Exhibitions

Group Show | Sampler 2019

23.07.19 - 15.08.19

Starkwhite presents a group exhibition (upstairs and downstairs) titled Sampler 2019, from 23 July – 15 August 2019. The exhibition includes artworks by represented artists and features works made for this exhibition along with others dating back to the 40s and 60s.

Two new works by Fiona Pardington and John Reynolds are the centerpieces of the exhibition.

Fiona Pardington is celebrated for her formal photographic still lifes, particularly those of ‘taonga’, or cultural treasures. Of all Tane’s children the Huia was the most sacred to Māori and the bird was considered tapu, a revered treasure. In pre-European times, only those of the highest rank wore the Huia’s tail feathers in their hair, but the bird was hunted to extinction in the early 1900s when the distinctive plume became fashionable in Europe. Koru Huia presents a single feather, resurrected and recreated by Pardington as a rich and lustrous portrait. Joined by a photograph from her recent Tiki: Orphans of Māoriland series, one lost taonga meets another. This unusual item was discovered by Pardington in London’s Wellcome Collection alive and kicking but lost to history and the mercantile inclinations of the 19th century. This striking but curious object is a faux hei-tiki, probably created for the Pākehā or international market – what art historian Roger Blackley calls the ‘curio economy’ – that flourished from 1880-1910.

For those who know John Reynolds’ ongoing Missing Hours series based on McCahon’s 1984 disappearance, View from a Cliff offers a hint of the recurring signs and symbols that have characterised this body of work. But now what were identifiably road maps have progressed into fully abstracted and angular mark making. The routes no longer connect or lead anywhere, the disorientation and uncertainty complete. Joining the familiar angularity is something quite new, a large organic shape. Across the left of the work a sumptuous flower-like form bursts forth, both beautiful and explosive. Referencing McCahon’s painting Mondrian’s Chrysanthemum of 1908, the form recalls the artist’s reflection on his work that ‘it is perhaps a chrysanthemum, perhaps a sunset, quite possibly a bomb dropped on Muriwai.’ Accompanied by the small block painting I Want You to Panic, the 7 metre long work anchors one wall of the gallery, a large-scale painting to ‘walk by’ in the McCahon tradition, and in which to lose yourself in Reynolds’. 

Sampler 2019 also includes recent work by Paratene Matchitt, Seung Yul Oh, Ani O’Neill and The Estate of L Budd et. al.

Paratene Matchitt’s modernism is inflected with his Māori heritage. Known for bold geometric forms styled after the abstraction and minimalism of European artists, which delivered Māori content, he is also famous for his steadfast refusal to conform to the strictures of tradition and his ambition to create a new art (informed by modernism) capable of conveying his artistic and cultural vision. Matchitt draws on indigenous motifs and renders them sharp, highly stylised and graphically dynamic in a characteristic black, white, and red palette.

Seung Yul Oh’s sculpture explores scale, space, cultures, and time. He works across a broad range of materials and aesthetics, often using humour and playfulness in his sculptural forms to connect contemporary art and whimsey. Historically, enlarging an object or figure is typically used to express heroism or cement the monumental, but here Oh delivers three round and appealingly cute penguins, skewering the intersection between size and significance. What are we to make of Woomool? Are we to read it as an oversized and adorable cartoon animal, or see the enlarging to sci-fi proportions as something menacing? The work is light enough to entertain but also complex enough to suggest a sombre underside. Oh’s shift in scale prompts a re-thinking of otherwise familiar images and objects and calls into question the role of the viewer.

Ani O’Neill draws on the traditionally feminine making techniques handed down by her Cook Island grandmother and the mamas of her extended community. Cottage Industry is an ongoing series made from crocheted acrylic wool over steel rings. Like many ideas and objects introduced to Pacific societies, O’Neill’s practice adapts and reconfigures form and substance. Anchored within a practice that explores urban Pasifika culture and nags the art-craft divide through a range of sculptural forms, her witty and provocative practice addresses gender, identity, colonialism and tourism’s commodification of Pacific culture.  

