John Hurrell – 27 August, 2024

In this group show, the selected works’ connection with the title is clearly stated by the anonymous image on the catalogue’s endpapers of descending precipitation forcefully hitting the ground, the shattered droplets bouncing up wildly in a splash. Like the seductive promotional image by Boomoon, a coloured shot of a cascading waterfall, many of the paintings or photographs are ‘watery’—perhaps being blue, puddle-based, angular, bubbly, low in temperature, streaky and glossy, or like damp (almost liquid) mud.

Apart from the ordinary simplicity of experiencing showers, the plummeting liquid hitting a glassy barrier directly, as in the atmospheric paintings of Gary McMillan, the title can also refer to a benign influence from above, or malignant: a blessing or curse sent earthbound from heaven.

The running paint drips of the abstract Helmut Federle and Shila Khatami works, though austere and morphologically understated, reinforce the unruly climate theme, while the two-panelled, three dimensional, ridged and encrusted shelf works of Koen Delaere push the sensuality of paint into new extremes of lush extravagance. Though nonfigurative, they dwell vehemently on the circular narratives of their own painting processes, possibly alluding to the unrelenting ferocious forces of nature, or the ‘new nature’ of Climate Change.

With the Federle and Khatami works, the former involves dramatic side-to-side smearing so that the horizontal wiping/erasing movements allude to traces that have now almost disappeared. No such subtractive obliteration occurs with Khatami, for only additive marks exist where the multiple vertical drips greatly add to the ‘skeletal’ / ‘architectural’ linear drawing. They elaborate on the painting process, especially the dribbling liquid paint application on the vertical stretcher. With black or white (or both together) acrylic, the use of a roller to make delicate fuzzy connected-up blocks is constantly emphasised. Wintery snowy textures rule.

Other contributions such as those of Hanns Kunitzberger possibly reference wet mud or rising steam, making temperature, humidity and saturated soil part of painting’s mimetic meteorological ambience. As blurry emanations with barely perceptible traces of dark brooding colour, these nuanced smudges are impossible to focus, and so for the viewer potentially present a tension that induces claustrophobia, menace and panic, despite their vertical mandalalike suggestions of contemplative ambiguous beauty.

Mark Francis’ skilled use of blurred paint is different again, accentuating the vertical, but still leaving dark gridded rhythms evenly distributed, sufficiently established to assert a strident muscularity. The bleary ambience suggests a cold snowy winter, the ‘barbed wire’ grid an implied hovering barrier, low in temperature, that needs to be crossed.

The late Lawrence Carroll’s blue paintings of cut-out, layered, oil paint skins, seem to reference patchwork (especially denim). These, you could argue, allude to repeatedly repaired clothing, tough but damaged apparel, soon to be discarded, that you might initially need in hostile winter weather.

For Aucklanders sick of the cold, but welcoming with hopeful anticipation envisaged blue skies and being dry, this clever thematic show helps cross their fingers for transitional spring. Indoor artworks for thinking ahead and pondering outdoor tactilities.

John Hurrell

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