What I really hope is that some people who perhaps had no interest in the visual arts have read one or two of these reviews and enjoyed them. Maybe even felt compelled to go and see the shows themselves, maybe? It is every reviewers dream to inspire and interest their readers.

All the while that I was writing these things I was aware of the fact that the contemporary visual arts are notoriously baffling, frustrating and infuriating for the general public. When most people make the effort to go and see an art exhibition they are often confronted by a confusing array of signs and symbols that they can’t understand and don’t care to decode.

What I hope that I have done this year is untangle these messages for some people, and revealed what I thought some artists were trying to say to their audience. Of course I could have got it completely wrong, there is no way really of saying. I have tried to steer away from being overly critical and dogmatic. Mainly because I’m terrified by the fact that since I live in Wellington, which is really just a little village, I will no doubt bump into the artist that I have torn apart. And not being a confrontational creature, this thought terrifies. But much more constructive I think than to criticize is to try to understand; to try and pull apart and open up art in a way that makes it interesting, stimulating and exciting. I have really tried not to review too many shows that were on at the most well known galleries; Te Papa and the City Gallery, for example. What I wanted to do was reveal the myriad of different art spaces we have in our lovely city, and the plethora of activities that gone on inside them everyday. There are lots of busy people out there and we should appreciate and enjoy the efforts that they go to.

I have sort of measured the quality of the art I have been to see by the amount I amiable to write about it and the level that I am able to engage with it. I normally have to have some time to let a show gestate inside my head, let it settle and move around a little bit. Then, suddenly, things become clearer and easier to understand, and I am able to think of ways to attack the work; ways to get into it and take it apart, and make it more interesting for the reader. Occasionally this isn’t the case and I can write immediately and quickly, the work stimulates all these ideas, and the more I get writing, the more ideas come and the more I can’t stop myself.

Sian Torrington’s work at ROAR! Gallery was a case of this. It was one of the earliest reviews that I wrote and, I was so excited about the installation, entitled It’s a jungle in there, that once I started thinking about this show and the issues that the artist was raising I almost couldn’t stop. I realize that review was quite long. Sorry. I liked the delicacy and control that Torrington exercised; the careful maps of paper that crept across the walls made me feel like I was in a storybook. Most interesting though, was the artist’s use of negative and positive space, and the distortions that she imposed on her material.

Space was also distorted in one of my other favourite shows of the year, Peter Trevelyan’s work Persevertron at the Engine Room in Massey University. Trevelyan’s bizarre monolith stood alone in the middle of the empty room. Mirrors were arranged carefully within the object to extend and manipulate its inner space. You could put your arms and head in, and your body was repeated off into infinity. Not only was the space of the object itself distorted, but the viewer’s own sense of balance and personal space was fractured. This work extended out from its own physicality and impinged on that of its audience; commenting on and examining our spatial perceptions and awareness of our bodies.

What else, what else? Video work that has interested and excited me this year: Murray Hewitt’s work Burnings, which was in the show Smoke Signal at the Michael Hirschfeld Gallery earlier in the year. This piece stayed with me long after I had seen it. Its sense of disquiet and unease played on my mind. Hewitt, whose piece in Performance Week I wrote about last week, is an artist interested in the visual language of Southern America and American consumerism. This work depicted a figure, dressed in garb reminiscent of the Klu Klux Klan, lighting a set of goal posts in what seemed to be suburban New Zealand.

The work was a mass of contradictions and layers of visual vocabulary. “Goal posts = rugby = New Zealand.” “White sheets = KKK = America.” These elements struggled against each other and animated the work for me. The use of the video medium was also salient. (Ed- Wicked bad pun Thomasin! Quite a salient way to end your Salient year, wouldn’t you say?). We could watch in real time the monumental flaming of the goal posts. The use of video also heightened the feeling of voyeurism, as we drove past, spying on this apparently personal ritual.

There are several other artists and shows I have enjoyed; Douglas Crane’s video work at Aaron Laurence Gallery, and Regan Gentry’s piece Common Cold in Islanded at the Adam Art Gallery have stayed with me for a while and were exciting to write about. Len Lye’s Water Whirler down on the waterfront is a great piece of public art for Wellington. I think it is working again after some vandals attacked it. Nice one guys.

