Memory and Art

The Blue Oyster is excited to present three artists with local connections. Kate Fitzharris and Nicola Hansby are Dunedin artists, and Rose McLeod is an Auckland-based artist who completed her BFA and MFA at the Dunedin School of Art. These exhibitions, which all explore the connections between art and memory, will open on Tuesday the 15th of November at 5.15pm with a preview and introductory artist talks.

Kate Fitzharris' sculptural installation, "Walk," documents and memorialises the artist's journey by foot from the Blueskin Bay oyster beds to the Blue Oyster Art Project Space. During this walk Fitzharris constructed many beeswax beads, embedded with materials that she found along the way. This mixture of materials has resulted in "pearls," which are composites of sand, water, dog hair, roadside weeds, plastic rubbish, materials dropped by fellow walkers, horse manure, peeling paint and residue from road signs. These "pearls" will be strung around the gallery as a memento of the journey, but a somewhat ghostly reminder. As the viewer enters the gallery they will follow the artist's path back to the Blueskin Bay oyster beds along this string of embalmed traces.

Nicola Hansby's exhibition, "A Collection of Still Life," is a series of paintings that plays with issues around recognition and the repetition of form. Hansby's paintings feature figurines and ornaments, carefully arranged so that they appear both abstract and familiar. The objects are depicted under forms of draping, which reduce detail and liberate them of their differences. There remains a trace of the person or thing that has been covered and simplified. This presence develops psychological elements, inviting the viewer to think about what lies beneath. These minimal/abstract works rely on the competition between foreground/background, positive/negative space and the rivalry between possible forms.

Rose McLeod's "Memory and Fabric" is a textile installation initially motivated by an important loss in the artist's life. The installation, which consists of deconstructed and reassembled men's woollen and tweed jackets, looks at male identity and the figure of the "old male" in contemporary dialogue. McLeod uses deconstruction/reconstruction techniques and recycled materials to facilitate discovery and creation. Fragmented pieces of clothing are put back together in new forms as part of a process of learning and investigation. She explores dissection and the need to disassemble thoughts, the tangle of memories, in order to unlock oneself from the strong emotional force of such thoughts.

These exhibitions will run until December 23.