Various Artists with Sofia & Maya

Adrienne Vaughan is a Tāmaki-based painter, driven by her boundless fascination and exploration of her mediums. In which she produces beautiful abstract paintings that employ an enriched vocabulary of colour, line, shape and form, and brings them into a world of her own. The forms themselves hover in a space of peculiarity, hinting to a kind of still life with a touch of surrealism, embodying a mysterious cast of characters.

Her current exhibition at Anna Milles Gallery Blue Myrtle, showcases a shift in Vaughan's painting practice, a slowing down of sorts, to allow for a new sense of intimacy with the painted surface. A softening and more tender approach to her use of pattern making within the canvas. letting the paints inherit materiality and its trace of application linger on the painting's surface, creating its own sense of pattern making within the painted image. 

Maya had a kōrero with Adrienne Vaughan about the show and overall practice.

Maya caught up with Pōneke-based artist Matthew Galloway about his exhibition Watch History on at Sumer Gallery. 

And Sofia had a kōrero with Hiria Anderson-Mita (Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Apakura, Ngāti Rereahu) about her show PĀ - Te Huarahi ki te Kāinga - Finding My Way Home currently on at Tim Melville Gallery. 

Whakarongo mai! x

Louise Bourgeois: In Private View is a new exhibition currently on view at The Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. Louise Bourgeois born in 1911, was a French-American artist with a career spanning seven decades of her life, one of the great figures within modern art. She was best known for her large-scale sculptural work and installations, but also had a practice within drawing, painting, prints and fabric work. Bourgeois work often dealt with these psychologically charged themes of memory, family, the body and the subconscious—commonly drawing from her own personal memories and childhood.

Louise Bourgeois: In Private View, showcases work from a never publicly exhibited before private collection. This intimate collection showcases works that span over six decades of her career. From early paintings, to a closer look at her iconic spider series, her sculpture of hanging spiraled entangled limbs, The couple, to later fabric work made in the final years of her life. A beautiful and intimate showcase of Louise Bourgeois work through time.

Maya caught up with senior curator of global contemporary art at The Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Natasha Conland about the show.

Michelle Reid is a Tāmaki based painter, exploring the idea of atmospheres and gardening through a layered material language that incorporates oil paint, pencil, water colour and even the use of a water blaster. Allowing an index of material vocabulary and mark making to arise. Interweaving these explorative methods of mark making with botanical imagery to create a kind of synthesis of material language, that dances between representation and abstraction. 

Her current exhibition at Artor Contemporary, A Biome of Hue, continues Reid's exploration of atmospheres. Shifting the gallery space into its own garden-like atmosphere that invites viewers to engage with the work in a slightly different way—installed through the lens of a garden, some paintings hung high, others low to the ground, and one even wrapping around the gallery wall. Inviting viewers to encounter the paintings through this alternative embodied lens. 

Maya caught up with Michelle about the show, and overall practice.