Works in the exhibition by The Estate of L. Budd and the collective known as et al. are willfully enigmatic, offering a gritty aesthetic and intriguing content. Abstract references to politics, academia, philosophy, and those contributing to the et al. umbrella collective populate the work. This shifting group of artistic entities is famous for offering no easy rewards, staging works with plenty of intrigue that resists a comprehensive understanding or polished ‘take’.   

Sampler 2019 also features early works by Billy Apple, Len Lye and Gordon Walters.

Billy Apple is represented by two works from his 1965 solo exhibition Neon Rainbow at the Bianchini gallery, New York. Executed in neon, translucent acrylic and serigraphs, the rainbows were exhibited in a windowless space and lit by the light was from the neons. In Sampler 2019 however a small acrylic sculpture and serigraph are exhibited in a more conventional gallery setting where the sculpture is activated by fluorescent and natural light.     

In 1946 Gordon Walters visited Māori rock art sites in Canterbury with the artist Theo Schoon. Largely unknown to Pākehā, these early indigenous paintings and designs were to be a powerful influence on the development of Walters’ aesthetic. With its sharply drawn black figure and ochre background, Walters 1948 Untitled synthesises international modernism with the Māori art forms he was to endlessly explore throughout his practice. Anticipating the better-known koru works, the minimal form and limited colour palette edge edges towards the geometry and symmetry Walters played to its ultra-modernist extreme. 

New Zealand born artist Len Lye (1901-1980) is recognised internationally for his pursuit of the “art of movement”, notably with film where he pioneered direct filmmaking (films made without a camera) by scratching or painting directly onto celluloid film and his kinetic sculptures. Sampler 2019 includes Roundhead (1961), one of the artist’s most delicate kinetic sculptures comprising four concentric circles that spin in space, with a sparse ambient sound track.

Group Show | Sampler 2019 | STARKWHITE
Exhibitions

Current

Past

Paul Davies | Still Frame

24.10 - 24.11

Billy Apple® | Progressives and Other Self-Portraits

31.08 - 12.10

Marti Friedlander | Starting Point for a Complicated Story

12.07 - 24.08

John Reynolds | Some Greater Plan (for Claire)

04.06 - 06.07

Fiona Pardington | Te taha o te rangi

16.04 - 25.05

Gordon Walters | History

09.02 - 31.03

Whitney Bedford, Bill Henson, Ani O'Neill, Jonny Niesche, and Fiona Pardington | Sampler 2024

