Popping up in the right place

A Pop-Up Gallery is bringing the freshest contemporary art by Auckland's most exciting
emerging talent.
Rob Garrett is opening a Pop-Up Gallery for seven days in Newmarket, Auckland, to showcase his selection of the hottest young artists in a vacant retail space which is part of the new Railway Square development where Broadway meets Remuera Rd.
As a global art phenomenon the Pop-Up Gallery fills the exhibition gap that exists between emerging artists and known artists who have gallery representation. For seven days in Newmarket from December 18, 11 emerging artists are being shown by curator and gallerist Rob Garrett. For many of the artists this is their first exhibition outside art school and some of the others have already received enviable recognition while still only emerging.
Cat Auburn's pieces range from a chainsaw-wielding sculptress to a delicate glass artist.
Whether her works are 3m tall or 15 cm high they are achingly delicate and beautiful with the merest soupcon of whimsy. She is the 2010 Olivia Spencer Bower Residency Award
winner, and my pick as the Contemporary NZ Artist to watch from 2009.
Estella Castle is described as a modern-day Jane Austen. Her life-sized, luminous and sun-drenched oil paintings portray characters from Romantic Fiction at their moment of greatest vulnerability. Each one looks out at us from the canvas in that moment just before they compose themselves to meet the one they will fall in love with. Castle's masterful touch therefore reveals these men and women at that moment when they reveal themselves as ripe for the picking.
Garrett says: "Stella plans to do her fine art masters degree in Europe in the next year or two, so now is the time to start collecting her work.''
He says the Pop-Up Gallery is about bringing the freshest art and the hottest talent right to where the people can experience the latest and best.
"We are not tied down by a permanent venue in some out of the way place with terrible parking. Nor are we locked into an 18 month exhibition schedule and planning cycle. The Pop-Up Gallery is a hip and fleet-footed approach because it makes the best new art
immediately accessible to people who want to see it but don't know where to find it, and presents that art in the latest international format.''
Pop-Up Gallery, Contemporary Fine Art, presented by Rob Garrett, December 18-24, open daily 9am - 6pm, 36 Remuera Rd, Newmarket. Website: http://robgarrettcfa.com/index.htm