Mid Masters Project: Elle Anderson

Elle has her mid masters project on display, with 6 fellow students from her year, at the same time as Whitecliff's MFA Graduating Exhibition. The opening is this Saturday at 4 and goes till Sat 25th. 

1/4 Acre: Printmaker Toni Mosley

Toni currently is selling her 1/4 acre Prints at Farmgate Gallery in Clevedon Village until mid February. I was there yesterday while she was doing demonstrations and selling prints straight off the press. Here is a impromptu snippet I took with my phone.............

1/4 acre is a fundraiser for Toni's upcoming residency at Can Serrat in Barcelona and she will be demonstrating her printing techniques again from 11-2pm on Sunday 26 January.
To find out a bit more about Toni's trip click here. So please pass this info on as Toni needs your support and she will look forward to seeing at her next printmaking demonstration.

Farmgate Gallery
20 Main Rd
Clevedon Village

S Walker-Holt Jan 2014

Left-Field presents: Toni Mosley and Sarah Walker-Holt

Toni will be exhibiting retrospectively her elaborate, whimsically handmade and printed books while at Left-Field over the next 3 weekends that she has created over a number of years. Toni is wanting to engage and examine the audience as they interact and contemplatively view them. Toni's books will make a very interesting presentation as they will hang from the ceiling and concertina out around the room.


Sarah will be presenting her project Collective Production which reflects her recent efforts to produce, with the help of Left-Field and friends, a small mass production of pieces that will be for sale. Sale-ability is not normally something that is high on Sarah's agenda as an artist, but this body of work has been created in an effort to fund her trip to Schmuck and Wunderruma in Munich next year.

Wunderruma is a show being curated by Karl Fritsch and Warwick Freeman that will present a survey of jewellery making in NZ.  Sarah decided that this would be a good time to experience, learn and expand from this prominently exciting event seeing that she will have some work in the Wunderruma show. So she hopes you can all find a little time over the coming weeks to support her, visit Left-Field and buy one or two pieces as they are very affordable, ranging from $30 - $70. 

If you would like to support and can’t make it to Left-Field or would like to visit outside of our open hours please don’t hesitate to call/text her and make other arrangements on 021 1040716 or email swalkerholt@xtra.co.nz.

Your support will be gratefully accepted.

Left-Field 2013

Collective Production Workshop

Thanks to all of Left-Field, family and friends; Ani Hirini, Bella Smith, Mark Mockridge, Janice Mockridge and her international student Blinda, and also Erikas friends, Nadia, Christine, Julie and Nelliette that helped out over last week constructing pieces for me for the upcoming presentation of mine and Toni's work.

Erika Wolters (Center) with friends Christine and Nelliette

For Erika's friends this was bit of a challenge and not what they expected, but they all did a great job. Julie and Nadia attached the cords and I was really impressed with both Christine and Nelliette not being afraid to 'give it a go' with the jewellery saw, drill and riveting.

Toni mosley and Matt Deyo hard at work for me gluing and filing

Now that Anna has donated an old BBQ - Matt, Bella, Caroline and I had an awesome BBQ after all the hard work on Saturday and hopefully we get a lot more use out of it over the summer months. Also a special thanks to Lucy as I would of been at a loss without her jewellery bench.

This was a great experiment for future workshops at Left-Field with lots of enthusiasm and positive feedback. 

Thanks again to everyone - great job

Sarah Walker-Holt 2013  

Images from the recent John Hill Vineyard Show

Thanks Elle Anderson for you hard work pulling together Left-Field's 1st collaborative Show at the John Hill Vineyard in Huna......................................

Anna Scott

Caroline Griffin and Matt Deyo

Elle Anderson, Erika Wolters and Toni Mosley

http://www.johnhillestate.co.nz

Elle has been pulling together artists to present their work from the Hunua/Clevedon area for at least the last couple of years and she has just handed the organizing over so it was great that Left-Field was her last show their and Left-Fields first presentation together to get the ball rolling.

Sarah Walker-Holt and Lucy Pierpoint

Images: Elle Anderson

Left-Fields Creative Neighbour: Flux Studio

 Left-field is lucky to be situated right next door to Flux studio, a foundry owned and operated by the renowned artist and casting specialist Frank Watson.

Frank in his Flux Studio

 Recently transformed, the front half of Frank’s cabin is now an open studio/presentation space where everyone is welcome to visit and enquire. As a Bronze and silver casting specialist, he is well respected for his fine art casting skills as well as his own work that is based on botanical themes.

