Absolution is a Tattoo, Body Piercing, Jewellery Showroom and Art Gallery, making it a unique venue in the Arts Centre Toi and also in a much wider context with the arts, the specialised nature of its services matched by the unspoken, yet close relationships that exist between all its services and creative resources.   

Absolution’s gallery space hosts a distinct and idiosyncratic programme with up to ten exhibitions annually, bringing together a diversity of arts practices from graduates and post-graduates and mid-career artists, collectively representing an infinite variation of alternative takes on life and its fair share of outsiders.

It is a consistently impressive schedule, with numerous highlights in its programme and among these are Nick Robinson’s Linwood from February 2021, a concise and beautiful series of photographs documenting the genuine charm of the suburb’s quarter-acre homes and its public spaces and parks.  

Equally compelling is Tom Kerr’s tribute to Bruce Springton’s Nebraska album from 1982, described by Kerr as ‘a track by track illustrated walk through, inspired by one of the most underrated albums of all time.’   And it is impossible not to remain haunted even a year later by Magdelane Clare’s Save a Life, Join a Cult, from March 2023, the subjects of her works featuring finger-burning hands and snakes. Clare is a local mixed-media artist with a post-graduate degree from Ara Institute of Art and Design, specialising in print techniques and sculpture, drawing and mark making.   For Save a Life, Join a Cult she acknowledged her exploration of the patriarchal ideology of women within medieval and Renaissance framework, and also taking the opportunity to position the gallery visitor as somewhere in the middle of a circle of bloody-mouthed witches and their confronting and demonic ritualistic gathering.  

Also in 2023, was Ynes Guevara Art, an exhibition of colourful geometric abstract paintings by the Timaru-based artist and former resident of Mexico, she describes her practice as drawing its inspiration from the uniquely South Island landscape and her rich Mexican culture, its heritage and cross-cultural and female identity.

In May, Absolution’s exhibition is ‘Garage Sale’ by Dakens Emporium (Jay Skelton), an artist who held his first solo show at the gallery in 2021, exhibiting a diversity of objects in a numerous range of materials, including art toys, paintings ,drawings, comics and more.  Interviewed by Reuben Woods, Daken demarcated his arts practice as being centred upon “bootleg art toys”, adding that ‘being a father lends itself to reflecting on one’s own childhood experiences. Trying to work out what makes you yourself, working in this new medium that invites play, wonder and nostalgia’.   

DETAILS:  Daken, Garage Sale, Absolution, Arts Centre Te Matatiki Toi Ora, 2 Worcester Blvd Opens Monday 13th of May at 6pm, 13 May – 7 June

IMAGE: Magdelane Clair, Save a Life, Join a Cult, acrylic on canvas