a gallery presents

There is no denying that Ray Yallop and Des Smith were major Dunedin arts personalities.Patrons and collectors, their house overflowed with art from the Victorian to the modern, and the gatherings of artists that they hosted have passed into legend. Smith died in early 2009, followed a year later by his partner, and it is fair to say that with their deaths an era of Dunedin’s art scene ended. It is fitting that A Gallery has decided to host a memorial exhibition featuring an eclectic mix of work, much of it from the couple’s friends in Dunedin. More than 80 artists’ work has created a wall-to-wall art display, hung in traditional style cheek by jowl around the gallery space. The exhibition is unusual in two respects. Firstly, it is evolving, with more work arriving to be displayed as the exhibition proceeds. Secondly, the exhibited work – albeit mostly very fine work by diverse artists ranging from the respected and recognised to the little-known – is in some ways incidental. The gallery itself is the focus, with the exhibition deliberately mimicking the couple’s own living space, and as such, attempting to capture some of the spirit of the two art patrons. It is a memorial I am sure they would have appreciated.

  

You are invited to the Sunday Afternoon Soirée on the 30^th of October 2011  Twelve till Four at a gallery 393 Princes Street Dunedin

Drinks will be Provided Please bring a Plate

And remember to Sign the Book.

The Yallop & Smith Memorial Exhibition is based on the enduring concept of friendship and community and a chance remember and celebrate the lives of two good friends Ray Yallop and Des Smith. The Exhibition is an on going salon installation in the style of the Yallop & Smith Residence that was in Grant Street, Dunedin, New Zealand. Cluttered artworks of all kinds would vanish into a tapestry of colour, under an endless sea of style, medium and form. The collection represented an endless expanding community of artists that would meet at ‘Des and Ray’s Place’ at least once a year for unveilings of new works, birthday celebrations and even a wedding. It was a place that felt like home, where all were always welcome, and accepted for who they were.

The exhibition includes artwork by those that knew Des and Ray and those that possibly would have. Philip James Frost, Anna Muirhead, Adian Howse, Alannah Brown, Gary McMillan, Ruth Cleland, Deborah Barton, Bridget Inder, Andrew Ross, Craig Freeborn, Allan Ibell, Sharon Singer, Jay Hutchinson, Kate Belton, Anita DeSoto, Ant Scarer, Morgan Oliver, Michael Morley, Alexandra Kennedy, Donna Demente, Simon Attwooll, Annemieke Ytsma Merrin Sinclaire, L.S.D Fundraiser, Desmond Smith, Danny Brisbane, April Dolkar, Julia Loach, Sam Foley, Heather Straka, James Dignan, Sam Ovens, D. Herkes, Anya Sinclair, Daniel Roberts, Rochelle Hutchinson, Joy Kent, Dyana Gray, Rachel Taylor, Christian McNab, Ali Bramwell, DDD CC XO, Charlotte Parallel, Hamish Kilgour, Franky Strachan, Daniel Mead, Gareth Perks, Kerry Anne Lee, Cathy Helps, Mathew Gillies, Nathan Thompson, Unit, Georgina May Young, Jules Oblivion, Bryn Corkery, Aroha Anezka Novak, CC, Miss Cherry Pie, Victoria Bell, Millie Leckie, Lynda Cullen, Albrecht Dürer, Lorna Watkins-Dooley, Katya Gunn, Elizabeth Manson, Claire Ranui Thomas Lord, Justin Spiers etc.

 

Ray Yallop 1934-2010

Des Smith 1920-2009

SUBHEAD – Simon Attwooll: Ex-Dunedin artist’s show part of White Night gallery crawl

HEADLINE – NO FEAR

Gavin Bertram

 

Former Dunedin artist Simon Attwooll had a difficult time when he first moved to Melbourne three years ago.

But the Otago Polytechnic School of Art graduate says he feels more settled now, and has a good balance of working in framing factory and creating art. The fruits of this can be seen in the Not Afraid exhibition at A Gallery.

Attwooll creates the multimedia explosions of colour and image using a combination of paint and screen-printing, drawing, and collage.

