EXHIBITION Resurface 2024

RESURFACING

Exhibition with glass artist Lisa Bates

Public Record
Ponsonby, Auckland, New Zealand
August 22 to September 8 2024

These works continue my exploration of themes looking at family dna, the uncertainties of memory and ageing’s effects on the way we see the world.

I’ve been making abstract paintings based partly around my mother’s declining memory and health but extended out to encompass my evolving understanding of how fragile but precious our physical and cognitive gifts are.

My mother’s unfailingly positive outlook has helped her through many health challenges and now, when she is at her most frail, she remains stoic in her choice to look for the good.

The provenance of these paintings goes back to 2019 when I was looking at the issues surrounding a cancer gene test my family was

taking. My family’s dna – by that I mean the physical attributes that get passed down and the diseases, but also how we have our own little tribal way of seeing the world – has been high in my mind as health issues have arisen and how those directly affected have responded.

I take pleasure in amending and adding to the layers of earlier works like a physical embodiment of memories overlapping and fading, being created and lost.

The paintings are on board which allows me to scratch and disruptthe surface. I use my fingernails to make the scratch marks – sometimes a builder’s nail. I enjoy the physicality of using a brush and at times a palette knife to get different marks and gestures.