Artfairs

Gordon Walters | Auckland Art Fair 2018

23.05 - 27.05

In partnership with the Walters Estate, Starkwhite will present pioneer abstract artist Gordon Walters at the Auckland Art Fair from 23 – 27 May 2018 and at the gallery from 29 May to 16 June.

Gordon Walters (1919-1995) is best known for his paintings employing the koru, the curving bulb form from Maori moko and kowhaiwhai rafter patterns. He Mondrian-ised the koru, straightening and regimenting its scroll-like forms, taking it from organic to strictly geometric. The presentations will include a major koru painting along with other koru works on paper, but will focus more on Walters’ late-career geometric and transparency paintings.

Gordon Walters is a master of modernist abstraction. In early works, Walters’ created configurations in which often curvilinear forms seem to jostle against each other. However the later paintings offer a strict geometry and shapes that butt up against each other, powerfully claiming their place on the canvas, yet with a delicacy of vision achieved through careful chromatic and structural shifts.  In the 1970s and 80s Walters intensified the process by which his sources were rendered down into elemental forms. His later works lean towards tightly painted geometric abstraction, in which pure shape and untextured brushwork further Walters’ translation of natural form into a purely abstract language. There’s a terseness and refinement to the geometric works.  They’re limited in colour, relying on neutral tones paired with contrast for their power, yet the energy and richness remains thanks to the dynamic relationships the artist creates between forms. 

Walters looked broadly for his influences, but his unique synthesis of local Indigenous and international art constantly returned to an investigation of the ways form might interact with space, or another form.  The progression of Walters’ abstraction over 50 years was further refined by his late-career transparency paintings, which explore the tension between interconnected and superimposed forms. In these works solid form is joined by or layered with a coloured repetition of itself, the inherent qualities of acrylic paint offering a opacity and fluidity that allow form to self-dissolve, and interlock. In much the same way that the koru paintings offered an illusion of perpetually dissolving figure into ground, the overlaid blocks of colour both self-metabolise and create new distinct shapes through the sense of oscillation of form and space. The illusionary space created is what Laurence Simmons calls “a conceptual jam of sheer undecidability.”

Gordon Walters is a revered figure in New Zealand, recognised for a long and productive career spanning five decades. The Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki and Dunedin Public Art Gallery organised a major retrospective exhibition of his work – Gordon Walters: New Vision – which is currently touring New Zealand. The Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki also staged a retrospective exhibition his work in 1983 and a survey exhibition Parallel Lines in 1994, and he has been included in many survey shows, including A Very Peculiar Practice: Aspects of Recent New Zealand Art at City Gallery, Wellington. Walters is represented in the country’s major public collections and his place in our art history is also memorialised in the bi-annual Walters Prize exhibition and award at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki.

Aside from Australia, where his work has been seen in Headlands: thinking through New Zealand Art at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art (1992) and the 5th Asia Pacific Triennial at the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art (2006-2007), Gordon Walters’ work has not found its way onto the international stage. This provided an opportunity for an important initiative by Starkwhite and the Walters Estate – to stage a solo exhibition of his paintings at Art Basel Hong Kong (one of the world’s greatest art fairs) in 2015, where it was seen by international curators, exhibition makers and influential collectors. Starkwhite also presented Walters again at Art Basel Hong Kong in 2016, along with Arnold Manaaki Wilson and Fiona Pardington. These presentations represent a small step towards granting Walters the international recognition he so richly deserves.

Artfairs

Past

Sydney Contemporary 2024

05.09 - 08.09

Aotearoa Art Fair 2024

18.04 - 21.04

Melbourne Art Fair 2024

22.02 - 25.02

Michael Zavros | Booth FC18 | ART SG 2024

18.01 - 21.01

Sydney Contemporary 2023

04.09 - 12.09

Aotearoa Art Fair 2023

02.03 - 05.03

Jonny Niesche | Booth F34 | Art SG 2023

12.01 - 15.01

Aotearoa Art Fair 2022

16.11 - 20.11

Sydney Contemporary 2022

08.09 - 11.09

Not Another Art Fair | Auckland Art Fair 2021

24.02 - 20.04

Jonny Niesche, Michael Zavros, Len Lye, Fiona Pardington, Seung Yul Oh, Alicia Frankovich | Auckland Art Fair 2021