Finally, I would like to say thank you to my few contributors, Pippin Barr, Emma Prendergast, and Will Robertson who have all written for the page and their contributions were greatly appreciated. It is nice to have different perspectives and writing styles to mix things up a little bit. So there you have it. Art in Welly. Suck it up.

McCahon was born in Timaru in 1919, and began his artistic career by exploring the South Island landscape that he was surrounded by. It was here that he created the sparse, minimalist, uninhabited landscapes for which he is widely known. McCahon’s art works also grew to be highly symbolic and religious subjects, questions about life, death and morality came to be prominent in his paintings.

Travelling to America in the late 1950s, McCahon was struck by the work of the Abstract Expressionists working there, particularly Jackson Pollock. This trip gave him new confidence to create works on a larger scale, paintings to ‘walk by’, and distort and manipulate forms as he saw fit. Works such as this one, Gate III, are characteristic of McCahon in their magnitude, use of biblical text, dark undertones and atmospheric, reduced shapes.

Colin McCahon is a seminal artist in the narrative of 20th century New Zealand art. He was a pioneer of semi-abstract and abstract art in this country and interestingly does not ever entirely fit into the international art movements which were emerging contemporaneously with him. His use of text in art has also been of interest to post-modernist art historians working today.

I thought it would be interesting, after giving it a promo last week, to write about some of the performances I’ve been able to get to that were part of Enjoy Public Art Gallery’s Performance Week. I’m writing this while the week is still going, and I haven’t been able to make it to all of them, so this is far from a thorough examination of them all. So think of this rather as a taster of a few, like the Cameo Cremes and pink wafer biscuits from one of those biscuit selections: A small selection of the overall tin, but a choice and pleasurable one nevertheless.

But enough of the biscuit metaphors. I had the pleasure of being involved directly in one of the performances that was organised by artist Beth O’Brien, a recent arrival to Wellington. Entitled Beeline, the work involved a group of corporate-types walking down Lambton Quay during the peak walking time, 8:00 in the morning. The artist sought out people she knew, friends of friends, friends of the gallery, and also random workers who worked down the end of the Lambton Quay. We had had a meeting a few nights before, where we were given our instructions. Some of us were to be part of the ‘the mass’ which stuck together in formation and walked the length of the course, all the way to the end of Lambton to near Parliament. Others were the ‘joiners’ who connected to this central group part way.

We met at 7:50 on the corner of Willis and Lambton, formed our group and headed off. We were supposed to look focused, and walk together with a sense of urgency and purpose. There were quite a few people recording the performance, taking photos and videoing it, but we were not supposed to look for them or look directly at them.

It was an interesting experience being involved. Being the way I normally walk to work, I am used to the sights and general vibe of Lambton Quay in the morning. Lots of serious people, dressed in black, going to work, thinking about the day ahead, or still waking up. I often think about it as I walk along; all these people with different stories and different types of days who come together in this public space. And it is the same people you see every day, doing the same thing, and treading the same streets. These were the kinds of issues that were raised in this performance; the patterns that people make without thinking about it, and the shapes that we create by ourselves and with others in our everyday lives. Also examined were the ways in which we adapt to our environment. Simply navigating through all the foot traffic on Lambton can sometimes be tricky, as well as crossing roads, getting on buses and waiting for lights. These were all mundane activities that we concentrated on in this performance, and highlighted the way in which our environment shapes our navigational routes.

Another performance I was lucky enough to catch was Untitled (Musical Performance) by Wellington based artist Murray Hewitt. I have been intrigued by Hewitt’s work since he was involved in the show Smoke Signals at the Michael Hirschfeld gallery a couple of months ago. In that exhibition, Hewitt showed an interest in the imagery of Southern America and the visual markers of this part of the world. Again, in this performance, Hewitt examined the imagery of America and the innate contradictions that appear in the cultural climate of this region. Dressed in red, with red Adidas pants, a Coke T-shirt, and red face paint, Hewitt sang a country gospel song to a small audience. This performance took place behind the Opera House in the small alleyway next to the James Smith parking lot. Visually, this was a stunning setting. I’ve never been behind there before. There is some amazing graffiti, and the orange wall behind the artist really offset his red attire. It is also a slightly American surrounding. I could imagine being in New York or some stereotypically urban American city. Lying on the ground next to Hewitt was an American Eagle and a soft toy of the Disney character Pluto, both overt symbols of America and American cultural imperialism.

