CAN column: Creative Arts Napier excited for busy year of exhibitions

Local artists Ethan Zonneveld (left), Dali Susanto and Nic Wilkey on the opening night of Royal Underground at CAN.

OPINION

Welcome to 2024, we have another busy and interesting year of exhibitions, workshops and events to look forward to here at CAN, including our 10th birthday celebrations.

Last Thursday, we celebrated our first Main Gallery show of the year, Royal Underground. A great night was had by all who attended.

Royal Underground features HB creative legends Dali Susanto, Ethan Zonneveld and Nic Wilkey. Three dudes, armed with paintbrushes and a desire to transmute paint on canvas into something charged with meaning and spirit.

View Royal Underground until noon on January 28, 2024

Opening in the Small Gallery on Friday, January 12, at 5pm, COPS ON GHOSTS is an experimental project that aims to capture a poetic moment and tell a story.

COPS ON GHOSTS artist Alexandra Dawson, aka Severely, explained the project focused on the connections between handcrafted elements and spoken word. The project is inspired by the moody energy of grunge and is a nostalgic reflection of their own youth.

“I usually create my artworks using paper collage and stop motion, but this project has seen me investigate new mediums.

“More than often, my artwork will focus on the power of memories,” Dawson said.

Creative Arts Napier (CAN) general manager Tania Wright.

Fundamental to Dawson’s process is experimentation, layering and taking the time to work with the materials and find something unique, using paper, tape and other tools of their craft to express ideas in a way that feels spontaneous and emotionally evocative.

Dawson said: “Through craft and figurative language, I strive to represent my own story – not because it’s any better than anyone else’s story, but because it’s what I know and it’s what I’m trying to work through.

“My biggest creative influence is my own overwhelming need to create a body of work that I am proud of.”

The COPS ON GHOSTS exhibition is in the Small Gallery until noon on January 25, 2024.

CAN’s new micro exhibitions to lead in the year are now installed in the CAN Foyer and our new Hastings St Gallery housed in the front of The Pottery Experience at 18 Hastings St, Napier.

Emara Whaanga’s new offering is a collection of simple yet powerful pencil sketches that are serene and thoughtful.

Sketches titled Ihirangaranga is an “intimate cry of hope, love, strength and mana motuhake for and with all indigenous souls”, said Whaanga.

Whaanga’s work is on display and available to purchase in the CAN foyer throughout  January.

Nerikomi porcelain bowls and vases featuring in Diversity by Julia Godfree at the CAN gallery.

This month popular multimedia artist Julia Godfree introduces her new exhibition Diversity.

Offerings include Godfree’s puriri moths in stoneware clay with patterns, metallic rubs and glazing; picture boxes that tell stories handcrafted in stoneware clay with glazing and metallic rubs; and her incredible nerikomi vessels and bowls in porcelain, handmade and with beautiful coloured patterns that make each piece unique, water-sealed and food-safe.

The Diversity collection can be viewed and purchased from CAN throughout January in the CAN foyer.

Just around the corner in the CAN Hastings St Gallery, Colleen Archibald and Brian Eyles have opened a new exhibition featuring her stunning ocean and nature-inspired paintings and his incredible eclectic recycled sculptures.

The CAN Hastings St Gallery currently features work by Colleen Archibald and Brian Eyles.

This husband and wife duo are a creative power couple.

Archibald is a graduate in fine arts and illustration from RMIT Melbourne. She has exhibited widely in Melbourne and Hawke’s Bay.

The talented painter and tutor works in pastel, oils, watercolour and acrylics.

Eyles is a retired builder, collector of interesting ephemera, a jack of all trades, and most recently a “junkologist”.

Proving that one man’s scrap is another’s creative materials, he has turned his hand over the past year to bring together recognisable metal objects and tools into sculptural works that improvise on everyday objects.

You can view and purchase their work from this exhibition at the CAN Hastings St Gallery throughout January.