Glimpses

Auckland painter Candi Dentice highlights environmental concerns in a fresh, dynamic way in her latest exhibition Glimpses.

Sustainability is central to the work of the artist. Apart from the content, this fact plays into the chosen size of works in the exhibition – they are all deliberately diminutive, highlighting the fact that in terms of consumption and sustaining the environment, big is not necessarily better, small can be just as beautiful and work just as well.

In keeping with this concept, Dentice shows us ‘glimpses’ of a landscape through a cut in the hedge, a gateway, or a break in the trees. These deliberate spaces refer to the relationship between man and nature and the irreversible impact that relationship has had on the environment.

Dentice depicts this relationship in a variety of ways in the show. Chapter, for example, shows a sumptuous pile of pristine white paper against a barren, grey wasteland.

In Pieces the softness of a cloud scene, broken into a jigsaw puzzle through which we glimpse different views of the verdant landscape below, implies both transience and the untouched purity of nature. Inadvertently we are also jolted into the recognition that the ‘jigsaw’ is a powerful, unforgiving machine used to carve up logs of wood for building.

Paper, being a by-product of wood, features in various manifestations in recent work. Symbolising man’s relationship with nature, its use in Dentice’s paintings represents the gradual civilising of the world across millennia due to our association and dependence on wood.

Tableau presents a series of quaint Victorian tables reliefed against a beautiful green, yet conspicuously cleared, parkland. Through a blend of surrealism with realism Dentice clearly reminds us that New Zealand’s experience in the wake of colonialism has relied on cutting down native forests for both local and international consumption.

In tandem with our unbridled consumption, is our obsession with material cultural. Rampant materialism has shaped the modern world, and much of New Zealand’s great natural forests have been consumed in the name of fashion, trends and keeping up appearances.

Glimpses opening preview Tuesday 27 Oct at 5.30pm. Exhibition runs 27 Oct – 15 Nov. Sanderson Contemporary Art, 251 Parnell Road, Parnell. Ph: 09 374 4476; www.sanderson.co.nz. For more information and images please contact Kim Atherfold, kim@sanderson.co.nz.

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