This month’s selection of visual deliciousness captures the essence of August, as we peek out from under winter’s veil, to see glimpses of spring.
Bergman Gallery
Tukufakaholo – Tongan Contemporary
Group show featuring: Uhila Nai, Telly Tuita, Hulita Koloi, Sione Monū, Harrison Freeth, Terje Koloamatangi, Sēmisi Potauaine, Benjamin Work
10 August – 2 September
With a stellar line-up of some of Aotearoa’s most exciting Tongan Artists, this exhibition is all about the magic of Tukufakaholo.
Through a European lens Tukufakaholo translates as inheritance or hereditary, but in Tonga, the definition is much broader than that. Tukufakaholo is the passing-on of the knowledge and wisdom that connects the past, present and future. In this context the artists are conduits for ways of being, and their work a visual repository of knowledge.
2 Newton Road, Karangahape End.
bergmangallery.com
Melanie Roger Gallery
Recent Painting
Gavin Hurley
On until 26 August
Thistles, thorns and exploding floral tributes populate Gavin Hurley’s new series of paintings, engulfing and threatening to obliterate the portraits beneath. Characters are derived from Hurley’s interest in the past – both popular culture, more austere political histories, and art history, as well as continuing to mine his own personal artistic archives. Hurley masterfully interweaves a cast of characters and ideas both past and present, real and imagined to create this new body of work.
444 Karangahape Rd, Newton.
melanierogergallery.com
Sanderson Contemporary
Lamp Black
Stephen Ellis
On until 27 August
“Ellis grew up in Ōtepoti Dunedin and Ōtautahi Christchurch in the 1960-70s with the smell of bituminous coal burning in the fireplace, and in the air. The nostalgia that coal now occupies for him is also a source of irony. In a suite of new works, coal is highly aestheticized, and rendered in exquisite detail.” – Emil McAvoy, Art writer
Lamp Black continues Ellis’s ongoing project exploring themes of environmental degradation and climate change. The exhibition presents a suite of new drawings created using the carbon black pigment traditionally produced by collecting soot from oil lamps and features giant lumps of coal levitating over glacial South Island landscapes.
Osborne Lane, 2 Kent Street, Newmarket.
sanderson.co.nz
Two Rooms
Gond
Michael Shepherd
21 July – 19 August
Exhibitions of new paintings by Michael Shepherd are infrequent but much anticipated. The artist’s distinctive practice combines technical mastery, thematic gravitas, idiosyncratic imagery, and that element of mystery and magic necessary to attract and hold attention.
In Gond, Shepherd explores territory with filaments connecting it to many previous themes and preoccupations – history, warfare, insignia, indigeneity, colonialism, landscape, ecology, botany, geomorphology, and art history.
16 Putiki Street, Newton.
The Frame Workshop & Gallery
Orchestra Of Light
Melanie Field
On until 12 August
We warmy invite you to the opening of Orchestra Of Light, a solo show by emerging Auckland artist Melanie Field, whose work is heavily influenced by nature and the mystical. See it at The Frame Workshop & Gallery, Herne Bay.
182 Jervois Road, Herne Bay
Turua Gallery
Slice Of Life
Harriet Millar
25 August – 6 September
Celebrating the joys of every day via the New Zealand landscape, Millars’s landscape paintings explode with vivacity. Her layered style of thick and loose brushstrokes, with hints of unexpected colour, captures hearts.
10a Turua Street, St Heliers
