Immersive landscapes at PAULNACHE gallery

Portrait of the artist Joanna Joseph and her 4.5m painting Te Uriti (triptych). Photos by Thomas P Teutenberg courtesy of the gallery.

PAULNACHE gallery presents a spliced selection of significant paintings by leading contemporary artist John Walsh and emerging Wairoa-based artist Joanna Abraham Joseph, in response to the dramatic cyclone and climate change events felt around the East Coast. The Guide talks to Joanna.

When viewing Joanna’s latest works, expect to be confronted by bold landscapes which show the impact of Cyclone Gabrielle. She uses the shapes of slash and the colours of silt.

The latest exhibition now on at PAULNACHE gallery includes some of Joanna’s pre and post-Cyclone Gabrielle works and the contrast is instantly clear.

The pre-cyclone works combine a sense of the power of nature with the reverence to it. Joanna’s time spent in the water with her longboard has opened up a majestic world of undulating waters and rock surfaces set against watchful cliff faces stretching to the sky. This reflects the landscapes on Māhia Peninsula and Whakamahia coastline.

In contrast the post-Cyclone Gabrielle paintings focus on building a vision of wonderment of nature doing its thing as opposed to its destruction.

“I feel we have much to learn about living in nature’s path instead of alongside it,” Joanna says.

She likes to apply a  mix of oil pastel and pencil using a variety of gestural mark-making techniques to an undercoated surface before applying textured oil paint.

“This is all to reveal the physicality of my natural environment,” she says.

“Sometimes, uninterrupted paint strokes are applied with palette knives and fingers. (I use plastic gloves due to toxins in oil paints.)

“More recently I have started using a cream tinted undercoat to suggest the colour of silt. This cream undercoat is painted on first, to be seen at the end within the spaces.”

The viewer will also notice the lavish application of oil paint on the paintings.

“This creates the natural textures of all that is to do with the land, sea and sky, but also, the effective use of textured paint can draw attention to the distinctions in the space within the frame — foreground, middle-ground and background.”

Joanna was born in 1971 in Wellington New Zealand. She graduated with a Diploma of Fine Arts from The Dunedin School of Fine Art in 1994 and has exhibited throughout the Otago region, Invercargill, Christchurch and Wellington since 1995.

She moved to Wairoa from North Otago near the end of 2016 with her now deceased husband Taane Tokona.

At the beginning of 2021 she joined the Wairoa-based band called Hydra where she met her current husband Tristan.

“The flood event and its aftermath have become the topics of all my works moving forward as will be seen in my next few shows.”

Her style has developed over the years and is now more gestural and expressive, she says.

Since the cyclone happened in February last year, she has been working away on the next series of paintings and is now taking a “less is better” approach to her art.

■ The exhibition is on until the end of January at Gisborne’s PAULNACHE Gallery, upstairs at 89 Grey Street. Gallery hours are Wednesday to Saturday 11am to 3pm or by appointment.