Group exhibition offers exciting new looks from old at Gallery on Guyton

Laurelle Lomath, Rose McLeod, Elaine Meyer and Tanea Ngapeka at the Re-Vamped group exhibition at Gallery on Guyton. Photo / Stuart Munro

Whanganui artists are nothing if not resourceful and a group show at Gallery on Guyton offers a wide range of inventive artworks.

The aptly named Re-vamped exhibition is a group show by Elaine Meyer, Kristine Dickson, Rose McLeod, Laurelle Lomath, Julie Coffey, Anthony Roebuck and Tanea Ngapeka.

Meyer has used an eclectic range of found objects and junk shop finds to portray societal changes such as the deterioration of public housing provision.

Old cake tins have been salvaged to make wall art with white, meringue-like confections painted on their surfaces.

"They have deteriorated beyond their intended purpose but they make a nice surface and have their own frames," says the artist.

Rose McLeod, a skilled tailor, makes new clothing from old using classic tweeds and tartans.

For the Re-Vamped exhibition, she has also employed her painting skill and added found objects.

A tartan blanket has been cut into strips and given new life as a piece of knitting on chunky wooden needles.

"I wanted to see how it would work and I like the way it looks but it was quite hard to work with."

Tanea Ngapeka has combined her use of cardboard jigsaw pieces with intricately folded pages from books for her work in this exhibition.

"They are beautifully glossy and I wanted to make multi-dimensional surfaces."

Laurelle Lomath is a first-time exhibitor at the gallery and her works all incorporate natural objects and materials that she has woven, sculpted and fashioned into exquisite little baskets, bags and ornaments.

"Those are red hot poker needles," she says of the little, coiled baskets she has made.

"I used seaweed I found at Plimmerton to decorate the top of that one."

Jute and cotton thread has been used to weave natural objects together to make them functional or simply objects to admire.

Kristine Dickson has created framed, rescued fabric collages and woodblock prints and Julie Coffey has painted icon-style portraits onto pieces of driftwood and there is a selection of her dioramas made with found and recycled objects.

The works are all softly illuminated by Anthony Roebuck's strangely beautiful lamps made from discarded metal objects.

With their distinctive styles and disciplines, this group of artists have taken the unwanted and unloved and filled the brief to revamp them into things of beauty and intrigue.

Re-Vamped is open for viewing at Gallery on Guyton, 62 Guyton St from 11am to 4pm.