Paintings by Paul Haywood, Shane Jackson, James Kirk
6 August – 6 september 2003
She’s not a hard road finding the perfect painting. Just track down the latest work from three highly promising emerging younger artists, all with roots in the South Island. Paul Haywood is still based in Karamea. Shane Jackson and James Kirk come from Dunedin. Together they show that the South continues to produce uncompromising and innovative visual arts.
“My passion for painting is a kind of thirst, relentless and intense, for certain feelings and felt states. To find or invent ‘objects’ whose felt quality satisfies the passion is for me the activity of the artist. I am constantly placing and displacing, relating and breaking relations. My task is find a complexof qualities whose feeling is just right – veering toward the unknown and chaos, yet ordered and related in order to be recognized.’
Shane Jackson’s paintings take a variety of forms. In addition to working on traditional supports, he has also painted in a trompe-l’oeil manner on surfaces such as fruit, books and furniture. Shane had his first solo show at Arthouse Gallery, Dunedin in 1994 and has been living in Wellington since 1996.
“In this exhibition I am interested in the vulnerability of the human form and its methods for protection. The hollow shell of a suit of armour is remarkable as an imprint of a body now absent. It is also riven with cracks that allow movement, but which also offer points of entry – perhaps by the warrior organisms swarming around it. In other paintings bodies are shown without protection, with only the picture frame as armour. Taken together, this body of works hint toward the possibility of penetration and the desire for pre-natal security. You might call it armour and amour.”
James Kirk has been a painter, sculptor and photographer for 20 years, usually on a small scale with a focus on detail and finish. He has exhibited in numerous group shows in Dunedin from 1986 and had his first solo show of painting at Dunedin’s Peter Rae Gallery in 2002. James now lives and works in Wellington.
“My current series of paintings represents the hieroglyphics of modern detritus. I use as my subjects objects from my collection of precious junk. I am fascinated with ephemera both for its intrinsic visual and tactile appeal, and for the memories and associations invested (or forgotten) in each object. The mystery of history and the beauty of the mundane.”
