Across her desk

A survey showing 18 years of work is an important mid-career event for an artist. Charmian Smith talks to Saskia Leek about her survey, ''Desk Collection'', which opens at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery on April 27.

It's hard looking back at old work you've left behind, Saskia Leek says about her survey exhibition on from the weekend at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.

''I'm a different person than I was then,'' she said.

''Saskia Leek: Desk Collection'' was curated last year by Emma Bugden for the Dowse Art Museum in Lower Hutt, and has been slightly reduced for the Dunedin exhibition.

''It was interesting collaborating with Emma, and trying to track works down and figure out what there was,'' Leek says.

''A lot of my documentation is quite poor in patches. I've lost things over the years and I don't know who bought them, and I've just forgotten what I've made. Even now I keep on remembering work that I have no documentation of and Emma's never seen so it wasn't considered.''

Another limitation was having to rely on owners' goodwill to lend the works they had bought, and one Bugden wanted to include had been destroyed in the Christchurch earthquakes, she says.

Leek grew up in Christchurch, and as a child visited galleries with her mother, a craft artist who enjoyed contemporary art. About halfway through high school she decided she wanted to become an artist and later studied at Canterbury University.

''It seemed like the best kind of job, being able to have your own visions and do what you wanted - I'm not attracted to starving in a garret, though,'' she says with a laugh.

''[Partner] Nick [Austin] and I often talk about what a strange life it is to be an artist. The concerns we have about things - when you step outside yourself it just seems like a strange thing to be doing.''

Leek, Austin and their daughter Agatha (now 3) came to Dunedin from Auckland last year, as Austin was Francis Hodgkins Fellow. While living in Auckland Leek taught part-time to make ends meet but last year with Austin's fellowship she didn't have to have a day job. They decided to stay in Dunedin, have just moved into a new studio space in Dowling St and are both hoping to live off their art. In 2010, Leek was nominated for the Walters Prize.

Leek has a trestle table at which she paints her small works, and some of them are propped on the dado while the oil paint dries and she considers them.

''Desk Collection'' refers to the fact that her works are painted at a desk, she says.

''I like to have this relationship where I can see everything at once, and I like working at a desk and looking at things in groups from a distance.''

Context is important, she says, and she sees works in her bi-annual dealer exhibitions as related. However, she hopes they also work on their own.

''It's something I worry about because I think there's this move in contemporary art where it's getting more difficult for this traditional idea of having shows in a gallery where people see a whole show. It feels like it's moving towards people selling things online and things as individual images. A lot of people buy from auction now, rather than buying directly from dealers, and that's like buying individual work, too. I guess it's what happened to music too. People buy songs instead of albums.''

A major turning point in Leek's early career was ''Hangover'' a public touring exhibition in the mid-1990s, curated by Lara Strongman.

''She was looking for someone new to put into the show. She asked me to do some new work for that and I did my first vinyl paintings for that show. It was the first public touring show I was in,'' Leek says.

In the late 1990s, Leek moved on from painting on vinyl to painting smaller works but mimicked the bright background colours of vinyl.

''It's quite interesting in the survey show; you can see these slow shifts into things,'' she says.

On the mantelpiece in her studio is a plate of plastic grapes that have found their way into some of her still lifes, and beside them a found painting of a vase of roses she thinks she might use as a starting point somehow.

She often uses found paintings as a starting point for her work, as she is interested in the idea of amateur art as a way of just getting something down or doing something for another reason than showing in a gallery, she says.

''It can be different things in the composition I'm attracted to. Sometimes it's the colour or the play of volumes of colour of the particular movement in paintings. Maybe it seems a bit esoteric. I've used paintings in different ways for a long time. I used to use them a bit more directly, I think. Things have just moved along and developed,'' she says.

Although her paintings are small, they take a long time as Leek makes many changes so the paint ends up being layered. Although it may not be obvious, the finished products may be paintings over paintings over paintings.

''I find painting really hard work. Rather than getting easier over the years, it seems to be getting harder. It's quite hard to keep reinventing yourself over and over again - which isn't to say I don't enjoy it. For me I've just learnt it's part of what I do and I think it's quite valuable to have some doubt about what you are doing.

''Sometimes I wonder if I'm really just making it hard for myself. For me it's part of the complexity, but I'm not sure how much of that comes across because in some ways they are quite simple paintings.''

Besides the survey show, will be an exhibition of works she has selected from the gallery's collection which she hopes will give some kind of context to her work.

''It's been very instinctual, whipping through racks and choosing things at first glance. In some ways I think something very interesting happens when you do that.

''I wasn't sure if they'd make any sense together or if they'd make any sense with my work but I think they sort of do because there is always something that comes through.''

See it
• ''Saskia Leek: Desk Collection'' is at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery from April 27 to September 20.
• ''Dayes and Weeks'' a selection of works from the gallery's paintings and works on paper collections, chosen by Saskia Leek to complement her survey exhibition, is at the gallery from April 27 to June 23.