“I like working with loaded images but I also like particularly insignificant images and then seeing how they read when put side by side,” he explains. “Unfortunately for anyone who has lived with me I am a hoarder and collect anything. I really like collecting images and objects. I enjoy finding similarities or discordant matches when you put one thing alongside another.”

The artist says he finds beginning with a plain white surface daunting, so he messes it up a little first. From there it’s a matter of adding visual elements and editing them so they work in either harmony or discord.

It’s a complex process with print making at its centre, as layers are built up and diminished so they work together as a whole.

Although there are digital processes involved in creating screens for printing, Attwooll says the hands on techniques he uses are vital to the way his works emerge.

“I think I like using computers as a tool rather than relying on them for a finished piece,” he considers. “I think the process helps me work through the original ideas I had when I started making the work and that informs the end product. It’s thinking about what you are making and being open for it to evolve so then you naturally approach the final outcome.”

Attwooll’s work is clearly a by-product of the highly charged visual world of the 21^st Century. But the artist doesn’t have any particular issue with the constant bombardment of the eyes, instead choosing to feed on it through his art.

“I think we are at a really exciting time at the moment,” he reflects. “Almost anyone can have access to what they want to use and that makes it exciting because it opens up a greater collective creative potential. But I think the space where you aren’t doing anything is important too because you have to come up with your own ideas instead of being constantly entertained.”

Along with Not Afraid, Attwooll has been busy working on ideas for big Paper Mache sculptures, and on putting proposals together for exhibitions in 2012.

“You have to do it a year in advance,” he says. “And I have to do my tax and those other boring things you try to avoid for as long as possible.”

 

gavin.bertram@dscene.co.nz

 

In “Not afraid”, Simon Attwooll presents a series of bright, energetic pieces on paper. His mixed media works, created from the cultural ephemera of newspaper, magazine, and internet images, are intended, in the artist’s words, to “encourage us to explore our current contemporary psyche through [ … ] the reproduced images it consumes and is consumed by.” While this bold intention may or may not hit its mark, the resulting chaotic melange it creates is certainly both strong and vibrant, and the juxtapositions of images and thoughts within the works does lend them depth. By using what the artist refers to as the “outmoded technology” of painting and screen-printing, he has created pieces which the viewer can explore at will. The mind of the artist is – to use the title of one of the works – finding a mess and making it pretty, or more to the point, making it significant. The addition of black glitter as a reflective material in the works enhances the effect of organised chaos. Its dazzle causes repeated deliberate interruptions to the viewing process and a constant shifting of the light over the works. The result is that the viewer is forced to repeatedly reassess the created images.

Kluster****. Sam Ovens, Nathan Forbes and Ant Scarer. 

Hope, comfort, and censorship; just three ideas that Ovens, Forbes and Scarer willingly stomp upon.

This is commendable, however, since these astute Dunedin artists demonstrate insight and wit rather than prosaic discontent disguised as rebellion.

Ovens uses the pop aesthetic to express socio-political commentaries. The audacious, commercial colours deliberately demoralise his subject-matter, while the gestures, text and humour keep us fixated.

We Are Devoid is a sprightly print which appropriates the “Energy Dome” trademark of subversive band Devo with the parliamentary Beehive, so as to (somehow charmingly) debase our ostensibly “devolving” politicians.

Forbes, a second-year art student, uses clarity of form and immaculate brushwork to describe Lynchian horror scenes.

His narrative compositions cleanly describe an immensely disturbing part of human potential; the threat of brutal, instinctual violence from the minds of superficially prototypical children. Chucky meets The Shining in these challenging, yet disconcertingly appealing pieces.

Screaming inaudibly in the corner, Scarer has disgorged the mind of a graphic artist on multiple pieces of A4 paper. Fearsome and comical, these images of corpses, skulls, vamps and cars engage the eye with quick, descriptive lines which, when accumulated, form masses of animated details.

Rambunctious and original, the artist’s forceful “ramblings” lash the room with cheeky quips.

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