Category Archives: Projects

Paintings, Projects, Selected Exhibitions

Houston Paintings

A selection of works exhibited at Art League Houston, March 22nd–May 4th, 2019.

In 2016, after moving to Houston, Texas from Auckland, New Zealand, my forays to local museum collections sparked a return to painting. Using photographic images from the book Houston’s Forgotten Heritage as a starting point, my paintings re-interpret the content of these historical images, and render new relationships to the present through my use of color. I went on to explore photographic images from other sources, including YouTube videos and children’s encyclopedias from the 1950s. My paintings employ the use of saturated color and meticulous techniques in a bid to tease out previously unnoticed details, to highlight the construction of the source images, or to emphasize the mythological or symbolic qualities that exist in the mundane. In these paintings, I use color and compositional elements in a non-natural way to jolt the viewer out of taking what they see for granted, nudging them to accept instability of history as told through photographic images.

To view all the works, along with their accompanying texts, go to the archived website.

Artworks, Projects, Selected Exhibitions

Dreams Moons Circles Fictions

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(and fragments found on the forest floor of disquietude)

A solo survey show of works (2003-2014) exhibited at the Papakura Art Gallery, Auckland, February 2014

For this exhibition, the projects A Humid Day and Untitled (White Book) were released as e-books.  

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A selection of works included in this solo survey show:

Untitled (Exportware)
Moon Bowl II
Monday
Body without Organs
Contemplating difference
Icons for observing points of the mind
Disappearance scheduled for Friday
She thought she was in a play when the whole scene had to be repeated again
You would, wouldn’t you? (For Ms AJ who remembers every minute of her life)
Hero
Familiar Spirit of The Cold Blooded Eater
Optimimsical
The economic interpretation of history is for the birds
Following fumbling falling finding fantasticities
They are usually wearing white.

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images courtesy of Papakura Art Gallery.

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Click here for images of the opening on Papakura Art Gallery’s facebook page.

To download the e-books featured in the show, please follow this link for further information.
 

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Dreams-Circles-Moons-Fictions1

 

Published in conjunction with the exhibition Dreams Circles Moons Fictions and fragments found on the forest floor of disquietude held at Papakura Art Gallery in February 2014. For images click here.

An introduction by Tracey Williams, and a catalogue essay by Dr. Cathy Tuato’o Ross.

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Dreams Circles Moons Fictions

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Projects

Threaded Stories

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4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney, Australia

A collaborative community project, facilitated by 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art in Sydney. Read more here & here.

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Embroidery hoops being prepared for the session.
Example of the chrysanthemum motif embroidered
Slideshow talk to the participants
Handling hair
Threading a needle with hair
Stitching with hair
First stitches
Template with embroidery underneath
Completed chrysanthemum embroidery.

 

.Photos by Garry Trinh.

Photos by Garry Trinh.

Artworks, Hair work, Projects, Selected Exhibitions

9

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64zero3, Christchurch, July 2008

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Hero
A Bowl to Catch the Sun
Empire
Memory of Hat
Sky Chart
Hedge Maze
The Cockroach
Ouroboros
1:1 scale of the ‘pyramid’ on the reverse of the United States one-dollar bill

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These scans were taken prior to framing and feature in the accompanying catalogue.

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Hero
A Bowl to Catch the Sun
Empire
Memory of Hat
Sky Chart
Hedge Maze
The Cockcroach
Ouroboros
1:1 scale of the ‘pyramid’ on the reverse of the United States one-dollar bill

Link to the catalogue for this exhibition.

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Artworks, Projects, Selected Exhibitions, Text-based work

A Humid Day

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These works sit in a narrative, that of a day in the life of a young woman. I have taken text out of “graphic designed” items such as commercial packaging, signage etc. and replaced it with text from Untitled (2001) and changed the visual elements of these items to suit the text.

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Announcement card
Graph
Page excerpt from recipe book
Bookshop frontage
Page excerpt from a program manual
Museum poster
Book cover from Classics section in a bookshop
Pack of self adhesive labels.
Tickets to a play

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Based on existing forms and formats of graphic designed ephemera, a New Zealand bookstore (Whitcoulls) sign is transformed into the words “Falling into Fiction” and a Penguin Classics book is altered to mirror the questions the protagonist has. A museum poster, using the background of a piece corrugated cardboard, purports to show the increasingly jaded protagonist “Treasures of the Unknown and Uncharted”. A page from a computer manual helpfully delineates “methods” of making paintings.

And finally, in a form of mirroring (such as the play within a play or a story within a story), the person goes to the theatre, only to find “herself” as the character. Her companion never shows up.

Installation at the University of Auckland Gus Fisher Gallery in 2007

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Project Website
A Humid Day website. Formerly at www.ahumidday.info
Website navigation screenshot

 

Click here to visit the project website.

 

 

A Humid Day E-Book Edition (Published 2014)

To download a copy of the recently digitised edition of the book, please follow this link.

A Humid Day (Abridged Version) 2014

A hard copy of the abridged version can be purchased on demand here.

Artworks, Projects, Text-based work

Untitled (White Book)

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Concrete poetry or psychology textbook and thesaurus mash-up, this book was based on collected scraps of notes and first published in 2000 as part of a final submission. The texts in the figures in A Humid Day were taken from this book.

Untitled (White Book) E-Book Edition (released 2014)

To download a copy of the recently digitised edition of the book, please follow this link.

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Printed notes, separated into their fragments.
Sorting the separate notes into their categories.
Arranging notes into an order.

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Page excerpts

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