 Frank’s castings, interesting wealth of experience and the lovely tranquil setting in Clevedon Nursery makes this a worthy visit. Flux is one of a number of artist studios in the Clevedon area.

Flux Studio is open to visitors;

Monday – Friday and Sunday 

10am to 4pm

Contact

fwatson@paradise.net.nz

ph +64 272866148

Visiting the Objective Art Awards 2013

 by Caroline Griffin

Recently I visited the Objective Awards with Sarah and we talked about the exhibition and of course her work in the awards titled Time Parallel, which I must say on behalf of Left-Field collective, we are very pleased to see in this show.

Anna Rae (Mangere Arts Centre) and Sarah in front of Sarah’s work.
Photo: C Griffin

 We found at the entrance to the gallery a small white statue of a man with jeans and bare torso with brick-like goggles this interestingly is made from casting plaster. The title M.O.W2 left me guessing but I think something about a virtual gaming world with plaster models like my son painted years ago. The figure had an upward gazing stance somewhat searching or looking into the heavens. Anyway we were keen to move on into the room.

Firstly the light in the room is at its bare minimum so a moment is required to pause and adjust which I think is a good thing as it slows things down. On first inspection the walls are lightly filled with works and there are three cluster arrangements of glass covered plinths for the other works.

This year the show has fewer works than in previous years with twenty-four works in one room. The winner is a ceramic urn by Richard Stratton, second prize went to Fran Allison for her lei work - My Place, and third prize was awarded to Ross Malcolm for his brooch titled Pseudo Curio. Really nice to see two of the top prizes going to people (Fran and Ross) who we know from the Jewellery department at Manukau School of Visual Arts. Both works look at an aspect of Pacific history and how in different ways it has an impact on us and this follows the whakatauki for the exhibition; People come and go, the land remains.

What I noticed was there seems to have been a careful selection from the various disciplines of object making. There are 8 jewellery works, 7 ceramic works, 2 glass works, 3 woven works, and 4 other-type works. Our overall reaction was that it looks like the selection quality has been raised and that surely it must have been difficult to select from such a wide range of disciplines.

Sarah and I had a discussion about how within the different object making disciplines there seems to be more opportunity to push the boundaries with medium within jewellery and the jewellery community is actively doing this. Ceramics has a long tradition but is limited by its medium although I did notice polymer clay at the Portage Awards. It’s an interesting conversation to select from a diverse range of disciplines and talk about skills, boundaries and traditions. Not an easy task and I imagine a difficult task for the judges to choose the work. 

Sarah Walker-Holt, Time Parallel.
Photo: C Griffin

 I was interested to hear Sarah talk about her work. I know partly what her work is about but its ambiguous quality has always intrigued me. Sarah talks about the knowledge of the future generation is not learnt or passed on but believes it is somehow a part of us which is carefully tied in with her chosen medium of old wooden kitchen utensils. These old utensils have the patina and character of everyday use and carry knowledge of their owner. These are then dissected and rebuilt from a variety of different objects coming together in new forms which result in something that looks like it has a purpose of some sort but not obvious and not known.  Perhaps something which may jog memories and these memories of course will be different from person to person. For me there were memories of old wooden skipping ropes and worn timbers and sash ropes of colonial houses by the beach and in the background the kitchen utensil quietly nodding to its domestic roots. There is also a possible futuristic apoplectic quality to Sarah’s work where we revalue past experiences. Sarah supplied a kitchen utensil hook for her work to hang from the wall which cleverly dictates how the work is shown.

We were pleased to see Renee Bevan’s balloon pieces carefully placed in the show next white domestic-ware ceramics. Renee’s and Fran’s work both talk about the exhaled breath Fran’s perhaps the final exhaled breath whereas Renee is a more playful breath.

Ross Malcolm is known to us through the MIT jewellery department. His work is based on a flowering parasitical plant whose common name is woodrose and these brought back memories for me of when these woodrose could be found in souvenir shops in New Zealand years and years ago. I had completely forgotten all about them until seeing Ross’s work.

Our visit was fairly rushed and I felt I needed more time or an artist statement to access some of these works. The works have been left without their artist statements which I find rather intriguing as one was required for the judging but then deemed unimportant for the rest of us although the three prize winners have their statements printed in the catalogue. Artists are required to spend time on carefully writing these statements which I personally would prefer not to do, so I only think it’s fair to include them along with the work.

The Objective Awards close on the 1 December.

Caroline Griffin