Layla Rudneva-Mackay, Blue (from the ‘Green With Envy’ series), 2009. C-type photograph, 470 mm x 470 mm. Courtesy of the artist and Starkwhite, Auckland.

Ready to Roll

29 May - 12 September 2010 in the North & South Galleries

Kushana Bush, Eddie Clemens, Elliot Collins, Matt Hunt, Richard Maloy, Campbell Patterson, Layla Rudneva-Mackay, Zina Swanson

Ready to Roll draws upon recent, exciting work being made around the country. The work, by eight New Zealand-based artists, has been drawn together without an overarching theme, but in acknowledgment of the fact that all the artists involved have compelling practices with a strong momentum and an individual voice.

The ages of the artists range from mid-twenties through to early forties, and while some have been exhibiting for over a decade, for others this is one of their first public gallery exhibitions. This exhibition does not set out to be an all encompassing survey of contemporary New Zealand art, rather it offers a more concentrated focus on recent work and profiles the practices of eight artists working in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin.

The title infers forward momentum, great promise, latent energy about to be released, a promise of something exciting, something seductive*.

Ready to Roll is curated by Heather Galbraith

* for folk of a certain age the title may also bring back memories of sitting on the floor in front of the television on a Saturday night, eagerly awaiting the latest hot top 40 pop hits, and the videos made to accompany them, counting down to this weeks’ number 1. It is with a similar sense of anticipation that new works by the selected artists are drawn together within this exhibition.

The Artists

Kushana Bush makes intensely detailed gouache works depicting figures undertaking group activities. The exact nature of the activities that these perversely beautiful and tormented figures are engaged in is ambiguous. References to yoga, individual and team sports, are unsettled by an undercurrent of sex and injury. Her style has been described as ‘grotesque sublime’, and is reminiscent of Indo-Persian miniatures and Japanese woodblock prints. Bush will be showing a series of works from the ‘Modern Semaphore’ series. The artist is Dunedin-based.

Eddie Clemens’ sculpture investigates the commodity appeal of consumer products and the way humble objects become markers for life experiences and emotional states. The construction methods in Clemens’ work span re-working hardware or stationery store bought objects (such as Morning Dew(2008) where he augments the common wire-covered clothes dryer, or Captive (2008) where he corrals multiple BIC Captive tethered pens to a surreal end), through to the design and prototyping of objects to simulate consumer items (as demonstrated through the fabrication of Pams’ rose-stencilled tissue boxes in powder-coated steel in The Fallen (2009). Clemens’ has recently completed the Frances Hodgkins’ Fellowship in Dunedin.

Elliot Collins’ text-based paintings whisper secrets and observations that most people and artworks have learnt to keep to themselves. Putting a new twist on diaristic or autobiographical painting, Collins’s works are equal parts brave, hilarious, earnest, melancholic, embarrassing, strident and poetic. Collins is based in Auckland, and for Ready to Roll will produce a site-specific wall painting over 14 metres long.

Matt Hunt’s paintings represent scenes from a total ‘cosmology’ created by the artist. His is an imagination fuelled by the insatiable acquisition of images, from popular culture, art history, the Bible, science fiction cinema and television, and elsewhere. Apocalyptic imagery, utopian creatures and comic book narratives continue to feature in his intensely detailed, maximum-action paintings. Hunt is based in Wellington.

Richard Maloy works across media including photography, sculpture, installation and video. He made his first video project in 1998 as part of his undergraduate studies at Elam where he filmed and photographed himself over eight months climbing in and out of a blue plastic bag. Maloy’s practice has continued to develop along unruly, idiosyncratic, and high-energy lines. For Ready to Roll Maloy will make a large architectural structure out of cardboard and show a collection of video works from a ten year period, before he travels to San Francisco to undertake a Wallace Arts Trust/Fulbright New Zealand supported residency at Headlands Centre for the Arts.

Campbell Patterson is an artist from Auckland, who works mostly alone and with real, staged situations. Much of his work is characterised by an interest in documenting the body’s mental and physical limitations, the results of which are always humorous, sometimes painful, and rarely predictable. Patterson will show a rich selection of over thirty video works not seen before in Wellington.

Layla Rudneva-Mackay makes photographs, informed by simple and acute observations of human behaviour and situations. The characters which inhabit her images are often alone, or interacting with one other in complete trust. The situation is often staged, yet achieves a sense of deep and profound ordinariness. For the first time Rudneva-Mackay will be bringing together works from a range of series, including images exploring portraiture from the ‘Green With Envy’ series. The artist is based in Auckland.

Zina Swanson is a Christchurch-based artist, who has makes drawings and sculptures. In a recent exhibition at The Physics Room she traced the perimeter of the gallery with a chain of pressed daisies, held aloft by glass crutches. The work reveals the artist’s intention to engage her public’s attention with the force of small and very simple things; while creating a cordon not to be crossed, she has typically used the most fragile of materials, deftly dictating the action. Swanson will be showing a new sculptural work and a suite of drawings where flora and fragments of human forms are grafted to create intriguing and fantastic hybrids.

Ready to Roll Works List

Media Releases

31 March 2010: Ready to Roll

18 May 2010: Art so new it's still being made.