Paper-Works Gallery in Te Awanga. Inset: Martin Poppelwell's Study for LFP, top, Sheyne Tuffery's Island Life. Composite Image.
Paper-Works Gallery in Te Awanga. Inset: Martin Poppelwell's Study for LFP, top, Sheyne Tuffery's Island Life. Composite Image.
Like Christmas gifts, the best art can come from the smallest boxes.
Such is the case with the art featured at a small coastal Hawke’s Bay art gallery’s Christmas exhibition.
Paper-Works Gallery in Te Awanga celebrated the opening of its festive exhibit last week, featuring more than 30 contemporary artistsfrom across Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand and overseas.
The exhibition showcases an expansive range of original works on canvas, paper from printmaking and drawing to mixed media and sculpture under one little roof.
Gallery owner Annabel Sinclair-Thomson said the exhibition had become a cornerstone event for the studio.
Hawke’s Bay artists featured at the exhibition include painters Martin Poppelwell, Josh Lancaster, Robyn Fleet, Mirjam Lugt, Michael Hawksworth, Annie Wilson, Susan Mabin and Lex Benson-Cooper, carver Jacob Scott, photographer Andy King, ceramicist Tessa Chambers, sculptor John Woodham, and multidisciplinary artist Bernie Winkels.
Georgie Johnson's artwork, left, next to her mother Jacqui Colley's artwork at Paper-Works Gallery. Composite image.
Their work is seen alongside young, upcoming artist Georgie Johnson, whose works bring a quiet, magnetic tension to the tight-fitting gallery thanks to her layered graphite and acrylic marks, playing with themes like repetition, memory, and the small shifts that change everything.
Works from Johnson’s mother and fellow artist Jacqui Colly can also be found on the walls of the gallery in the exhibition, with her dynamic acts of painting sharing coherent visual statements embedded with moments of deliberation, serendipity, and the somatic experience of making - proving why she won the prestigious Parkin Drawing Prize in 2018.
The exhibition runs at Paper-Works Gallery at 268 Clifton Rd, Te Awanga, Thursday to Saturday, 11am to 3pm until December 23, with free entry and flexible purchase options.
Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke’s Bay Today and has worked in radio and media in the UK, Germany, and New Zealand.
