Forget the Dead You've Left: Saskia Leek

17 August - 6 October 2002 in the Entire Gallery
When Saskia Leek began exhibiting her paintings in the 1990s, her subject matter was drawn from her real and imagined life as a child growing up in Christchurch. The materials she used, such as vinyl rather than canvas, and the brassiness of her painting technique echoed her subject matter and its concern for the nastiness and naivety inherent in teenage desire.

This exhibition introduces audiences to Leek's recent work. The title, taken from the Bob Dylan song Baby Blue, alludes to an ambiguity. For while the painting and sculpture have abandoned specific reference to autobiography, they convey a diaristic quality and still seem to deal with nostalgia for a recent past. In many ways her subject matter is emptied of reference to time and place and yet it elicits strong visceral responses, including memories of state houses and the false optimism of the 1960s. At the same time the paintings implicitly question accepted tenets of good painting.