Andrew Barns-Graham’s exhibition Approaching Consequences is on at Muse Art Gallery in Havelock North. Photo / Stephen Robinson
Andrew Barns-Graham’s exhibition Approaching Consequences is on at Muse Art Gallery in Havelock North. Photo / Stephen Robinson
Review by Rosheen Fitzgerald
To live in the current age is to be subject to a sense of impending doom. Climate change has moved from theory to disturbing reality. Partisan politics at home and abroad have dissolved into a bun fight, and social inequity is coming to a head. Even as we pay forthe mistakes of our predecessors, we sow the seeds of future discontent, to be reaped in turn by our children.
Gisborne-born, Auckland-based painter Andrew Barns-Graham faces this reckoning head-on in a series of seven portraits, showing at Havelock North’s Muse Gallery.
His subjects could be the product of an AI prompt of a typical art gallery goer – if the AI in question were somewhat depressed. Each woman stares accusingly from the canvas, demanding moral inventory from the viewer with unflinching eyes.
Eyes of different colours are a genetic rarity. Yet, here they are in abundance, giving the impression that the subjects are somehow special, and, perhaps, that today’s society is a zero-sum game – that existence is impossible without exploitation, even if that exploitation takes place without our knowledge or control.
They have a paradoxically homogenous individuality – a trendy blue rinse here, an asymmetrical fringe there – on the safe edge of edgy. The detail with which the figures are rendered in oils – the cleanness of lines, the perfection of shading, devoid of visible brush strokes – contrasts with the simple landscapes and dull skies against which they are set. While the women are in sharp focus, the background is allowed a little looseness giving the sense that the world is crumbling around them.
Their unusual, elegant names, sourced from around the globe, feel more like a class signifier than a cultural one, at odds with their uniformly sallow pallor. There’s a juxtaposition between their names’ meanings – Truth, Protector, Hopeful One – which encapsulate the optimism of new birth; and their steely regard, marking them as harbingers of consequence.
Paired with the paintings is a selection of Orbital Bowls by English-born, Auckland-based, emerging ceramicist Kit Rennie. Their dynamic composition of perfectly spherical shallow wells and loosely formed rims, augmented by understated, matte raku glazes, are delicately balanced, straddling the boundary of intention and instinct.
As the season turns and darkness draws in, Approaching Consequences invites introspection – both individual and societal – provoking an uneasy sense of questioning, rendered in muted tones.
