Ocula has posted a report on the recent Sydney Contemporary held last week at Carriageworks. Gow Langsford presented a wide variety of works from New Zealand and international artists and were one of only four galleries from New Zealand present at the fair.
"Among its big-hitters (including two of Tony Cragg's twisted, column-like forms, and Ugo Rondinone's painted stone-and-steel sculpture black white orange mountain, 2016), Gow Langsford Gallery presented a fair highlight—Colin McCahon's large, un-stretched painting A Handkerchief for St Veronica (1973). McCahon's painting is said to depict the Tasman sea (an inscription on the canvas reads 'Kaipara Flat – Looking West'), and displays much of the New Zealand artist's signature style, namely his interrogation of the New Zealand landscape and elements of spirituality through a modernist lens infused with the use of painted text. The work was previously shown at this year's Art Basel in Hong Kong, raising the question of why an institution or savvy collector has yet to pick it up. That being said, it is unclear whether or not Sydney is the place to spark such interest, as there didn't appear to be many of the country's curators on the ground, something noted by several gallerists, but contradicted in the fair's press statement."
Read the full report here.