anecdote and buffeting memory.

For further information on Hight, the publication Michael Hight: Crossing The Line (2014) by Michael Hight and Gow Langsford Gallery is available to purchase. It provides an overview of his previous works, with essays by Gregory O’Brien and Dr. Paula Green and includes a conversation between John Gow and Michael Hight. Read more

Happy Medium

Group Exhibition 20 Apr - 14 May 2016 Auckland City Happy Medium is a curated exhibition of works on paper by four artists. For the artists in this exhibition: Richard Lewer, Bernar Venet, Pablo Picasso and Max Gimblett; this medium presents different possibilities to their primary artistic practices. Read more

New Representation III

Andre Hemer 20 Apr - 14 May 2016 Lorne Street [2008 - 2021] New Representation Part III, Andre Hemer’s debut solo exhibition at Gow Langsford Gallery is an exhibition of paintings that are a response, but not necessarily an answer, to this question. The new paintings continue the artist’s inquiry into the role of painting in a world dominated by digital media and the slippages in meaning between object and image. “Hemer describes his work as embodying a ‘new representation’, a term he coined during his PhD to describe the painting he is making. “You have these terms like post-internet but new representation speaks more generally to the idea that, because the way we consume and create media has changed so markedly over the last decade, the way we represent the world must change because of that. This is about how you represent all this dematerialized form in the world – how you rematerialize it.” (Mark Amery, Art Collector, 2016)

Hemer’s approach to painting is typically y-gen in its use of both physical and digital mechanisms. Using a method akin to a modern day ‘en plein air’ painting (a flat-bed scanner left open under the autumn sky of Tuscany) Hemer scans painted sculptural forms to create the background of his compositions. The combination of the light sources (the LED light of the scanner from below and the fading sunlight) create images that look digital but are not produced in a digital way. The images are then overworked with spray paint, acrylic, oil and very three-dimensional impasto to create visually dynamic compositions. The combination of techniques is reflected in the difficulty in describing the finished works in more traditional painting terms.

Hemer’s works have earned him international recognition. His work is on the cover of Thames and Hudson’s publication 100 Painters of Tomorrow (2014). The book uncovered the world’s most promising painters from more than 30 countries. He was also named by The Guardian newspaper as one of their top ten favourites to watch. Read more

From Here on In

Chris Heaphy 16 Apr - 3 Jul 2016 Lorne Street [2008 - 2021] Chris Heaphy art exhibition. New paintings by great artist Read more

Mongrel Mob Portraits

Jono Rotman 23 Mar - 16 Apr 2016 Auckland City Jono Rotman mongrel mob, NZ photography Read more

One Day in the Afternoon of the Gods

Max Gimblett 24 Feb - 19 Mar 2016 Auckland City, Lorne Street [2008 - 2021] Max Gimblett exhibition 2016 Read more

OBJET D'ART

Group Exhibition 27 Jan - 19 Feb 2016 Auckland City Objet d'art is an object-based group exhibition titled after the French term which simply translates to 'art object'. When categorizing art, works generally fall into a number of large groups: painting, sculpture, photography, installation and so on. The remaining works, after the larger groups have been formed, can often fall... Read more

Paintings

Jan de Vliegher 27 Jan - 19 Feb 2016 Lorne Street [2008 - 2021] Paintings by Belgian artist Jan de Vliegher is made up of works from three series (2012-2015), each defined by its focus on a singular subject matter, and is characterised by the artist's ability to straddle realism and abstraction in each composition. As introduced in his debut exhibition at Gow Langsford... Read more

Five Painters

Group Exhibition 12 - 23 Jan 2016 Lorne Street [2008 - 2021] Five Painters is a cross selection of five contemporary New Zealand artists, each with a distinct approach to painting. Read more

The Aroma of Black (Part III)

Reuben Paterson 9 Dec 2015 - 9 Jan 2016 Lorne Street [2008 - 2021] For The Aroma of Black (Part III) Paterson returns to his exploration of textile traditions. Where earlier works borrowed from fabrics he associated with the maternal side of his family, these new works take their inspiration from botanical subjects and reference still life paintings by 17th century Dutch painters. His ideas are translated into carefully constructed glitter paintings which, for the first time at Gow Langsford Gallery, use a more intricate method that creates smoother, more graduated depth to the textured surfaces. Read more