The lyrics of the gospel song (sung very well by the artist I must say) were saccharine in their clichés and empty in their promises. “I still believe in nonviolence,” they went. “I will run to be with Jesus, I don’t believe what they say on TV.” The soft toy is immediately associated with the child-like and innocent, as are the words of this religious and supposedly uplifting song. This conception rails against the violent history of Southern America (for which it is obviously not alone), and the racism which often characterises this region. But the song was delivered dead pan, with no obvious hint of irony. “Take from it what you will” the artist seems to say.

Finally, straight after this performance I headed down to Enjoy to check out what G-fab and the Meat Pack were getting up to. Unfortunately, while I was there, this performance wasn’t working so well, and it could have been amazing if it did. The performers themselves weren’t there; they were at an ‘undisclosed location’. In Enjoy was a phone taped to a microphone, which was in turn connected to some speakers. The artists were playing electro/trash/pop music somewhere else and this was piped down the phone line, onto the phone at Enjoy and then supposedly amplified by the microphone. It would have been amazing if this music had been pumping around the gallery, but unfortunately it was very quiet when I was there. I don’t think that the connection between the phone and the microphone was quite good enough to amplify the sounds sufficiently.

Nevertheless, it was great idea, and I don’t know if it got working more successfully after I left. The piece played on the idea of presence and absence, and sneakily removed the artist almost entirely from the artwork. This gave the music a life of its own when distanced from its creator. The work also played with the ideas of connectivity and communication. And interestingly, by not actually working properly, the work highlighted the limits of communication in our supposedly technosavvy age.

Interesting bits and bobs from Performance Week. It was nice to see some art that wasn’t hanging on the gallery wall.

There are heaps of words in this show. Heaps. I’m just preparing you for the fact that you will need to read a lot. I would say almost too much. It would take hours to get round the whole thing and read everything. It is kind of like walking through a National Geographic article. My legs got tired. But it is quite easy also to pick and choose; select parts that seem interesting. For me, this was definitely the earlier photographs and collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library.

The exhibition showcases early pioneers of science in New Zealand, replete in their stuffy black coats and thick moustaches. These are the collectors and the classifiers; organising and naming an unknown land. I particularly enjoyed the case of stuffed birds on display. It brought very quickly to mind the current show on at the Adam Art Gallery, Archiving Fever. In this exhibition contemporary artists subvert and examine this very urge to arrange and archive, which these nineteenth century scientists saw as their vocation.

Besides the interesting creepiness of the earlier Victorian scientists, I’m not sure how easily all this scientific subject falls into exhibition format. There are just a few too many words, and not enough interesting things to look at. The curators haven’t really utilised the space and the opportunities that exhibition format has to offer, to their full extent. And the result seems a little dry and wordy. However, there are some interesting sections and it certainly highlights the richness of New Zealand’s scientific community. It struck me, after reading about some of the work of these scientists, how unfair it is that these incredibly intelligent people spend their lives unsung in their own country.

NATIONAL LIBRARY GALLERY
5 September – 26 November

It is such a carefully planned building, everything is balanced and organized to achieve perfect symmetry. It is exactly the same height as it is wide, and the height of its massive central dome is the same as the façade, which makes it so pleasing and satisfying to look at. It is made of vast quantities of cream coloured marble so thin and painstakingly constructed, that in places they almost appear translucent. The walls, floor, and gateway to the gardens are meticulously carved and decorated by millions of flourishes: excerpts from the Qu’ran and Islamic texts, all heightening the aura of devotion and solemnity which surrounds the building.

The building was ordered to be constructed by Shah Jahan (who ruled from 1628 – 1658) as a memorial to his favourite and most beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal. Jahan himself must have liked the look of the place as well, as he was also eventually buried there. Understandable really.

Images such as this one are instantly recognizable as by Warhol, as they have so completely entered the domain of popular culture. They are on T-shirts and coffee cups around the world. And this is just what Warhol would have wanted. Art, in Warhol’s conception, was far too precious and self-absorbed. He burst onto an art scene where the American Abstract Expressionists were all making art about their feelings, and creating art for art’s sake alone. Warhol totally rejected this idea of art as distanced from the everyday world of advertising, product placement and consumerism. Instead, these were the biggest influences on his work.

His infamous studio was called ‘The Factory’ and it was here that Warhol mass produced vast numbers of printed canvases. Pieces such as this one, Marilyn Diptych, were created through the technique of silk screens. This allowed him to reproduce the images endlessly, sometimes even making several versions of the same work. In this way, Warhol was totally subverting the conventional art hierarchy and an art world which valued uniqueness so highly.

