(A Big Wall Project, Dunedin Public Art Gallery)
Black O (1997) is a conceptual work by Australian artist Kerri Poliness comprising six site-specific drawings. Integral to the work are a set of instruction booklets containing detailed requirements for each drawing’s exhibition instalment. In its last week at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Drawing #5, Drawing #1 and Drawing #3 of this work are on show as part of the Big Wall Project in the foyer space of the gallery.
The drawings were completed over the course of a few weeks last winter by the gallery’s technicians, Jay Hutchinson and Chris Schmelz. They are hand drawn in black poster marker. Poliness’s instructions for the work include specificities that mean each work is uniquely measured for the height of the wall it is placed upon. The work also includes a collaborative component in that the interpretation and application of the instructions comprise a key element of the work.
Black O traverses conceptual art and geometric abstraction, originating in the 1990s abstract art scene in Melbourne. For the viewer, the perceptual qualities of the drawings literally and physically loom large, enveloping one’s field of vision in a bodily immersive kind of way. Each drawing is a full circle that expands to become an optical hemisphere, utilising formal variations of the grid.
![Untitled [detail] (2024), by Motoko Watanabe.](https://www.odt.co.nz/sites/default/files/story/2025/01/motoko_w.jpg)
(St Paul’s Cathedral, Dunedin)
Local artist Motoko Watanabe’s exhibition comprises four large-scale textile works installed in the apse of St Paul’s Cathedral. The works are dramatic yet minimalist in the subtle reverberant way they both inhabit and are accommodated by the vaulted spatial dynamics of the cathedral’s chancel.
The formal qualities of the work are intricately detailed and abstract, with colour, texture and line being prominent compositional elements. In creamy white and pale grey, the soft sculptural wall hangings are all hand-sewn using two different techniques. The largest work, for example, was constructed over a period of 10 months and is made up of many small piles of pieces of fabric; there is an organic formality to the work, with layers that create lines in contrast with small and fraying triangular corners of fabric across the surface. The other technique involves sewing long thin pipes of fabric, or worms, as the artist describes it, and forming layered compositions with a more defined frontage.
Watanabe only uses recycled materials, often dismantling and reusing previous works with an intuitive and practical approach to the scale of the work. This approach emerged through the artist’s experience of motherhood, as Watanabe turned from painting to a fabric-based creative practice that she found worked well with family life.
(RDS Gallery)
"A Matter of Perception" features work by five artists — in painting, drawing, mixed media, sculpture and jewellery — with a curatorial focus on materiality and perception. The works contain or elicit these formal concerns in a range of ways, presenting different visual interpretations and sensory engagements.
Debbie Adamson’s contribution includes a selection of jewellery from 2015 to 2017, a period when the artist worked with the sculptural qualities of rubber and soft plastics. Adamson was interested in considering the value or authenticity of these non-traditional mediums.
Jon Cox’s recent paintings are experimental and exploratory meditations on the material qualities of paint. These works consider the liquid characteristics of paint and inherent formal analogues of rhythm and tonality.
Wesley John Fourie’s poetic mixed media works — in wool, cotton, silk and acrylic embroidery on cotton with copper or ceramic frames — are lyrical abstractions with allusions to the elemental and mythological, for example.
Jackson Harry’s bronze sculptures traverse figurative and abstract qualities, with two small-scale frames or chassis of upended cars.
Matthew Trbuhovic’s digital paintings are optical and sensory experiences that engage perceptual abilities of the brain. The works generate a kind of "optical vibration" and a sense of movement and visual curiosity, as the artist calls it.
By Joanna Osborne
