‘Unfolding Horizons’
An exhibition honouring the outstanding work of inspirational New Zealand artist Piera McArthur OMNZ
Exhibitions Gallery of Fine Art in Wellington is proud to announce the opening of Unfolding Horizons, an exhibition honouring the outstanding work of New Zealand artist Piera McArthur on Wednesday 10 September at 6pm.
Born in 1929 Piera is an amazing artist, vigorous and unrelenting in her pursuit of her own expression and purity in her
paintings. She is an example to other artists to be true to oneself, unconstrained and unencumbered by the latest
trends.
With a clear analytic eye Piera paints people with her hallmark bright imaginative colours. The glorious possibilities
of the colour spectrum, an infinite delight in line and a constant search to bring all aspects of an intensely personal
expression together are what characterises her paintings and reflects her varied and exciting life experiences.
“People ask if you are successful!” says Piera. “Can one judge one’s own painting? Surely one’s success would be to find
one’s truly personal independent mode of expression – to obey the assiduously cultivated inner voice, that makes you the
sort of painter you are, free and unfettered by fashion or the pronouncements of painterly cliques.
To have found one’s true path with its constantly unfolding horizons is the greatest good a painter can hope for. The
components of good painting are for all time.”
Having been commissioned by the Hon C. Finlayson, Minister of Arts and Culture and Minister of Treaty Settlements,
Pieras painting ‘The Apology’ was presented as a gift on 22 August 2014 to the Tuhoe people, in memory of the historic
settlement that took place in the Beehive on 4 June 2013, and will be hung in their new building.
This involvement with the historic Tuhoe Settlement opened yet another theatre of painterly activity. Part of ‘Unfolding Horizons’ deals with stories from New Zealand’s early days - radiant pounamu doors leading to a dazzling future for a
dispossessed people, defenders of Nga Tapa Pa escaping down a moonlit precipice, clinging to vines, a minister of the
Crown apologising to the Tuhoe people and shedding tears.
Other aspects of greatly varied work are present also; dazzling black and white, a series of portraits, musical themes,
nudes ascending a staircase, “homage ā Marcel Duchamp!” the colonial’s answer to one of the key figures of modern art
theory. There is food for thought, critical appraisal, and sensuous pleasure.
“An original that marches to her own beat, Piera’s work is the precise, definite opposite of mediocrity” says novelist
Alan Duff MBE. “Her paintings are bursts of vivid colours of strikingly familiar forms, rather like those profound
pictures you see as living forms, shapes and meanings...in your dreams at night.”
‘Unfolding Horizons’ opens 10 September 2014, 6pm-8pm
Concludes 4 October
Exhibitions Gallery of Fine Art, 20 Brandon Street, Wellington
Hours 10.30am – 4.30pm
For more information please visit:
ENDS