Manu Berry

Exhibition Tributaries: 18 September to 18 November 2008 at MVH Gallery, Marlborough Vintners Hotel.

Manu Berry is a fast-rising young New Zealand printmaker carving a distinct name for himself with dramatic and assured woodcut and woodblock prints. Born in Otago, now based in Wellington, he has caught the attention and praise of senior artists and reviewers, and his individual style has captured a growing following among art collectors interested in New Zealand stories and evocation of place.

Recent Work 

The connections of childhood, family, friends, and places are like tributaries into a river of new work, hence the title Tributaries of his 2008 solo exhibition at the MVH Gallery in Marlborough.

The beautiful Whanganui River wending into some of the North Island's most remote back country is a central theme in this striking new work, inspired by Manu's recent journey with fellow artist James Robinson to Jerusalem in the NZ hinterland. This is familial and familiar territory for Manu Berry, whose father came from the region. He found beautiful places of both dramatic beauty and contemplation, rediscovered memories of childhood holidays, including the retreat/convent where an aunt was Mother Superior of the Sisters of Compassion.

The work Common Ground features the old corrugated iron woodshed which sits just below the orphanage – the cross just visible behind the woodshed – against the rugged hills of this remote region – an image which could be "anywhere New Zealand" and resonates differently with each viewer remembering their own journeys to special places in the back country – another interpretation of "common ground". The series carries a strong sense of connection with place, people, and a feeling of journeys into territory both familiar and surprising on both a physical and spiritual level. The power of the New Zealand landscape is superbly captured in One Path and Uncommon Land, the intimate scale, diversity and sense of security in the land in Tributary, Jerusalem Bend and Constance.

The Rock & Pillar series captures an equally treasured place – the Rock & Pillar region of Central Otago where Manu Berry grew up, where the wind sweeps in unexpectedly and transforms the landscape, people become insignificant beneath such power. He expresses the wind as a force almost as solid as the land in these tight works which owe a lot to his love of Japanese woodblock prints.

He works in very limited editions – usually only five in each edition, as he likes to move on to new ideas for each exhibition. As they are very affordably priced, the prints sell out quickly (enabling the artist to move on to the next suite!), at or after the first exhibition. Each work has subtle variations in the level of inking as they are hand-worked. They are very affordably priced, despite the small editions, at only $400-$660 framed including freight within New Zealand.

More About the Artist 

Born in Otago in 1978, he lived in St Bathans as a child, growing up in a creative environment – his mother is a well-established Otago painter and printmaker, and noted artist Grahame Sydney is a long time family friend. The family then moved to Dunedin, where he attended art school after travelling round New Zealand. However he found that he had a strong sense of where he was going with his art and struck out on his own after a year at art school, much like Wayne Seyb whose woodcuts inspired him to work in that very direct medium.

Manu moved this year from Dunedin to Wellington, and this led to the North Island work. His work is unique for its power, impression of fine detail, and his expressive use of layered colour created by wiping some of the ink off before printing, and layering other colours over, so that each print in the very limited edition is a slight variation – like a monoprint.

He particularly concentrates on woodcuts rather than oil painting because the process is defined and doesn’t allow the artist to go back and change the work or put more in: he says it suits his "slightly impatient temperament".

Manu Berry has exhibited regularly in galleries around New Zealand, particularly in the South Island, since 2000, in solo and group shows and was a prizewinner in the Mainland Art Awards in 2005 with his woodcut Butterfly Effect.

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.