Expect to Reflect

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.