24.02 - 28.02

Martin Basher, Whitney Bedford, Seung Yul Oh | Sydney Contemporary Presents 2020

01.10 - 31.10

Virtual Fair | Auckland Art Fair 2020

30.04 - 17.05

Fiona Pardington | Art Basel Hong Kong Kabinett 2020

19.03 - 21.03

Yuk King Tan | Crisis of the Ordinary | Art Basel Hong Kong Encounters 2020

19.03 - 21.03

Rebecca Baumann, Jonny Niesche, Gemma Smith | Art Los Angeles Contemporary 2020

13.02 - 16.02

Sydney Contemporary 2019

12.09 - 15.09

John Reynolds | Auckland Art Fair 2019

02.05 - 05.05

Paratene Matchitt, Gordon Walters | Art Basel Hong Kong 2019

29.03 – 31.03

Billy Apple®, Michael Zavros | Art Los Angeles Contemporary 2019

13.02 - 17.02

Rebecca Baumann, Len Lye, Seung Yul Oh, Michael Zavros | Sydney Contemporary 2018

16.09 - 13.09

Laith McGregor and Danie Mellor | So Long until we meet again | Art Los Angeles Contemporary 2018

25.01 - 28.01

Gordon Walters | Auckland Art Fair 2018

23.05 - 27.05

Billy Apple® | Auckland Art Fair Projects 2018

23.05 - 27.05

John Reynolds | Soap Box Symposium | Auckland Art Fair 2018

23.05 - 27.05

Fiona Pardington, Michael Zavros | Beyond Surface Affect | Art Basel Hong Kong 2018

29.03 - 31.03

Fiona Pardington | London Art Fair Dialogues 2018

17.01 - 21.01

Fiona Pardington and Michael Zavros | Sydney Contemporary 2017

07.09 - 11.09

Richard Maloy, Clinton Watkins | Video Contemporary, Sydney Contemporary 2017

07.09 - 10.09

Daniel Crooks | The Subtle Knife | Art Basel Hong Kong Film 2017

23.05 - 25.05

Art Basel Hong Kong 2017

23.03 - 25.03

Art Los Angeles Contemporary 2017

26.01 - 19.01

Auckland Art Fair 2016

25.05 - 29.05

Grant Stevens | Auckland Art Fair Projects 2016

25.05 – 29.05

Richard Maloy | Yellow Structure | Art Basel Hong Kong Encounters 2016

24.03 - 26.03

Arnold Manaki-Wilson, Gordon Walters, Fiona Pardington | Art Basel Hong Kong 2016 

23.03 - 26.03

Michael Zavros | Art Los Angeles Contemporary 2016

28.01 - 31.01

Sydney Contemporary 2015

10.09 – 13.09

Laith Mcgregor | Installation Contemporary, Sydney Contemporary 2015

10.09 - 13.09

Michael Zavros | Art Basel Hong Kong 2015

15.03 - 17.03

Grant Stevens | Thinking Feeling | Art Stage Singapore 2015

22.01 - 25.01

Michael Zavros | Melbourne Art Fair 2014

13.08 - 17.08

Gordon Walters | Art Basel Hong Kong 2014

15.05 - 18.05

Rebecca Baumann | Art Basel Hong Kong Encounters 2014

15.05 - 18.05

Seung Yul Oh | Huggong (Variation 1) | Installation Contemporary, Sydney Contemporary 2013

20.09 - 22.09

Grant Stevens, Clinton Watkins | Video Contemporary, Sydney Contemporary 2013

10.09 - 13.09

Auckland Art Fair 2013

08.08 - 11.08

Billy Apple® | THE IMMORTALISATION OF BILLY APPLE | Art Basel Hong Kong 2013

23.05 - 26.05

Sydney Contemporary 2013

10.09 - 13.09

Melbourne Art Fair 2012

02.08 - 05.08

Jin Jiangbo | Art Hong Kong 2012

17.05 - 20.05

Martin Basher | The Armory Show 2012

08.03 - 11.03

Gavin Hipkins | This Fine Island | The Armory Film 2012

08.03 - 11.03

Art Hong Kong 2011

26.05 - 29.05

Art Hong Kong 2010

14.05 - 17.05

Whitney Bedford, Jin Jiangbo, John Reynolds | Art Beijing 2010

29.04 - 02.05

John Reynolds | 1001 Nights | The Armory Show 2010

04.03 - 07.03

Grant Stevens, Peter Stichbury, John Reynolds | Art LA Contemporary 2010

28.01 - 31.01

John Reynolds | Table of Dynasties | Art Hong Kong 2009

14.05 - 17.05

Gavin Hipkins, Hye Rim Lee, Jae Hoon Lee and Grant Stevens | ShContemporary 2008

10.09 - 13.09

et al. | altruistic studies_vote more than once | Art 39 Basel, Art Unlimited 2008

04.06 – 08.06

Dane Mitchell | Conjuring Form | Art 39 Basel, Art Statements 2008

02.06 - 08.06