+64 021.453.418:: thelab@fe29.com
“While searching through old photos, I came across two images of myself as
an infant with a rocking horse. In one I wore a red hooded dress and red shoes. These characters became “Little Red” and her “Equine Companion” and are the origin and inspiration for my November 2024 exhibition at Fe29.” Bronwyn Gayle-Mohring
Evan prepares the first works to ship to Fe29 for his upcoming exhibition.
Final shipments have arrived – Just waiting on the artist!
Opening 10am Friday 20th September – Don’t miss the opportunity to meet the artists and see these fabulous new works.
Viky Garden, born in Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand, is best known as a painter. From the age of 15, she predominantly used herself as the model for her work. Through this singular practice, and over the course of three decades, she has explored the transitory nature of change and impermanence, themes that offer a framework to consider personal and universal aspects of the female experience.
Last year, Viky entered two photographic images into the international Julia Margaret Cameron 12th annual Photographic Award in Barcelona, Spain. Out of over 6,000 entries from all over the world, both images won the Alternative Processes Award and will be exhibited alongside other category winners in Barcelona this May 2019.
The two works came from a series of pinhole photographs, Casting Shadows, created by Viky in 2018, when her curiosity in pinhole photography became a reality after she moved from her studio off the lounge, where she had worked for over 20 years, to a larger backyard shed with a room attached that is now her dark room.
Recognising through social media that everyone is now a photographer, she remembers wondering how far back she could take photography for it to interest and have value to her.
“As a painter, I am very aware of how a painting can, when the going’s good, invent itself. It develops outside of anything I’m doing to encourage it – often in spite of what I’m trying to do and which I never quite achieve (hence the next painting). So it is with photography, I love the mysterious revealing or developing aspect and it’s this that feels lacking in the digital picture-taking process.
Pinhole photography is very much hands-on and really does create a kind of spirit. For me, it’s photography born of a cardboard box with no lens that I can look through to check the subject, only a pinhole to let light in onto a paper negative, where the exposure time is guesswork and frankly, anything can and does actually happen.
It can often take a day for me to do just a few shots because my guesswork can be wide off the mark and in winter, with no running water other than an outside hose and a large bucket, recognising and rinsing the failure shots to only go and repeat the process can feel rather dispiriting. At this point you’re thinking, why bother rinsing them? Well, they’re my lessons – I have to study those shots to learn what it is I’m trying to achieve – actually, what the camera is trying to achieve. If I trash them the way we delete displeasing digital images, I stand to learn nothing about the craft itself.
Because Casting Shadows are indoor poses, the exposures were up to 14 minutes long. This meant sitting as still as a statue, shallow breathing because even the rib cage moving created a blur. As I sat there, I had little idea what the camera was choosing to focus on but hoped serendipity graced herself and bestowed an exquisite result. Yes, it’s very much like a lottery. It’s about inviting chance into a process and respecting that very little will ever go to plan.
The resulting images have a recognisable idiosyncratic aesthetic. They are an analogue image as opposed to something digital. They are time and light crafted.”
Fe29’s exhibition CASTING SHADOWS was timed to coincide with the show in Barcelona. Limited edition prints from the series are available through the gallery.
Featured on the Arts page of the Otago Daily Times, Thursday, October 12, 2017
Paris based New Zealand artist, Marian Fountain’s works are being exhibited at Fe29 Gallery in St Clair this month. As she explains to Rebecca Fox, one of her greatest honours has been to create a bronze monument as a tribute to New Zealand tunnellers in World War I, in Arras France.
Q Is there any particular work or series of work that is a favourite or stands out for you?
‘The Earth Remembers’ monument stands out for me because it was made for the people of NZ and France about our common history, and it will live it’s own life from now on.
Q – What did it mean to you to be commissioned to make a statue to mark the First World War centenary commemorations at the Carrière Wellington Museum, Arras, France?
It was a huge honour and responsibility. Finding the idea took time but once it was there it was complete and nothing needed changing. Immersing myself in the subject of WWI was very subduing, I took my role – of representing the people who suffered and the need to condemn war – very seriously. It was a 4 year process and the fabrication itself took 22 months.
