Summer Session

This summer we are proud to be hosting a selection of artists from renowned gallery Whitespace. In collaboration with Deborah White, we have selected a number of works that sit alongside our existing artists, exhibiting a new language and extending our offering to our clientele.

With over 20 years experience in the art market, Directors Deborah White and Ken Johnson work with many senior artists alongside emerging talent in New Zealand. Their passion has led them to travel the world for and with art, taking exhibitions to the US and visiting artists all over the world. Their loyalty to their artists and their following of clients pays tribute to their experience and integrity in the New Zealand art world. We are lucky to be hosting some of their fine artists at Artform.

Garry Currin

Currin's landscapes are not allegories conveying meaning through symbolic representation, nor do they seek to imitate reality. Rather they employ, in the fashion of lyrical abstraction, the emotive and expressive qualities of colour, shape and brushwork to capture first the artist's feelings, and subsequently the viewer's.

Landscapes appear to be the subject, yet the dark shades, the atmospheric smudges of light and shadow carry a cipher of another world that shifts between experience, memory, and dreaming. Although man is evident he is not present in these landscapes where light plays, shifting and elusive through pale veils, teasing the connections between eye and memory, tempting us to capture the sense of a real place, a real-time in the shapes of hills and waterways. Part of the mystery lies in the ambiguity of form, as visual rhythms capture our need to identify evidence of our place in the landscape … a row of fence posts, a road? an abandoned building? … exposed momentarily in the light, landmarks like staging posts in our imagination.

Appreciating that there is 'nothing new under the sun', Currin's search for painterly truth lies in his working processes. He paints, he says, "from the inside out" approaching the energy of the moment listening to the music of Toru Takemitsu (a Japanese composer influenced by the work of John Cage, Claude Debussy and traditional Japanese music). The process of painting, for Currin, is an exploratory sensing rather than directional questing. The paintings that result from this process enable viewers to step outside themselves and into another world.

View Garry on YouTube here.

Lianne edwards

Beauty and chaos, transience and permanence are key phrases in Lianne Edwards’ analysis of nature and its mindless destruction by humankind.

Lianne Edwards background in marine ecology and resource management, and as an artist serves to position her at the forefront of eco artists in New Zealand. Her interest in both science and art finds its voice in artworks that make comment on our relationship with the natural world. All too often humankind is found wanting in an examination of our interaction with nature. Edwards work, often microscopically delicate, or alternatively, commanding a strong physical presence, questions how we value the natural world. The subtlety and aesthetic appeal of her works belies the underlying environmental messages and important themes she addresses.

Edwards has collaborated with organisations such as the Sea Cleaners initiative, and also with wildlife scientists to draw attention to what’s happening in our marine environment and with our critically endangered native bird populations. Lianne is of Tongan, Irish, Scottish & English descent. Born and bred in South Auckland she is now based in the top of the South Island.

"I personally feel a very strong connection to the Pacific region, firstly from growing up on an island nation (New Zealand) surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, secondly due to my Tongan ancestry, and thirdly because of my background and interest in marine ecology and conservation. I’m concerned about what’s happening to our oceans and to our native plants and animals and the future that we will be leaving for generations to come”.

Lianne has work in the collections of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Chartwell Collection, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, James Wallace Arts Trust and many private and public collections.

View Lianne on YouTube here.

Bing Dawe

Dawe has rightly been described as one of New Zealand's most prominent sculptors for his distinctive style of art which engages with pressing environmental issues in a way that inspires contemplation and open dialogue.

Bing Dawe's upbringing in Glenavy, South Canterbury, alongside the Waitaki River was a formative experience that has fed into both his personal and artistic lives. It has sustained a life-long interest and respect for the environment; its bio-diversity and eco systems and the ways in which human beings interact with these delicate and self-sufficient series of relationships. His recent work explores the vulnerability of New Zealand's ecology and marine life, referencing the impact of water degradation and habitiat destruction and conveying the implication of their potential loss on a universal scale.

Since graduating from the University of Cantebury's School of Fine Arts in the mid 1970s he has participated in numerous solo exhibitions including a major retrospective at the Robert McDougall Art Gallery in 1999. He is the recipient of many awards including the highly prestigious Wallace Art Award in the same year. His work can be found in significant public and private collections both in New Zealand and overseas, including public commissions in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Rotorua.