09.02 - 31.03

Jamie Te Heuheu | Quiet Thoughts and Quiet Dreams

23.11.23 - 13.01.24

Bill Henson | The Liquid Night

23.11.23 - 31.01.24

Clinton Watkins | Depth of Field

20.10.23 - 19.11.23

Bonco | Star Stare Start

20.10.23 - 19.11.23

Gordon Walters by Francis Pound | Book Launch

14.09.23

Curated by Jonny Niesche | Ümwelt

01.09.23 - 07.10.23

Richard Maloy | Raw

27.07.23 - 27.08.23

Petra Cortright | micro lemon diamond realm

07.07.23 - 26.08.23

Jonny Niesche | You say sfumato, I say sfumato

12.05.23 - 27.06.23

Billy Apple® | Divine Proportion

23.02.23 - 08.04.23

Gerold Miller, Gordon Walters | Miller meets Walters

08.12.23 - 31.01.23

FuckCancer_DontDelayFun | Blind Auction

27.10.22 - 05.11.22

John Reynolds | APOCALYPSEoCLOCK

21.10.22 - 01.12.22

Whitney Bedford | Imaginary

30.08.22 - 15.10.22

Seung Yul Oh | Huggong-Monologue

09.07.22 - 20.08.22

Gerold Miller

01.06.22 - 02.07.22

Bill Henson | Selected Works

30.04.22 - 29.05.22

Layla Rudneva-Mckay | I Roll

15.02.22 - 19.03.22

Fiona Pardington | Tarota

16.11.21 – 18.12.21

Fiona Pardington | Tarota Preview

05.10.21 – 07.10.21

Jan van der Ploeg | The Other Window

17.08.21 – 12.10.21

Laith McGregor | Second Wind

03.07.21 – 07.08.21

Richard Maloy | Maternal Routine

03.06.21 - 19.06.21

Bill Henson | 1985-2021

21.05.21 - 19.06.21

Martin Basher | Birds of Paradise

13.04.21 - 14.05.21

Will Cooke | Every Wall Is A Door

15.01.21 - 13.02.21

Jonny Niesche | Poikilos

17.11.20 - 22.12.20

Gemma Smith | Thin Air

06.10.20 - 07.11.20

Whitney Bedford, Petra Cortright, Kirsten Everberg, Judy Ledgerwood | Slippery Painting

01.09.20 - 03.10.20

Jin Jiangbo, John Reynolds | Performative Geographies

14.07.20 - 15.08.20

Group Show | Sampler 2020

14.05.20 - 06.06.20

Gordon Walters | From the Archive

05.02.20 - 07.03.20

Richard Maloy | Studio: Space & Time

28.01.20 - 01.02.20

Rebecca Baumann | New Work

27.11.19 - 21.12.19

The Estate of L. Budd et al. | the artists in conversation

22.10.19 - 16.11.19

John Reynolds | The Art of Wine

14.10.19

Billy Apple® and Tāme Iti | Flagged

08.10.19 - 12.10.19

Clinton Watkins | binary

19.09.19 - 03.11.19

Yuk King Tan | Crisis of the Ordinary

21.08.19 - 14.09.19

Group Show | Sampler 2019

23.07.19 - 15.08.19

Fiona Pardington | TIKI: Orphans of Māoriland

12.06.19 - 11.07.19

Laith McGregor | AM/PM/AM

09.05.19 - 08.06.19

BILLY APPLE® is N=One

11.04.19 - 05.05.19

Ani O'Neill | Classic Hits

14.03.19 - 10.04.19

Alicia Frankovich | Microchimerism

08.02.19 - 06.03.19

Martin Basher | One Week Stand

24.01.19 - 02.02.19

The Estate of L.Budd_et al.

11.12.18 - 22.12.18, 02.01.19 - 12.01.19

Gavin Hipkins | Block Units

14.11.18 - 08.12.18

John Stezaker | Collages

09.10.18 - 03.11.18

Grant Stevens | The Mountain and the Waterfalls

01.09.18 - 29.09.18

Whitney Bedford | Bohemia

31.07.18 - 24.08.18

Seung Yul Oh | Horizontal Loop

26.06.18 - 28.07.18

Gordon Walters | From the Walters Estate

29.05.18 - 16.06.18

Group Show | Sampler 2018

17.04.18 - 26.05.18

Alicia Frankovich, Ani O’Neill, The Estate of L Budd, et al. | 125

13.03.18 - 07.04.18

Len Lye | Love Springs Eternal

07.02.18 - 07.03.18

Richard Maloy | Things I have Seen

22.12.17

Michael Zavros | The Silver Fox

17.11.17 - 16.12.17

John Reynolds | RocksInTheSky...

17.11.17 - 24.12.17

Martin Basher | Devil at the Gates of Heaven

10.10.17 - 04.11.17

Daniel von Sturmer | Luminous Figures

02.09.17 - 30.09.17

Martin Basher | Hawaiian Tropic

01.08.17 - 26.08.17

Fiona Pardington | Nabokov's Blues: The Charmed Circle

23.06.17 - 23.07.17

John Reynolds | FrenchBayDarkly…

17.05.17 - 17.06.17

Group Show | On the Grounds

02.03.17 - 08.04.17

Billy Apple® | Art Transactions

08.02.17 - 04.03.17

Gavin Hipkins, Jin Jiangbo, Danie Mellor | Beyond Landscape

17.11.16 - 17.12.16

Laith McGregor | Swallow the Sun

01.10.16 - 12.11.16

Matt Henry | Analogues

19.09.16 - 14.10.16

John Reynolds | WalkWithMe...

