Earth Disco: Whanganui exhibition combines natural wonders with disco lights

The first exhibit you see as you walk into the Edith Gallery this week is a freakishly shaped, brightly painted teapot.

It is the collaborative work of visiting artists Elise Bishop and Sarah Bingle who are holding their Earth Disco exhibition at the gallery this week.

The two have collaborated as musicians before, playing in indie 90s band Meat Market and more recently in Three Way with Kirsty Porter.

Now the two are exhibiting their visual art together for the first time and the teapot is the only exhibit where Bingle's ethereal, colourful paintings converge with Bishop's earthy, fossil-like ceramic works.

Their individual works clash wildly and yet the exhibition works.

The eye is drawn from Bingle's almost unbearably bright canvasses to Bishop's earth-coloured ceramics and back again.

"We weren't sure how it would work until we put our work together in one place and we're very pleased with the look of the exhibition and the Edith is the perfect space for it," Bishop said.

"Our work has a strange synergy, as we're both speaking of time and material and human hands on the planet."

Bishop held a solo exhibition at the Edith Gallery last year while a resident artist at 85 Glasgow St.

She now lives on Great Barrier Island but spent her early childhood in Whanganui and remembers attending after-school classes with renowned Whanganui potter Agnes Smith.

"I've been a keen rock hound, and mud-pie maker since the beginning, and I've seriously played with the art of ceramics for a couple of decades now."

The Great Barrier landscape provides her with plenty of raw materials and she has discovered a number of clay varieties to experiment with.

Some of her works in Earth Disco are raw lumps of clay containing plant fossils which she has fired and glazed, and some bowls that have cracked during firings have been repaired using the Japanese Kintsugi technique which turns the faults into decorative features.

"You use metallic powders in the glaze and I've used bronze for these ones."

Palmerston North-based Bingle is one of the instigators of artist-run space Snails and a prime mover in the city's alternative arts and music scene.

She has previously specialised in small, 3-dimensional works and has recently shifted her focus to exploring colour and depth on large canvasses.

Bingle uses layers of pigment to create "ghosts" in the canvas, making them objects that interact with the light.

"These works are made for the disco - main lights off, strobes on… like Monet on acid," she said.

"I use a range of paints and inks and I was really excited when my 19-year-old son bought me a bottle of Black 3.0 for my birthday."

Bingle said the paint developed by British artist Stuart Semple is reputed to be the flattest and mattest black paint in the world.

"I have used it in a few of these works and I'm looking forward to using it in more of my disco series.

"I think it's the nicest present he could have given me."

Bingle has commandeered the small storeroom at the rear of the gallery to set up a mini disco with lights where visitors can experience the full impact of her works.

Earth Disco is showing at the Edith Gallery, 24 Taupō Quay, until Friday, January 31.