Ten out of Ten
Ten artists from 10 years at The Diversion Gallery:

Don Binney, Claire Beynon, Don Peebles,
Eion Stevens, Jeff Thomson, Lindsay Missen,
Melvin Day, Michael Smither,
Richard Adams and Wayne Seyb

On exhibition until 15 March, 2010
Open 11am-5pm daily at Grove Mill Winery, Marlborough

The exhibition includes superb new and recent works by 10 of the artists who have been with us over our first 10 years of exhibitions at Grove Mill Winery. We will feature more of our stable of senior and collectible New Zealand artists later in 2010.

The works are diverse, and the hanging of this show provided some unexpectedly wonderful juxtapositions – perhaps as you’d find in your own home or work environment.

Our invitation featured a detail of the sublimely contemplative painting of Tasman Point near Nelson, by one of our most senior and very collectible artists, Melvin Day. This was part of a series Tracing Tasman exhibited at the Nelson Provincial Museum in 2005, connecting Abel Tasman’s visits to the Wellington harbour (which Day looks out over every day) and Nelson/Tasman Bay. The suggestion of reflected landform, in Day’s signature aqua blues and greens, is handled masterfully in this very large work, superbly framed, a painting with real presence.

Michael Smither’s colours are just as distinctive, and he offers one of his joyful new Harmonogram paintings, exploring the relationship between the colour spectrum and the musical scale. We have a DVD with interviews in which Michael explains the foundation of this theory, but also asks whether we need to know, or should simply feel, with these works. They have evolved from his famous Harmonic Chart screenprint in the 1980s; the artist felt there was much ‘unfinished business’ in relation to these works.

Claire Beynon’s new work is also rich with colour – two paintings in oil and liquin – a transparent medium mixed with oil paint to produce washes of intense colour, as you can see in the images. These paintings arose from her last trip to Antarctica, in which she made a flotilla of 220 tiny boats from bamboo, and released them underwater, 80 feet below the ice, filming them as they floated and swirled their way to the surface, tipping over as they went. The film has just been shortlisted for a short film award in the United States. The paintings have a delicious sense of swirling movement, like a freeing of the spirit, and a sense of moving from water into the air.

From Don Binney we have a new painting of personal significance – Awatea Front Garden. At one level it is a meditative view of humble pots at the edge of his front garden against the burnishing wall of the fence. But it also harks back to earlier work – his Remuera Jug series linking the domestic and suburban with the wider landscape, and particularly his Ancient Earth series of sites of spiritual sanctuary. This is his private sanctuary against a world of change, noise, and demands upon the artist as he approaches 70 years of age (we celebrate this soon with a solo exhibition, his first for three years). Do the pots, with their outpourings of foliage, represent decades/eras? Perhaps. But beyond the beautifully detailed hedge looms the outside world – a shadowy building, and trees threatening to reach into his space, depicted less distinctly, like a peripheral noise. The formality of his own garden offers meditative space and subtly balanced colour.

This exhibition also features two significant paintings featured in the art book Inner Landscapes (focused on 15 artists with Canterbury Connections). A superb abstract Without Title by Don Peebles is a serious work, pared back and balancing texture and tone with great care, lifted by the gleam of gold in its centre. After finishing this work, he was reading The Rubaiyat by Omar Khayyam and was struck by the parallel between his painting and the first verse:

He inscribed the verse beneath the linen hanging in the centre. This is an excellent collector’s piece by one of NZ’s most important abstract artists.

Eion Stevens’ key is a powerful mid-sized painting that punches straight back at the viewer. It is as if the figure in the dark is poised to escape, unlock the blackness and reveal the world of light and colour we glimpse in the background. Eion often paints characters who seem trapped within a plane of colour, questing to be elsewhere... His other painting here, triangle, has a figure trapped in or beneath her own thoughts, perhaps wrestling with the idea of painting, given the ‘painting within a painting’ giving her the eye from the right.

Jeff Thomson constantly redefines what is possible with the humble medium of corrugated iron, a material central to New Zealand’s post-colonial history. He has many imitators, but stays ahead of them with astounding creations. Here, he braids corrugated iron strips then coils the ‘rope’ into a mat, in the manner of seafarers of old. Of course, the razor sharp mat can never be used, but that’s part of Thomson’s ‘irony’ with this most practical of materials.

Wayne Seyb captures the power and energy of the coastal landforms near Karitane (North Otago) with his signature expressive sweeps of thickly laid oil paint in Huriawa, a strong work from 2005. This is special territory for Seyb, who lived here for many years before moving to Christchurch. He returns often to paint, and it seems to bring out the greatest vigour in his work. We also have two ink and sand abstracts Wayne completed on his most recent trip, using the power of the tide to wash the sand through the ink, then finishing with layers of varnish.

The sea is central to Richard Adams’ new work too, some of his best paintings, with an amazing light appearing to enter the work from a corner or the side, like light on distant water; or with a burnished glow emanating from behind the painting. He is intrigued by the idea of the early seafaring explorers charting courses into unknown waters, guided only by sun, moon, stars and myth. A number of commentators have observed that Passage East is one of his best oil paintings to date, and the works on paper have the same quality. We have a small number of unframed works available by this artist who is equally known as the lead singer/violinist with the jazz group Nairobi Trio.

Lindsay Missen returns with captivating necklaces using found and antique materials, some chunky and some delicate. Two feature fragments of antique Japanese porcelain, set into pods of silver from a Victorian card case. Two others incorporate beads made from a piece of antique ivory, along with antique wood originating in Africa and central America. A few are shown here, please enquire about the other necklaces. Each is unique, and prices range from $620 to $1200.

Other works: We have various works beyond those shown here, so please enquire and we can email images. If you are visiting Marlborough and wishing to view stock, it’s worth knowing our stockroom is at our Picton office, not at Grove Mill Winery, so just call to arrange a time to view.

Remember there are also lovely limited edition prints on show every day at the MVH Gallery at the Marlborough Vintners Hotel, 190 Rapaura Road, just out of Blenheim. On show now: Kathryn Madill, Craig Bluett, Wendy Murphy, Jim Tannock, Olav Nielsen.