Gus Fisher Gallery is pleased to present works by Christine Webster and Georgie Hill. Opening Friday 9 May at 5:30 pm. 

Gallery One
"Therapies": new photography by Christine Webster
In conjunction with Milford Galleries, Dunedin and the Auckland Festival of Photography
9 May – 3 June 2014

Christine Webster’s photography gets under the skin with its unsettling beauty and unnerving, direct gaze at subjects usually left in the dark. For over 35 years, her work has examined the way in which the female body has been constructed historically. In Therapies, she re-imagines the age of the crone, barren in body and pushed to the outskirts of a society that worships youth and beauty. In these recent photographs made in England, she has produced a sequence of images which evoke powerlessness, anguish and desolate beauty.

With tacit acknowledgement of the traditions of the English Romantic landscape, Webster sets her figures in a bleak world of bare trees, chill earth and oppressive skies. She writes: “Therapies places the subjects in, and alongside, a landscape which is not fecund and burgeoning with ampleness, but instead scarce, bleak and pared back to the essential dirt and mud”. 

Christine Webster’s photographs, with their uneasy subject matter and lush production qualities, confront the viewer with their striking juxtapositions. Rich, textured interiors and stark, monochromatic exteriors mirror the tensions inherent in the minds and bodies of her subjects. The complex narratives in the 57 photographs which make up Therapies invite considered contemplation.

Gallery Two
"Feint": watercolours by Georgie Hill
9-31 May 2014
Opening: Friday 9 May 2014, at 5.30pm with opening speaker Aaron Lister, City Gallery Wellington

Derived from the same French word that gives us the verb “to feign”, feints are manoeuvres designed to distract or mislead an opponent. In fencing, a feint attack (or retreat) gives the impression that you will move in a certain direction when you may not be going to move at all.

“Ruled feint” is the kind of paper stationery that has pale blue horizontal lines drawn on it, and a red vertical margin to guide handwriting. The other spelling of the word, faint, is often used in describing colours which are neither strong nor dark. In watercolour painting, the colours which fade and become faint on exposure to light are called fugitive colours. Typically these are red: madder, vermilion and carmine lake. The latter is produced from the bodies of insects.

In this suite of watercolours, Georgie Hill creates a surface of disruptive patterns derived from camouflage to hide signature seating designed by modernists Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann, Le Corbusier and modern Irish architect and designer Eileen Gray. To complement the narrative of loss and appropriation of work by women which her choice of imagery implies, she mimics the protective colouration found in nature where over generations a moth, for example, adapts to blend in with its surroundings to avoid predation.

PUBLIC PROGRAMMES

1pm, Saturday 10 May

Curator Aaron Lister from City Gallery Wellington is in conversation with Georgie Hill about the references, ideas and approaches used in her watercolours in the exhibition Feint in Gallery Two.

1pm, Saturday 17 May

Linda Tyler will present a talk on Irish architect Kathleen Eileen Moray Gray (1878-1976) designer of E1027 and Tempe a Pailla in the South of France.

1pm, Saturday 24 May

Students from the ARTHIST734 class combine with the Women’s Studies Association for a panel discussion on feminist art practices in New Zealand.

1pm, Saturday 31 May

Dr Sandy Callister is in conversation with photographer Christine Webster about her images of the crone in Therapies.