I’m not too familiar with Clem Devine’s other work, so it is hard for me to place these pieces within any sort of context. The title, The Remarkables, refers to the ski field of the same name in Queenstown. Two works, the ones I thought of as a beginning point for some reason, Elevator and Escalator, are created out of bits of battered skis. These are broken up, split apart, rearranged, and stuck onto plywood by way of presentation. Devine has dropped in clues (there are still bits of writing visible) so that we are able to recognise these objects, but they are totally removed from their original function. Instead, chopped up and broken, they are now appreciated for their aesthetics alone; for their shape and colour. Indeed, they reference the sort of geometric abstraction practiced by the likes of Kandinsky or Moholy-Nagy. Except these works are 3D and extend out of the picture plane into the space of the viewer.

These works, which use the actual skis, are referenced by those surrounding them. The works TNT and Shady Lane are ultrachrome prints that depict the broken skis, and the geometric shapes they have been arranged into. As the artist introduces each manipulation of the object, we are moving further away from the original function step-by-step. In TNT, the skis are lurid pinks and oranges, shattering the picture plane with their angular edges and sharp lines. They become akin to a graphic design, almost as if with commercial purposes, like a T-shirt design or advertising image. In the print Shady Lane, the artist is exploiting the high contrast of the black and white and using it to confuse and distort this space.

Homeward Bound, the largest work in the show, is painted enamel on aluminium. It uses another medium, but is still using the same sorts of shapes and patterns. There are large broken words and plain areas of colour. Devine seems to be exploring the aesthetic possibilities of a single set of objects, how they can be manipulated and what effect that medium has on a set of ideas. Homeward Bound also references a long history of New Zealand art which plays with words, signage and text. The size of the letters were very McCahon-esque, but any meaning is here effectively removed. We are able to know where these sets of symbols came from, but they are rendered useless in these art works. Their original purpose of advertising, branding and selling is cut up and deleted.

Round the corner, in the two little back rooms, there is a group show of sculptural work. Here I found other artists who share Devine’s interest in geometric shapes and their effect on space and form. I found Gabby O’Connor’s work, Extreme pressure: avalanche series, extremely interesting. In the corner of the room is a kind of cascading collection of paper. On closer inspection it is made up of the envelopes. These are all cut and folded into repeating forms, stuck together and arranged to fall down the wall and out onto the gallery floor. They invade the space of the viewer and creep insidiously outwards. The title of the work, Extreme pressure: avalanche series, implies a great force and an impending doom from this small creation. It is distinctly at odds with the actual delicate nature of the piece. The paper is obviously very light and fragile; its connections are not held together by extreme force, and cannot of course create any real pressure. There is a funny disjunction of what an avalanche should actually be and what it should cause, and what this paper avalanche can tentatively achieve. Just a quite rustle across the floor, not a thunderous boom as may be expected.

In her other works in the show, Extreme pressure: avalanche series: blue and Extreme pressure: avalanche series: red, both water colour on paper, O’Connor goes on to explore the same sorts of geometric relationships. Here, the carefully painted shapes float in white space; they are not so intimately related to each other as in the sculpture on the wall/floor. Their inside space is just as important as their exterior. They do not present a façade but instead reveal their inner workings to the outside world. Shameless really.

Another artist in the show, Douglas Stitchbury, also examines this idea of inside and outside space. His work Ghost Ship is a small model of a ship, standing out slightly from the wall, and is also simply outlined by connection sticks. There are no large planes to divide the interior from the exterior. Its ethereal emptiness (and total failure to perform in the way a ship should perform) makes it very much a ghost ship, devoid of functionality and stripped bare to the outside world.

Finally, Terry Urbahn has created for this show another one of his matchstick monuments. His clumsy tower, stuck together with wax, sits in the other back room. Again, there are geometrical shapes and forms, and a lack of distinction between interior and exterior space. The tower is simply a haphazard outline; it takes no solid form and makes no bold claims about itself. The artist is here poking fun at the traditional, monumental function of sculpture. This work would just as rather fall apart than stand firm. The fact that it is made of matchsticks also refers to its inherent self-destruction. If it wanted, it could burn itself down.

Suck on that.