Q – Where did you grow up?
In Papatoetoe, South Auckland. We lived off the garden which had 36 varieties of fruit, there were vegetables, chickens, and the occasional lamb. When I was 7yrs the family moved to Whanganui where I stayed till returning to Auckland to go to art school.
Q – Did you always know you wanted to be an artist? How did that evolve?
As a young child I was often wrapped up in observing a leaf or stick, creating scenarios with objects. The sense of wonder has always been there, I felt that a scientific career would inevitably become too specialised, and that by making art I could discover more about the universe and our existence by playing with juxtaposing ideas.
Q – How did you come upon sculpture and medal making?
Professor Beadle at Elam School of Fine Art introduced me to his techniques in his fascinating world of working with wax. As he became too ill to work he passed on some commissions to me : portrait plaques of the former deans of the art school, and a sundial for Auckland Medical School. So the first year after art school was a formative time for learning how to create art work in the real world.
Q – What is it about these arts that have grabbed you and hold you?
Bronze is a material which has a rich history in many cultures through time. Making sculptures with this age-old process seems to bridge time, informing us at once of our present and our distant ancestral past.
In the process of making a sculpture I mainly work with plasticine, wax and plaster. They are natural materials which are pleasing to manipulate, not toxic. The negative and positive steps in mold making add more stages in which to intervene, building up a situation of many creative possibilities.
I work alternately between small and large scale: a large work is concerned with form and presence, whereas a hand-held object lends itself to a more narrative intimacy, whereby one can hone in to the microcosm as though looking through a microscope, to find out about the nature of something.
Q – How has your work developed over the years?
Arriving in Europe in 1984, the multitude of cultures, styles and eras led me to look for a certain essence or universality. A period of museum research ensued, culminating in an exhibition at the Museo Archeologico di Milano, where I exhibited in the Etruscan room, proposing a series of objects from a ‘yet undiscovered’ or ‘possible’ culture.
In contact with contemporary artists in Eastern Europe during the early 90’s, my work underwent a transformation, and ‘metamorphic’ tendencies evolved in direct response to shifting politics and the changing situation for Eastern-bloc artists. With the series of ‘beings in transition’ I was analysing the actual structure of change. At this moment I got ‘out of the museums and into the subconscious’.
The Remote Control series (2000 – 2010) looks at our evolving relationship to touch and form in our everyday lives, with levers and buttons replaced by touch screens.
Q – What is it like making medals for things like commonwealth games etc?
First I try to imagine the spirit of the finished object, then brainstorm the possible aspects of the subject by drawing a lot of possible scenarios. It’s then often a process of elimination to hone down the design to a satisfying whole.
Q – How is technology impacting on casting in bronze if at all?
I’m starting to use 3D printing for making some effects at the model stage. The actual casting process is age-old, but foundries in the Paris region are becoming scarce.
Q – Why move to Europe and settle in Paris?
I was attributed a QEII Arts Council Grant in 1984 to study foundry techniques in Europe, first training at the Italian Mint School in Rome before living for a time in London. In my travels Paris became a mid-way point that became more and more essential, I made friends here and took up the opportunity for free studio space.
Q – What do you like about living in Paris?
Everyday conversations here have always been inspiring. I’ve lived in 3 different neighbourhoods each with their own particular feel and history, and there will always be more to discover. The diversity and resilience of Parisians inspires confidence.
Q – What is a ”normal” day like for you?
Every day is different, starting with meditation I then get on with the most urgent thing whether it be the project or sculpture at hand, meeting people or administration, with exhibition visits and communal gardening whenever possible.
Q – How does your NZ background influence your work?
Nature and the land is our life-source. It’s enriching to have grown up in contact with the Maori culture : the presence of another world view from that of Europe, with different creation stories, customs, understanding of nature and the land, language …and reasons for making art. Resourcefulness and creativity are alive and well in NZ.
Q – Would you ever come home to NZ for good?
I live in the present.