NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Herald NOW
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
  • Herald NOW
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Politics
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Herald NOW
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / Lifestyle

Painting goes back to its pure roots

By by T J McNamara
15 Feb, 2005 06:01 AM5 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

The big art news in Britain is that Charles Saatchi - the most prominent collector and taste-maker in contemporary British art - has given over his gallery to a show called The Triumph of Painting. It is the first of three shows this year which will be devoted entirely to painting on a flat surface. His Britart masterpieces have either been sold (Damien Hirst's shark went to New York for US$7 million) or put into storage.

Do the exhibitions here suggest pure painting is big again? Two of the best things on show in Auckland are conceptual art and video, but painting certainly rears its head.

There is a connection with Saatchi. Former Christchurch artist Francis Upritchard has had works bought for the Saatchi Collection and has an exhibition at Artspace until March 5.

The show is a remarkable piece of curatorship. The huge main gallery has only one work, flat on the floor - a large, hairy beast that is half monkey, half spider, though it has only four legs waving in the air. It is a curiosity presented as sculpture.

Other work is pushed so far down to the end of the adjacent long gallery it could almost be overlooked. Here, the fashionable word "vitrine" comes into play. It means putting work in a glass case so it becomes like a museum specimen, isolated and special. Damien Hirst's exhibition in Naples is almost entirely made up of vitrines.

This is exactly suited to Upritchard's exhibition Doomed, Doomed, All Doomed and concerns itself with the way enigmatic odd bits and pieces may be all that remains.

One vitrine contains her now celebrated and memorable imitation shrunken heads.

More vitrines are in the third gallery, as well as her latest development - draped melancholy statuettes of ascetics. The whole show is sad but not sour and certainly reinforces the memento mori associations of the title.

In the show Coming Out at the Vavasour/Godkin Gallery until February 26, video art is alongside painting. First is a typical scattered installation - severed feet and dynamite among upright members of society. It is by Emma Smith and called Luxury Liner and is, one supposes, a visual equivalent of The Death of Klinghoffer, the contemporary opera set on a ship which will be part of AK05. The three-dimensional elements include Hamish Palmer's peep-hole bird boxes which contain photographs of kumara posing as birds. They were funny when he first did them. They are now running a bit thin.

Far more potent is the work of Gregory Bennett, who shows the short art video genre still has life in it. His painstakingly photographed mannequins evoke sympathy as they take a step in the dark and tumble into the void, transform into trees, get lost in a human jungle or show fear and puzzlement at a hospital situation, where everything, even a pillow, can become strange.

The strength of his created images is shown by the way they transfer to still photography to make images of a round dance of life or, most notably, an immensely complex print called Fall

1 that challenges traditional images of the Last Judgment.

Some of the energy Saatchi taps into is certainly there in the bright, vivid work of Chantelle Smith, sweet and as full of juice as the berries which inspire its colour in Cranberry, and the upward-rippling, lively Blackcurrant.

The special colour relationships that only painting can ally to tactile gestures that build up a structure are part of the appeal of the colourful work.

That painting is certainly not dead, though perhaps short of triumphant as in the title of the Saatchi show, is emphasised by a newcomer and a veteran painter.

At the Lane Gallery is an exhibition by two artists who have, as yet, achieved little prominence. Lurlene Christiansen works in ceramic and has statuettes based on a legendary eel. Lorene Taurerewa is a painter to be reckoned with.

Her tall, strange, mythical figures loom out of a bright background. At their best they are full, stern and have the brooding power of myth. Set in a box-like coffin they are more consciously symbols of mortality and more conventional, but the solitary figures have considerable force.

The long-established painter Sylvia Siddell is at Artis Gallery until March 6. She manipulates paint to give a wriggling life to everyday objects. Her work has consistently got bigger and more confident. This year, full-sized couches and garden seats get the treatment in this lively show.

It is at its most quirky and effective when details give a surreal spin to the image. Notable is Feral Couch, where vegetation threatens the human world and the couch cushions have teeth.

Strangest is a draped Library Chair, which takes on a ghostly Miss Haversham quality. The white drapery gives it more force of suggestion than the various femmes fatale of Historic Couch, delightful though that work is.

In an interview, Charles Saatchi hoped his example would be contagious. Auckland certainly features enough good painting to make his present preoccupation catching.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Save

    Share this article

Latest from Lifestyle

Premium
Lifestyle

I gave up pasta for a month – this is what it does for your health

Lifestyle

NZ bodycare founder Tanné Snowden: 'Living with endometriosis doesn't mean you're broken'

Royals

'Life is precious': Prince Harry open to reconciliation with royal family


Sponsored

Sponsored: Why heat pumps make winter cheaper

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.


Latest from Lifestyle

Premium
Premium
I gave up pasta for a month – this is what it does for your health
Lifestyle

I gave up pasta for a month – this is what it does for your health

Telegraph: It’s cheap and easy, but if you’re in midlife, it might be time for a rethink.

15 Jul 06:00 AM
NZ bodycare founder Tanné Snowden: 'Living with endometriosis doesn't mean you're broken'
Lifestyle

NZ bodycare founder Tanné Snowden: 'Living with endometriosis doesn't mean you're broken'

15 Jul 02:00 AM
'Life is precious': Prince Harry open to reconciliation with royal family
Royals

'Life is precious': Prince Harry open to reconciliation with royal family

15 Jul 01:53 AM


Sponsored: Why heat pumps make winter cheaper
Sponsored

Sponsored: Why heat pumps make winter cheaper

01 Jul 04:58 PM

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP
search by queryly Advanced Search