CURATOR Aaron Lister PARTNER Gus Fisher Gallery, Auckland OTHER VENUES Gus Fisher Gallery, 9–31 May 2015 PUBLICATION texts Anna Smail, Linda Tyler, Aaron Lister
Georgie Hill’s intense watercolours explore visual concealment, generating spatial instabilities and optical uncertainties. The Auckland painter’s work is inspired by camouflage. Disruptive patterns are a natural phenomenon (the contrasting colours of a moth’s wings confuse predators) and a cultural one (perfected by military camoufleurs). In this new body of work, Hill’s disruptive patterns merge with other forms in shallow interior spaces, asserting a new painterly and psychological complexity. The items of furniture that lurk within or float across the surfaces of these paintings can be attributed to modern designers, such as Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann, Le Corbusier, and, most significantly, Eileen Gray. Hill expands her interests in modes of invisibility to address Gray’s invisibility in art history, prior to the recent scholarship that recognised her contribution to modernism. Feint is Hill’s first public-gallery solo show.
