Artstation shows The Maintenance of Order

AUCKLAND CITY COUNCIL

MEDIA RELEASE

26 July 2006

Artstation shows The Maintenance of Order

Painters Andrea Gaskin and Linda Roche explore notions of control in “The Maintenance of Order”, an exhibition at the Artstation Gallery between 9 and 29 August.

The pair are recent visual arts graduates from the Auckland University of Technology (AUT). They share a common interest in the way order is constructed and preserved and explore this through very different painting approaches. Ms Gaskin looks at how order is maintained in suburban life while Ms Roche uses the act of painting itself to investigate ideas around order and control.

Ms Gaskin’s figurative paintings reflect the maintenance of social norms and “keeping up with the Joneses”. Familiar domestic objects such as letterboxes and garden gnomes blend into darkness to suggest tensions between individuality and conformity.

“My paintings explore all that is real and imagined about suburbia,” says Ms Gaskin.

Ms Roche’s abstract work uses painting materials and processes to generate close relationships between order and disorder. A methodical, repetitive painting approach is employed to explore the potential for chaos within a logical art-making system which involves the careful application of thousands of diluted paint droplets onto large gridded surfaces. The compositions that emerge however are not complete and continuous as might be expected but instead reveal a high degree of spontaneity as slips and spills both disrupt and create the orderly patterns.

“It’s that fine level of unpredictability that excites me, the inability to ever precisely determine an outcome,” says Ms Roche.

Ms Roche is currently undertaking a Masters degree at Auckland University of Technology.

The opening of the exhibition is generously supported by Kim Crawford Wines.

Artstation, Auckland City’s community visual arts facility, is located at the old police barracks at 1 Ponsonby Rd, Newton. It is easy to get to by public transport with the Link’s ‘Artstation’ bus stop right outside.

The Maintenance of Order exhibition information:
Artists: Andrea Gaskin & Linda Roche
Exhibition: 9 – 29 August 2006
Opening: 5-7pm Tuesday 8 August 2006
For more information please contact Artstation on:
Phone: (09) 376 3221
Email: artstation@aucklandcity.govt.nz
Web address: www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/artstation
Artstation gallery hours: Mon to Fri 9am to 5pm
Sat 10am to 4pm

ENDS

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