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Alysn Midgelow-Marsden
Alysn is an Auckland based artist with a northern European heritage.
Her practice delivers an invitation to create pleasurably intimate connections to personal experiences,
through subconscious, visceral and emotive interactions. Marked visually by a complex, lyrical fluidity the sculptural works articulate connections, responses, fragility and strength. Alysn is driven by curiosity about
the human psyche, about science and about the social stereotypes of textiles and stitch.
A scientific background, a continuing interest in the natural environment is often combined with a fascination about the traditions of widely differing cultures, times and connections with shared human existence.
Many works are composed of evocative forms and figures incorporated into surfaces articulated with
complex, undulating, knotted and interwoven designs. Themes emerge slowly through gentle yet obsessive mazes, exploiting the boundaries of the surfaces and creating subtle combinations. There is a contemplative narrative formed through the patterns and figures in the works, along with the working of a mostly unconscious human ancestral memory swaying in the tides of unseen forces.
Recent awards for selected exhibitions include:
Mandurah Wearable Art (Australia) for ‘What Lies Beneath’;
‘Wall Brooches II’, (Australia) for ‘Taniwha’;
‘Changing Threads’ Nelson Arts ‘Bernina Award’ for ‘The Space Between VII’. |
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Jo Harris
Jo Harris is an Auckland based artist with an art practice which is centred on the theme of authenticity of self. Using a variety of materials, with an emphasis on recycled and found objects,
Jo's pieces explore the concepts of public and private expressions of human experience.
Always striving to find authentic space for herself, it is her hope that viewers will, in their own way,
connect to her work and thus to themselves. |
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Valda Niederer
My European ‘consciousness’ has developed since childhood; my family had a great respect for history.
My tupuna (ancestry) includes the story of my great grandfather walking a thousand miles from northeast Switzerland to Hamburg to gain passage on a ship to New Zealand. As a young woman I was fortunate to
live in a Long Island Jewish community. From my first journey to Verrocchio Art Centro, near Siena, in 1997, the director, a maestro sculptor himself, informed my thinking. For 20 years he took me to churches, towns and piazzi, crammed with art. My own journeys in adulthood affirmed a European kinship; a contrast from the ‘young, suburban’ landscape around me. Exploration of things aged yet restored is a focus of mine – the ability to be repaired – paralleling the human condition of breakdown and renewal reappears in my work. Antique constructions of medieval villages are the origins of my concepts. The mastery of the pre-industrial era buildings, created by artisans centuries ago, command my attention. The consequential asymmetry from this craftmanship fascinates me. The eternal loving restoration; and the fully inhabitable condition of these buildings is awesome. Residing inside these walls provides a sense of permanence, and yet animation with locals enacting their lives within them.
For me, the act of making art is enormously physical and emotional. The world is viewed in sensory terms
and this expression of texture and tactility was initially a component of my mixed media paintings for 20 years. Now, a lateral shift of making aged buildings in 3D is a natural progression. Recycled metal, perspex and copper are my main materials – all gifted by generous local tradesmen in my domicile of Mount Maunganui.
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