The Earl Street Journal (2011/2012)

In its second year, The Earl Street Journal brings together artworks that span a range of media and genres, highlighting the vision and skill of our artists.

New to Milford Galleries Queenstown, Justin Boroughs paints beautifully refined landscapes that are a captured moment; evoking nostalgia for a half-remembered time and place. Philip Kilmore’s ‘Princess Juliana’ also suggests a place outside time, his delicate floral subjects will remain unfading and the hillside villas glimpsed in the background hint at golden days gone by.

Unlike the singular moments of Boroughs and Kilmore, Callum Arnold’s paintings are a series of glimpses that coalesce into a landscape nuanced with possibilities. The divergent roads and layered hills of ‘Valley’ contain a multiplicity of memories and suggest the passing of time rather than one fixed point.

The transitory nature of time is also a concern of sculptor Graham Bennett. ‘Make Time’, with its calibrated face and exacting construction, appears to measure out minutes with precision. This accuracy is belied however, by the work’s inexact counterbalance and imprecise weighting. Bennett wants us to think about how we spend our time, both as individuals and as a community – are we running out of time? If so, is there a solution?

Time has indeed run out for the sleeping huia in Paul Martinson’s ‘Non Vocal Dawn Chorus Vol IV’ and the artist makes pointed comment about the ongoing extinction of our native birdlife in this work. Exquisitely rendered, his birds dream in a tranquil ‘trance-space’. Martinson is intrigued by ideas of the irrational subconscious and invites us to examine the relationships between what is ‘real’ and what is not.

Tranquil is not a descriptor that could be applied to Reuben Paterson’s exuberant ‘Ginger Beer’. His warped, glittering, floral pattern moves across the canvas with a barely contained energy, enhanced by a sharply-defined palette of brightest yellow, black and white. Likewise, Sue Hawker’s pate de verre ‘Too Much Is Never Enough’ takes the ‘more is more’ approach; this flowered vessel resonates with a ‘joie de vivre’ that can’t help but lift the spirits.

Fans of glass can enjoy works by, amongst others, Ann Robinson, Evelyn Dunstan and Emily Siddell while collectors of works on paper can take their pick from Stanley Palmer, Nigel Brown, Penny Stotter and Dick Frizzell. Be challenged by Richard Orjis’ attention-grabbing ‘Bed In’ or let your eyes linger on the lush oils of Simon Edwards.

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