New works by Martin Doyle At Roar

8th – 24th March

ROAR! gallery 55 Abel Smith St, above Real Groovy, Wellington

New works by Martin Doyle

Martin Doyle is a predominantly self-taught painter. A man with a passion for life as well as painting, he is an artist who goes at a canvas with all guns blazing. Currently using acrylic paints on hardboard and canvas, he explores themes and stories about life in the real world. His character emotions and lives can be read clearly in their stances and expressions, where imagination spills into actual representation. A recent work of his depicted an argument between man and woman, where their words became a physical battleground; rats and multi-lingual insults being hurled across the painting.

For this show he has chosen to work with the theme of St Patrick. In inimitable Doyle style, he has investigated the man as he might have been as a real person, rather then as a glorified and exalted saint;

“I noticed that one of the proposed dates for the show was going to be St Patrick’s Day. It got me wondering if he might be a possible theme for the exhibition. I was familiar with a few stained glass images of him round Wellington, and one or two imposing white statues in churches. Is much known about the life of the man? Did he have a reality separate from the legends and myth? Was he just ‘always perfect’ or did he evolve through his life? To the non-religious, is he of any great interest? At the library, I found out that towards the end of his time he wrote an account of his own life. I read it.Â

So here he was, no academic but one hell of an individual, spitting out his story in simple, conversational language. I have based my pictures on the ideas and images that came to me reading his words. My exhibition is definitely not ‘devout and traditional’, but at least it’s connected by a ‘hotline’ to the real man. My paintings are light-hearted, lyric cartoons. I have painted what struck me as the ten key points of his life. Each one stand alone. But in themselves they also form a kind of story that I hope people will enjoy following from canvas to canvas. A bit ‘new’ in some ways, but done with admiration for a person of faith and vitality.”

Artists talk Friday 23rd March at 1pm

Also showing the results of a three week residency by Vanessa Crowe
ROAR! gallery Artist in Portal Residency.
Monday 12th Feb – Sat 3rd March
Exhibition – 8th March – 24th March
Title - ‘I Waz Here’

For the inaugural ROAR! Gallery artist in residence, we invited Vanessa Crowe to come and make work in our project space, currently known as ‘The Portal’. As the name suggests, it is a bridge between two or even three worlds, that of the gallery, the public and Pablos Art Studios. The residency has been conceived as bringing an artist in to work in between the gallery and the studio, and potentially developing collaborative structures and ventures between the two.

Crowe’s work is a wall drawing which uses pattern stripped back to its basic structure of a grid to explore the connections between an artistic practice and the monotony of everyday life. The title refers to the connection between an artists’ residency in marking out a certain space for a length of time, and the teenage practice of marking ones’ presence with the words ‘I Waz Here’.

The pattern has developed through a rule based practice where a rule has been made either by Crowe or the artist who collaborates with her on the project. In this way the integrity remains of the work and there is a tension which develops between the element of control and that chaotic desire to simply scribble all over the walls.

‘I employ simple and methodical making processes, alluding to a sort of social idealism, often repetitive and resulting in bodies of work made up of multiple parts. The making process is an integral part of my practice, the work is always in a state of becoming – the finished work is more about a decision to stop rather than reaching a point of completion.’

I hope to visually articulate a play between discipline and day dreaming and in doing so perhaps provoke discussion about the discipline required to be an artist, the similarities between this and having nine to five job. Also, I want to draw attention to the significance of a process based art practice. While I will follow a determined order of doing things – i.e. colouring the grid with a different colour each day, I am unsure of the out come – unexpected surprises come out of the making process.”

Artists talk – Thursday 22nd March 6pm

Sian Torrington
Gallery Manager
ROAR! gallery
55 Abel Smith St
1st Floor
Above Real Groovy
Wellington
PO Box 9720

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