Creative Arts Network presents, 29 March 7-9pm at the Refinery ArtSpace,
David Merritt, Back & Beyound.
'Dragging his renegade carcass up and down the country like a man possessed, David Merritt is one of the hardest working (and nicest) poets you're ever likely to meet.

Humbly constructing poem books by hand from the detritus of consumer waste, he uses recycled Readers' Digests to create word treasures that are unmistakably his own. Mating insightful political comment with arresting emotional themes- expect poetry that strips the cynicism from your arteries. Expect whimsical tangents and badger noises.'

A contemporary art exhibition at The Refinery ArtSpace
 With Christine Wingels, Larisse Hall, Erhard Wingels, Dominique de Borrekens
 
Dates: 28 March -24 April 20018
Opening hours Mon- Fri 10am -5pm, Sat 11am – 2 pm
Closed Easter, 30 March – open again 3 April 2018.
 
4 Switched on Artists - Turn on their Lights at The Refinery!
 
Who has heard of an art exhibition in the dark? This contemporary art show at The Refinery ArtSpace in Nelson has a concerted focus on light and will have much dark space for each of these 4 artists to offer unique interpretations of light as conceptual idea as well as a art medium.

Christine Wingels, the recent and multiple winner of Changing Treads Contemporary NZ Fibre Art Award, is resolutely on the contemporary and minimalist side of art. Her love of painting and sculpture, leads to a new aesthetic experience. She searches for the “between” and the “behind” of light and shadow. Off-cuts of everyday industrial materials, layered and ordered, reveal the aesthetic elegance of a perfect form in carefully balanced sequences. Texture is fascinating and hints of organic presence is organised in a new make-believe order with a dash of humour, to create worlds of their own, leading to eternity.
 
Throughout her career, oft remembered as Wearable Art Awards winner and long in-famous co-creator of the Queen’s garden ‘sail’, conceptual artist Dominique de Borrekens’ artwork has been concerned with shadow, reflection and transparency in the spaces of the Mind. In her new video installation, she explores these elements in the context of human perceptions screened by unconscious filters. Her ethereal and ephemeral presentation of moving repetitive images and sounds is fragmented, reflected and obscured by unexpected screens, and it disorients. She too uses everyday material, made beautiful by light to allude to the allure and dangers of consumer society on the ecology of the Earth.
 
In her new sculpture, well-known Nelson artist, Art Society President, and finalist of the Biennale Project 2017, Larisse Hall contrasts marketed expectations of self and our own perception of this, with a celebration of inner beauty, good intent and one’s real 'self'; the cover of the book and its content, beyond our projected image. She seeks to unify and harmonize the inner and outer elements that convey a sense of ‘us’, with the pressures of social media and peer pressure. Her anthropomorphic forms reference the embrace of Madonna and Child and are imbued with a life found in the alchemy of the ethereal quality of light and the materiality of paint and form.
 
For Erhard Wingels and his award-winning creative blends of photography, painting and sculpture, any light entering the lens of his camera is only the very beginning of his artistic quest and his options are endless… He, more often than not, leaves standard photography behind and through phases of abstraction on his computer ‘dark room’, rather follows the painters of the beginning of last century. The result can end up being 2 dimensional or 3D sculptures. His way of working with light is through the reflection and absorption, transparency or translucency of his surface materials. His works presents new changing realities for the viewer to ponder on.
 
All 4 professional artists are multiple award winners and have seriously excellent training behind them. They have exhibited widely in Aotearoa NZ and overseas, for many years. They have a wide international experience in the art field and are known for their multidisciplinary and contemporary approach to their art practice. Some of their work is held in public and private collections.
 

A little impression from Changing Threads, Contemporary Fibre Art Awards.
Runs until 24 March.
There is still the Peoples Choice Award, kindly sponsored by 'MMP - making more possible'.
So please come in and vote for your favourite piece.

And the Awards recipients are [in order of display]:
The Dame Suzie Moncrieff Award for a work which shows high technical
excellence and captures the spirit of the show. Award Recipient: Maggy Johnston (Tasman)
The Creative Journeys Award for a work demonstrating a contemporary
twist on a traditional technique. Award Recipient: Lane Hawkins (Nelson)
The Debbie Cooper Real Estate Award for a work of creative excellence.
Award Recipient: Meg Latham (Tasman)
and
The prestigious Bernina NZ Award was presented to the work featuring best creative use with a sewing machine. Award Recipient: Christine Wingels (Tasman).
The show of all finalists is running until 24 March.

Arts Council Nelson presents - Changing Threads, Contemporary Fibre Art Awards.
Runs until 24 March 2018.

Natchez Hudson with his painting based activation of the Inner Space 'Land' [Left Top: THIS IS THE END OF THE WORLD, Left Bottom: Landfall].
Katie Russell with her architectural based space intervention 'House for Rent' [Middle Top/Bottom] and 'The Signature of All Things' - an interpretation of NZ flora by Kirsten Boswijk [Ceramics] & Cate Murphy [painting].
​All three shows running until 24 February.

Local artists Kirsten Boswijk & Cate Murphy with a colourful interpretation of the New Zealand flora.
Until 24 February 2018.
Kirsten Boswijk graduated from Nelson Marlborough institute of technology in 2010 with a bachelor in Visual Art and Design. She majored in ceramics and was mentored throughout her degree by Christine Boswijk. It was 2005 when Christine first put clay into Kirsten’s hands and encouraged her to study at NMIT and she has been a steadfast supporter to the development of Kirsten’s practice. 
Her practice includes a range of slip-cast and hand carved domestic-ware inspired by flowers, and a series of hand built works inspired by the unique birds of New Zealand. 
This exhibition was inspired by the beautiful botanical drawings of New Zealand flora by Audrey Eagle. The concept is to celebrate the diversity of New Zealand’s flora.

Cate Murphy is a Nelson artist who paints in bold and bright acrylic colour on canvas, timber or found objects. 
She has exhibited in San Francisco, Dublin and New Zealand.

Runs from 15 January to 3 February 2018.
Mikaela Marshall's exhibition builds and extends from her research for her Master Thesis, and sits under the umbrella of Conceptual Art.
'Wherever there is life, there is movement, and the movement of life is specifically of becoming as it draws the whole of being to itself to become, by itself alone, a source of meaning. So I choose the humble city as the foundation to mapping meaning, as I think it is important to visualise the interplay of transience and read the inhabitants; to listen to the voices not heard in place and express this movement. With intense investigation, but also with artistic intuition, I attempt to cut across this division, this spectacle of disconnection, and bring to the forefront what connections might have been, and what connections could yet be. Condensing relativistic conditions such as time and space onto a single plane will reveal, behind the conventional image of a network of interacting entities, the meshwork of interwoven lines; interwoven lives.'