Badcock collection on show at Saffron

Badcock collection on show at Saffron

With autumn looming, after a summer we've barely experienced, what better way to forego the "seasonal blues" than by celebrating spring and the floral beauty and rebirth it brings.

A major art exhibition being mounted by South Canterbury's Saffron Gallery of Art, situated on the outskirts of Timaru in the Ken Wills complex, is offering just such an opportunity.

The exhibition of a diverse selection of works by renowned Geraldine artist John Badcock will have a gala opening on Friday, March 5 at 7pm and will continue to run throughout the month of March. Ticket price to attend the occasion, to be opened by Timaru district mayor Janie Annear and at which the artist will speak, is $25 and proceeds are in aid of Hospice South Canterbury.

Spearheading Saffron Gallery's showing is Badcock's series of garden works painted on location at Waimarie Gardens at the head of the Waihi gorge. These striking, richly textured multi-dimensional works portray the changing face of the gardens in spring time - something for which Waimarie is feted - and which Badcock painted for an entire season capturing the subtle alterations in the profusion of blooms. Numerous visitors take advantage to view the beautiful gardens when they are open to the public throughout October and November.

The Garden Series, however, is not all that displays multi-dimensional characteristics - there are further aspects to the exhibition giving it a multi-faceted appeal.

It will also include significant portraiture, a John Badcock hallmark, displaying the much lauded series "Passing People", a series of 100 portraits which Badcock describes as being for him "a very major work."
Its focus is local people with whom he came into contact through daily life and the portraiture evolved, he says from "coming out of a very black period of what was happening in the world. I needed to re-visit portraiture to see if I was still on track [with that genre]. I did one, in a traditional way looking for a complete likeness [of the subject]. Then I thought one doesn't mean anything."

Thus the series came about. It has been exhibited to enormous acclaim in a number of New Zealand galleries and Saffron Gallery owner Rosemary Walden says that having this additional component to the John Badcock exhibition is "a very compelling adjunct to his wonderful Garden Series - which in itself is a major drawcard.

"Passing People is a portraiture classic and has additional significance because it is representative of people of our region. I know of people who have visited this exhibition three or four times and still want to see it again. It is a series that has that kind of magnetism."

Integral to the showing as a vehicle to raise funds for Hospice SC is the unveiling and first showing of a portrait painted by Badcock of Timaru identity, the late Jenny Ferguson. This was completed during her last days in Hospice.
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ABOUT JOHN BADCOCK

Born in Queenstown, but a resident of Geraldine for some 30 years, John Badcock comes from a family of artistic talent. Primarily self-taught, as a young boy he would join his father, Douglas Badcock, on various painting expeditions.

He has been painting for three decades and his work covers many spheres and has attracted an international following. His renowned reputation is based primarily on portraiture, but his series of works ranging from oils to charcoals, cover an all-encompassing range of subjects. As he puts it: [I paint] "Whatever takes my fancy at the time."

This ranges from his self-described "dark Periods" when he feels "politically inclined to react to the current social environment, the calendar of what is happening in the world", to the lighter, more joyous garden works where "I have the pleasure of setting up a large canvas in the environment and just letting go - enjoying the lushness of colour, the use of paint and its texture and moisture and just being amongst it; it's very much a reactionary thing."

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