Marc Blake is not one to shy away from controversy. In fact he is courting it with his latest work.
Happy Birthday is printed digitally, with only one small corner painted by hand. Blake describes it as very conceptual and hopes it raises many questions with the viewer over literally how it is made.
"Hopefully, it triggers more thoughts in your mind and it lingers."
He believes it has successfully done so in the Craigs Aspiring Art Prize, where it won the supreme award and prize of $20,000.
"I know it’s been a somewhat controversial winner of the award, but it is what I take to be quite a positive result — I want that, it’s the whole intention of the work."
The Queenstown painter and gallery operator says while the work is quite new for him, using technology in his art is not. It has been the one constant in his practice, underpinning his process throughout his career.
"I’ve been drawing with the computer since I was 9 years old."
When he moved to Japan after university, the first camera phones and broadband internet consumer digital cameras had just come out.
"The whole technology thing has been at the core of my work for years, but mainly as planning and compositional aid for my paintings."
In the past few years, the digital side has begun to come to the forefront. Happy Birthday started out with photographs of his wife holding his 2-year-old son on his birthday, that were then cropped and played around with.
"It’s what this work displays. It’s made up of a drawing composed of photographs of physical painting and drawings as well as my own photographs and they are all combined on the computer and played with in the same way as you paint, layering and substracting, making decisions."
"So the resulting work looks like a painting. You see canvas grain and weave. Literally physical paintings are included as images in the work which has been printed digitally."
It leads to some confusion when people look at it, as they can still see that grain but it is unusually large. Then there is a small corner that is painted over by hand.
"It establishes it as a unique art work and adds that final tactile layer over the top."
He is not sure if viewers recognise the computer component of the work.
"I think they feel they are looking at an abstract painting and for some people that is a barrier. The whole confusion over what you are looking at — is it anything? — is all definitely part of the key response I’m trying to get from people. It’s between abstraction and figuration. In one sense, it’s literally showing photos of things, and another sense they have all been manipulated and played with."
In his past work, he has mainly played with existing images to make a drawing.
"The landscape work I used to do, everything was planned on computers and eventually then those things were rendered by hand. But I’m starting to question why I need to do that anymore."
The new direction has been influenced by his trip to South Korea last year, where he attended the Frieze art fair in Seoul. More than 110 galleries from Asia and around the world featured their artists’ work.
"I realised all of the work I was responding to was digital hybrid, analogue hybrid. It gave me the courage to make the decision as a painter, which is quite a bold one, to not use so much paint in the final work. But because there is so much physical painting and drawing made that then gets photographed, I’m still doing those things.
"The more I explain it, the more of a conundrum, a rabbit hole it starts to be. It is full of the gestural and abstract marks, all of the things which I love."
Happy Birthday has led to a new body of work which Blake will be showing at the Auckland Aotearoa Art Fair, which showcases contemporary art, in March.
Even if, as in Happy Birthday, it is only one square centimetre of acrylic painted over the top in the bottom corner.
The new works are formed from photographs Blake took while in Korea, which he visited with his Korean wife and two-year-old son, who was on his first visit to his mother’s home country.
"It was a great trip. It is so important to have an opportunity to see new things, especially at the highest levels internationally."
Despite the technological components, Blake says he is still a painter.
"They’re still composed of paintings, they’re just photographs of paintings. Also, with this one the final intervention with paint was very minimal, but some of the new ones, every work has varying degrees of final paint applied over the top. But this one didn’t need more, it felt very substantial in its own right and I wanted the question around that to come to the forefront."
Having the new body of work shown at the Aotearoa Art Fair is significant for him as an artist but also as a gallery owner. It is the first time his gallery, Broker, has been selected — it is also the first Queenstown-born gallery to show there. Showing alongside him will be Wesley John Faurie and Dunedin artist Hana Pera Hoake.
"It’s a huge buzz for us and comes off [the] back of a huge amount of work to introduce new ideas and opportunities for contemporary ideas to have a presence here. It’s also terrifying to be in the art fair — it’s a lot of work and costs a lot of money — but its such an important thing for us."
It is worth it to be seen alongside the country’s top galleries and artists in the contemporary art space, he says.
"It’s a great way to see the maximum amount of work in the shortest period of time. It’s way more hyped than walking into a museum. As an art lover, it is a pretty cool way to see new ideas and the Frieze show was incredible for that."
Blake moved to Queenstown in 2015, but after a family tragedy, stopped exhibiting to recalibrate before deciding he wanted to give back to younger artists.
Discovering a vacant space in the new Five Mile development, he approached the owner to see if he could put on an exhibition, and opened the space up to as many local artists as he could.
"I did huge shows — 80 artists at a time. I think I’ve shown 300 artists. It got extremely tiring."
When Covid came along, it gave him the time to create a new model for a gallery — an artist-led initiative fused with a commercial gallery. In February, 2021, he started Broker.
"We’ve just done our 14th exhibition."
He is endeavouring to run it as a commercially-focused venture, because the goal is to enable artists to succeed professionally.
"That’s why we are taking part in the fair."
Juggling running the gallery with his own practice has been hard and exhausting.
"It seemed like a bad decision the more I did it. I’m pretty good at setting things up and I think making it look good. The curating side of it is something I really enjoy, and the more I started to work with the Broker model and artists, it became extremely rewarding and fun."
While it is hard to go in and out of an art-making mode, Blake has found a way to do it.
"The art-making is still the priority and always will be, but I’ve become very good at knowing how much time I need for each project."
It also gives him the social contact that is important for artists, often at risk of isolation in their studios.
"It forces you out of the studio, but still very connected."
