ELAM POST GRADUATE SHOW, ELAM B BUILDING, AUCKLAND

Post Graduate Diploma in Fine Arts Research Project

This painting and drawing project has focused on the use of the grid as a framework for engagement with spontaneous mark-making that is derivative of the natural environment.  The grid acts as a surface structure, creating space, rhythm and pattern, despite it being an apparatus that imposes rules and repetition.  The gestural marks are independent of the underlying system, defying and disrupting it, and dissolving any fixed perspective.

Research into the art historical paradox of the grid’s aesthetic possibilities for painting – as being both space and picture plane, spiritual and rational – has led to reflection on this modernist paradigm that historically extinguished chance, mysticism and nature in its utopian vision. 

My reading into the grid as Colonial construct lead me to research Re-wilding as an idea for the future of the planet, tapping into indigenous knowledge systems and letting the land rejuvenate and re-wild for future generations. These paintings are almost like a re-wilding of the grid, a disruption to the status quo and capitalist thinking that ignores the regeneration of landscape.

Installation November 2018