Blurring the lines

ARTIST IN PROGRESS: Diploma of art and creativity (advanced) student Lynette Brown explores materiality and process, and the fundamental design component of line in her work with thin aluminium lithographic plates from The Gisborne Herald as part of her final year of study. Picture by Paul Rickard

PRINT materials from The Gisborne Herald, rather than print-making, is the stuff Gisborne woman Lynette Brown’s art is made of.

The thin aluminium, lithographic plates text and images are laser-burned on are usually recycled for print purposes, but Brown uses them to create table-top or wall-hung reliefs.

The artwork is part of Brown’s diploma of art and creativity (advanced) studies through The Learning Connexion School of Creativity and Art. This is her fifth year with the course.

“In this final year, I talk about materiality and process and move away from representation. It’s quite conceptual.

“In essence, this part of the programme is about putting aside accepted norms of art convention — painting, drawing, 3D — and slowing down to explore fundamentals.”

This includes the physics of a material, an action, a process, says Brown.

She is exploring one of the most fundamental components of design — line. Point and plane are the other two primary components. The exploration of line in her reliefs is about materiality and process, she says.

“I only cut the sheets. It forms its own curves. Through cutting and layering, I explore what the material does.

“It has no mimetic properties. It’s not made to represent anything. It blurs the lines between painting, object and material.”

In a complete shift of direction from aluminium plates as a medium, Brown is interested in exploring rope as a material. She would like to exhibit her work.

“It’s a big move putting your work out there. Sometimes we have to put ourselves out there because if we don’t, time will pass and the opportunity might be lost.”