Spring Sampler Exhibition

Spring Sampler at Starkwhite Queenstown brings together a group of contemporary New Zealand and Australian artists in an exhibition that fills the gallery with sensory experiences and colour. This diverse but interconnected group show presents a broad selection of art work across a range of media.

SPRING SAMPLER AT STARKWHITE QUEENSTOWN - Billy Apple, Rebecca Baumann, Jonny Niesche, Seung Yul Oh, Ani O’Neill, John Reynolds

Minimalist and exacting colour field paintings by Seung Yul Oh are met by Ani O’Neill’s Baby ‘Eke, dozens of crocheted baby octopi that flee across the gallery wall. Cast in a rainbow of hues, O’Neill’s ‘eke are joined by crochet disks from her Cottage Industry series, referencing intersections of Pasifika heritage and place via abstraction and 20th century art history. A large work from John Reynold’s Missing Hours series is fluid and painterly, while his ongoing Acronyms, etc… tiles bridge the verbal and the visual, capturing the zeitgeist of shifting language while celebrating, protesting, or delightfully muddling systems of politics and society.

Australian artist Jonny Niesche presents his latest seduction in a series of paintings with chromatic fields and prismatic structures that riff on mid-century minimalism with formalism. Fellow Australian Rebecca Baumann presents four works created with pen on paper. Delicate and minute traces creates gestural colour abstractions where mark making and sensory perception interconnect. Fresh, crisp and deeply set in the conceptual art making that guided his practice for over seven decades, Billy Apple’s screen print from his Forty Years series completes the exhibition with an exceptional art work from one of New Zealand’s most internationally significant artists.