James Ormsby's work Genesis ($20,000) is an 8.5m long work which uses a biblical text both in English and Maori. It looks like a large version of one of the Dead Sea Scrolls or an ancient Chinese manuscript.
James Ormsby, New Work
Whitespace
Until December 1
Barry Lett, .New Works
Remuera Gallery
Until December 2
Joon Hee Park, If Things were Perfect
Orex Gallery
Until December 1
James Ormsby’s work Genesis ($20,000) is an 8.5m long work which uses a biblical text both in English and Maori. It looks like a large version of one of the Dead Sea Scrolls or an ancient Chinese manuscript.
While having the initial appearance of medieval script, the lettering is actually in a truncated, rectangular computer-style font often used by Shane Cotton in his paintings.
The work is a link between the medieval and the modern, both in terms of the retro look but also the way the biblical text is used to create cultural links between Europe and New Zealand. It also touches on the relevance and irrelevance of religious writings in contemporary society.
There are more personal connections as well with the artist referring to the famous Ormesby Psalter (there may be a family connection), one of the oldest medieval books in the Bodleian Library.
Instead of having the illuminated initials and pages normally found in medieval psalters, Ormsby has included New Zealand-related images of birds, feather, adzes and mummified heads.
Barry Lett’s iconic sculptural dogs make their appearance in his latest exhibition at the Remuera Gallery, featuring in works such as Those Days ($24,000).
In this work the artist brings together a number disparate images to create pictures of everyday life. The hard-edged work looks like a child's simple jigsaw puzzle or a medieval stained glass window.
The images are simple: birds, people, jars, flowers, chairs, a happy a revolutionary flag waving figure and, in the centre as the focus of attention, is one of his abstracted green dogs.
The work is in the mural tradition with a cubist, flattened approach where the quirkiness of the images, combined with a masterly control of the painted, textured surface of the work, brings together the ordinary and personal on a grand scale, showing the order and disorder of the everyday life.
Joon Hee Park’s Come With Me ($4200) also features a dog in the centre of the painting. She creates a surreal environment which has a dreamlike quality, along with the simplicity of children’s book illustrations and the edginess of Alice in Wonderland.
The painting is populated with common objects, such as the little dog and a TV, along with strange creations – a snake with a rabbit's head and funny little monsters that could be out of a medieval bestiary or science fiction film.
The setting, an ordinary living room, is a child view of the world as well as a vision of the foyer of the afterlife with the inevitability of crossing to the other side.
The images and objects keep taking on symbolic and metaphorical meaning. The restraining donkey is a reference to surrealist artist Salvador Dali’s rotting donkey, and the small pool in the middle of the room referencesthe well of knowledge with the strange genetically modified, satanic snake drinking from it.