THE REMARKABLES CLEM DEVINE
5 September to 7 October

A GROUP SHOW OF SCULPTURAL WORK
5 September to 7 October

A primary activity that intrigued the Surrealists was matching up two (or more) apparently unrelated objects and seeing what transpired. In this case the artist, Meret Oppenheim, has created an unlikely relationship between a cup and some luxurious looking fur. This creation had its genesis in a conversation Oppenheim was having with Picasso when they were drinking tea one day. Picasso admired a furbracelet that Oppenheim was wearing and casually suggested that almost everything could be covered with fur.

Out of this comment sprung Objet (Le Déjeuner en fourrure), which translated becomes Luncheon in fur. Like much Surrealist art, this creation is not only visually appealing, but it also playfully invites touch. The Surrealist also often had sex on the brain, and this work is no exception with its sensual fur and concave curves.

Across the back wall a large projection shows a man and a woman dressed in stereotypical cowboy outfits riding what must be mechanical rodeo machines. Their expressions are strangely serene. They are concentrating very diligently on their pursuit. Their lower halves are cut off however and we can only see the writhing motion of their torsos, flung around the space. Divorced from the apparatus which causes their bizarre gyrating, their movements take on new meanings. It is like a weird dance, at moments they mirror each other, then they move away. Man on one side, woman on the other, they seem to both attract and repel each other. It is a slightly sexual display of interest and courtship.

Gibbs’ exhibition examines the interplay of the sexes, the distinctions between them and the more uncertain ground where clear boundaries slip away and sexual identity becomes ambiguous and unclear. The plump, round beanbag-like object in front of the projection takes its ambiguity very seriously. Pink, dimpled, and spouting water out of its center, the object is very sexually suggestive but it is not immediately evident why. The texture of the material is like some sort of dodgy sex toy but this is subverted by its child-like shade of pink, and the gentle tinkle of the water which flows from it. The sexuality and innocence of this object sit uncomfortably with each other, and it is this juxtaposition that characterizes the other works in the show as well.

Opposite the large projection on the back wall is a smaller DVD depicting a montage of scenes taken from TV and popular culture. There are shots of a male strip show; men are surrounded by crowds of clapping women, laughing and at times looking a little uncomfortable. The dancing men are bizarrely reduced to their simple aesthetics. Bronzed and muscular, dressed in these extraordinary leafy thongs, they are only objects to behold.

When watching this ritual objectification of willing subjects, the supposedly sexy unravels and becomes devastatingly unsexy. Gibbs takes a step back from the practices which shape and define sexuality and reduces them to their bare essentials; their almost animalistic fundamentals. On the DVD other images are cut amongst the male strippers and body builders, and they serve to accentuate this unrealistic and hyped up display of sexuality. There is the recurring image of stags in the wilderness. These are noble, beautiful creatures, portrayed as symbols of strength and power. Also, with their stature and phallic horns they are overtly masculine. Shown immediately next to these shots are images of a hunter, complete with large phallic gun, patrolling the countryside, searching for prey. Gibbs juxtaposes these images carefully to suggest that even masculine power and potency are capable of being reduced and subverted.

The DVD is constantly toying with this subversion of power, undercutting images of masculine authority to reveal them for what they really are; subjective constructions which have only a tentative relationship with reality. The stag can easily fall victim to the hunter. The male bodybuilders, instead of being symbols of ubermasculinity, become fetishlike objects ready to be owned and manipulated.

There is a moment of real disquiet in this montage of scenes. A small boy comes up to a large empty swimming pool. It gapes before him. He stands on the diving board and bounces a little, like he is about to spring into the concrete mass. At the last minute his Dad comes up and stops him, takes him down and berates him for being so careless. Then he leaves and the boy is alone again, but there is the potential lying there that he will simply try it again. The moment examines the vulnerability of the small child. As he doesn’t know any better and could possibly injure himself, and the construction of self through teaching and environment, with the father coming down and dispensing his warning. But it is the last section that is the most interesting. The child is left alone with the pool. He now has the choice of whether to simply re-enact his former mistake or to take on the knowledge that he has been given. There is the disquieting contrast between his vulnerable childlike state and the small decision which he able to make, and the certain power that he is still able to exert.

Overlaying the whole show are the gentle strains of a piece of classical music by Haydn. It is as if someone is playing classical music when you go round for dinner at their house, when it is clear that they never would normally. Like other aspects of this show, it is deliberately sugar sweet and forced; a thin veneer of respectability coating these subtle displays of sex, innocence, knowledge, and implied violence.