30.08.16 - 24.09.16

Daniel Crooks | Vanishing Point

03.08.16 - 27.18.16

Gavin Hipkins, Richard Maloy, Daniel von Sturmer | Material Candour

05.07.16 - 22.07.16

Layla Rudneva-Mackay | Running Towards Water

07.06.16 - 08.07.16

Fiona Pardington | 100% Unicorn

24.05.16 - 25.06.16

Clinton Watkins | lowercase

19.04.16 - 18.05.16

Whitney Bedford 2016 | Lost and Found

15.03.16 - 14.04.16

Fiona Clark | For Pink Pussycat Club as part of THE BILL

20.02.16 - 22.04.16

Alicia Frankovich | The Female has Undergone Several Manifestations

06.02.16 - 05.03.16

Fiona Pardington | The Popular Recreator

11.12.15 - 23.12.15

Gavin Hipkins | Block Paintings

04.11.15 - 05.12.15

Gordon Walters | Gouaches and a Painting from the 1950s

21.09.15 - 24.10.15

Fiona Pardington | Childish Things

12.08.15 - 19.09.15

Rebecca Baumann, Brendan Van Hek, Alicia Frankovich, Len Lye, László Moholy-Nagy and Grant Stevens | In Motion

10.07.15 - 08.08.15

Grant Stevens | Hold Together, Fall Apart

07.07.15 - 02.08.15

Laith McGregor | Somewhere Anywhere

02.06.15 - 04.07.15

Arnold Manaaki Wilson, Billy Apple® | TOTEM | curated by Mary Morrison

01.05.15 - 30.05.15

Martin Basher | Jizzy Velvet

03.02.15 - 14.03.15

John Reynolds | BLUTOPIA

19.12.14

Seung Yul Oh | memmem

31.10.14 - 06.12.14

Gavin Hipkins | Erewhon

31.10.14 - 29.11.14

Rebecca Baumann | Once More With Feeling

19.09.14 - 18.10.14

Michael Zavros | Bad Dad

02.06.14 - 28.06.14

THE ANALYSIS OF BILLY APPLE®

05.05.14 - 10.05.14

Jin Jiangbo, Stella Brennan, Billy Apple, Trenton Garratt, Seung Yul Oh, John Reynolds, Layla Rudneva-Mackay, Jim Speers, Yuk King Tan and Wang Dawei | SIGNALS

08.08.14 - 13.09.14

Layla Rudneva-Mackay | Blue Squares, Purple Pairs

17.03.14 - 12.04.14

Curated by Martin Basher | Lovers

06.02.14 - 06.03.14

Glen Hayward | I don't want you to worry about me

06.12.13 - 31.01.14

Matt Henry | High Fidelity

16.11.13 - 14.12.13

Li Xiaofei | Assembly Line - Entrance

03.10.13 - 26.10.13

Richard Maloy | All the things I did

04.09.13 - 30.09.13

John Reynolds | Vagabondage

22.08.13 - 21.09.13

Clinton Watkins | Frequency Colour

25.07.13 - 16.08.13

Curated by Robert Leonard | BAZINGA!

11.05.13 - 08.06.13

Whitney Bedford | This for That

09.04.13 - 04.05.13

Jin Jiangbo | Rules of Nature

08.03.13 - 04.04.13

Martin Basher | Solo Exhibition

05.02.2013 - 02.03.13

Ross Manning | Field Emissions

29.11.12 - 22.12.12, 15.01.13 - 22.01.13

Seung Yul Oh | HUGGONG

23.10.12 - 17.11.12

Jae Hoon Lee | Antarctic Fever

18.09.12 - 13.10.12

Curated by Brian Butler | Greetings from Los Angeles: Eight Artists

10.07.12 - 06.08.12