Grahame Sydney

Grahame Sydney, ONZM (Central Otago, NZ) The 2005 lithographic portrait Myself, Looking Back marks a turning point in the work of Grahame Sydney, one of New Zealand’s best loved contemporary artists. Over 30 years of exhibiting, he has become celebrated as the definitive painter of Central Otago: its vast hinterland spaces, endless skies and folded mountains, dwarfing human occupation and existence. There is a somewhat surreal quality, an ineffable tension, to these dramatic paintings which have made his body of work iconic.

Now, he’s moved on. Not from Central Otago, where he still lives and works, but in subject and artistic quest. The catalyst was the his visits to Antarctica in 2003 and 2006, journeys of artistic discovery which resulted in a series of acclaimed limited edition photographs, presented on a dramatic scale, each image about 700mm across. The minimalism, infinitely subtle shifts of tone, and hard-to-define dimension which seduced him on the ice have now infused his exploration of familiar territory back in Central Otago.

“I’m a fog man now,” he explained at a recent floor talk at The Diversion Gallery. (For an edited transcript of this presentation via email, please contact Barbara Speedy.) The artist is fascinated with the minimalism and concealment of landscape glimpsed through fog. The familiar heartland still exists, but is not visible, and landscape features are only barely discernible, almost at the point of disappearing again. His paintings and lithographs capture that tension, and the detail seems to emerge as the viewer spends time with the work, and the eye adjusts to the subtleties of tone on tone. This is ethereal, a glimpse of a familiar place as if breathed onto canvas or paper.

Viewed side by side, the connection between the Antarctic photographs and the fog paintings becomes clear. Already some commentators are viewing the minimalist fog works as amongst his best; they are demanding and exacting for the painter and equally compelling for the viewer drawn into the work.

Few of his paintings are exhibited for sale, as most are sold to a private waiting list, such is the following for Grahame Sydney’s work, so the inclusion of the major painting Fog and Pond (oil on linen) in the exhibition at The Diversion was a rare opportunity for collectors. His lithographs are equally sought after, but remain affordable and very collectible works. The self-portrait Myself, Looking Back has previously only been offered privately, and just nine in the edition remain. Fog at Kane’s Pond had just a small number remaining at the time Antarctica Returning opened at The Diversion in early June 2008.

Recent Work 

The Antarctic photographs pursue a point at which a shift in tone or light is last discernible, often at dawn or dusk. This is the southern continent viewed very much through the eyes of a meticulous painter. Sydney doesn’t set out to test the technical limits of the camera, but the limits of the light and creativity. “It is my hope that when people study these rather minimal images they still find the unmistakable ‘Sydney’ manner and style.”

Some images express his sense of history such as the explorers who crossed the Barrier, the vast ice shelf the size of France, with no reference points or any idea of what they were walking towards until they got there. The green flagged ‘roads’ give us a sense of the immense scale of the place, but those explorers had no such guide.

Where most invited artists have gone in the summer, Grahame Sydney chose to go in October when the light was extremely subtle, but found conditions were prohibitive for an artist who always begins with drawings and studies en plein air (outdoors). Oil paint became like cement, watercolours froze and crackled, paper became brittle, and even pencil drawing was impossible because frostbite threatened within a minute. He turned to the camera and discovered a new world of possibility, ultimately finding it could be ‘a legitimate art medium for me’.

The photographs are all Durst Lambda photographic prints on archival paper, produced in very limited editions of 10. In some cases (such as Barrier 2 and Pegasus) only one or two are still available. They have been exhibited in several public galleries including the Dowse Art Museum in Lower Hutt, the Christchurch City Art Gallery and the Dunedin Public Art Gallery. His work is held in national collections including Te Papa Tongarewa (the Museum of New Zealand) and in international private collections including Elton John, Nelson Mandela and Sam Neill.

Lithographs: His recent stone lithographs were produced using archival materials. Fog at Kane’s Pond appears almost monotone at first but in fact involves five separate printings from the stone. For Myself, Looking Back he chose to print the background in the same colour as the original stone, incorporating the indentations of the stone as an artistic device. We have two further lithographs available: the intense Night Station, based on an image from the Cook Islands, produced using two colours to accentuate the eeriness and unease of being alone at night; and the poignant Harrier of a hawk caught on the wire, presenting a metaphor for the fragility of the Central Otago environment.

More About the Artist 

Grahame Sydney was born in Dunedin in the South Island of New Zealand in 1948. He graduated Bachelor of Arts in 1969 and began his full time art career in 1974 after a period of teaching and overseas travel. He was Frances Hodgkins Fellow at the University of Otago in 1978, and exhibited widely throughout New Zealand, also in Sydney and London, since 1969. A major retrospective of his work, On The Road, toured New Zealand public art galleries from 2000-2002.

Until Antarctica, his focus has been almost exclusively on Central Otago and southern New Zealand and his intimate knowledge underscores the power of his paintings. He is currently the champion of the Save Central campaign to prevent large scale wind farms from dominating the landscape. He remains best known for his finely realist and iconic paintings, and as art critic Keith Stewart says: “you don’t just see the land here, you feel it”.

Grahame Sydney is also well known for strikingly beautiful printmaking, particularly figure studies, and has worked in egg tempera, watercolours, oils, lithography and etchings. Now, his photographic images of Antarctica, sometimes surreal, sometimes almost storytelling, demand a further review of preconceptions about the breadth of his art. He was awarded the ONZM (Officer of the Order of New Zealand Merit) in 2003 for his huge contribution to New Zealand painting. Major publications on his work, including The Art of Grahame Sydney and Timeless Land, have won prominent book awards. A book on his Antarctic photographs will be published in October.

Please contact us to confirm current prices: most prices are posted at the time of exhibition, and may be revised as the artists’ values increase.