SANDY GIBBS
Enjoy Public Art Gallery
6 – 23rd September

The classic example of a kid’s movie that is superficially childish but actually totally screwed is Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. It’s like some sort of crazy test to wend your way through Wonka’s madhouse alive. Inevitably the children are slowly struck off one by one, and Mr. Wonka is worryingly nonchalant about their fates; he announces ever so casually that Violet Boregard is going to end up in the juicing room. The freakiest bit is when they are traveling through the tunnel on the barge and ‘the rowers show no sign of slowing’. On the tunnel wall is a psychedelic montage of people and animals; the chicken getting its head cut off was always particularly terrifying.

There is a point to all this rambling I can assure you. We are actually here to talk about art. And here is my segue, I kept thinking about that part of Willy Wonka when I was looking around Peter Lewis’ exhibition Scalpelicious at ROAR! gallery. That part of the movie always totally freaked me out when I was a kid. Now I am much older and more mature I was able to wander around this show without covering my eyes with my hands, but there was definitely something reminiscent of Willy Wonka in Lewis’ work. It is the unsettling conflation of childish imagery and adult themes of politics, science and gender that characterises these works and brings them to life.

Peter Lewis is a Dunedin based artist who creates these detailed and delicate montages. He foraged through op-shops and library cast-offs to find old books, children’s encyclopedias, and illustrated fairytales, to massacre. He then reinvigorates them, places them in alien landscapes, cuts and pastes, aligns disparate images, creates people with animal heads and vice versa. The result is a colourful psychedelia of weird and wonderful creatures, drinking tea and playing board games while giant squids and monsters squelch around them.

In his use of montage Lewis draws on a long history of this technique. Most famously, the Dadaists who were scampering around in early twentieth century Berlin were big fans of cut and paste as a means to create new and startling images. Dada was an art movement that exploited the power of chance and surprise to determine how artworks were made. In this manner, Dada artists such as Hannch Höch collected found materials like pamphlets, posters, and photographs which she then manipulated to create her detailed montages. These were not only decorative but addressed the ever present political issues of the Weimar Republic, such as the position of women within society and the growing influence of the mass print media. In the bizarrely constructed images that resulted, these issues were addressed with a certain irony, and were certainly filtered through the skepticism and wit for which Dada is well known.

This kind of depreciating humour is evident throughout Scalpelicious and very much shared by Peter Lewis. These images don’t take themselves too seriously. One of my favourites was ‘Tiananmen Duck’. This depicted the infamous Tiananmen Square, scene of clashes between the restrictive Chinese government and protestors. The most well known representation of this area is that famous photograph of the one protestor standing solitary before the oncoming bulk of a tank. Normally therefore the domain of serious journalists and documentary photographers, on this space Lewis has overlaid a gratuitous yellow duck, thereby subverting the seriousness of the image and reworking a cultural iconic image.

These pieces are constantly reworking, re-contextualising and sabotaging the imagery that Lewis has borrowed from innumerable sources. Lewis describes his technique as akin to that of a DJ who samples and rewrites pre-existing pieces of music. In this way, Lewis’ work is very much like a visual sampling; an eclectic mix of images stolen from anything the artist can get his hands on.

The works therefore, like Hannah Höch’s almost a century ago, are also an examination on our image saturated culture.
Images and representations pervade every moment of our modern existence. We are bombarded everyday with images from advertising, magazines, television and the internet which shape the way we think, act and live our lives. Lewis’ images are almost parodies of the vociferousness of the mass media. The sheer number of different images and references to popular culture make these works almost like music videos or the E! channel. But saying that I mean they convey a vast number of images simultaneously. When watching music videos or E! I almost feel tired from the rapid fire cuts from shot to shot. There is never a moment to focus your attention or slow down. Each moment is almost overlapped and overlaid by another.

Lewis revels in this technique of oversaturation and excess. In their playful references, the works in this show are a pastiche of both the E! channel and the macabre undertones of Hansel and Gretel. In Lewis’ world skipping girls with octopus legs make friends with aliens and toy ducks preside over Tiananmen Square. It is an implausible world where the fantastical becomes entirely believable, and above all highly entertaining.

WORK BY PETER LEWIS ROAR! gallery
August 31 – September 17