COAST is a group exhibition that directs its attention to the idea and reality of the indeterminate border between land and sea.  Curated by printmaker Marian Maguire, COAST includes the work of nine artists:  Josh Bashford, Jacqui Colley, Maurice Lye, Euan Macleod, Vivienne Murchison, Jenna Packer, Chris Pole, Stefan Roberts and also Maguire.  

 Her introduction to the exhibition draws attention to the coast lines of Aotearoa as ever-changing and fragile, detailing a relationship in which Nature is immeasurable, and the space between shoreline and land a boundary that further represents the sense of a relationship, one continually assuming new personalities in our connections to the world.   

This is also an aspect of the sea’s reality for American art historian and curator, Abigail Susik who has reconsidered the ocean adopting a new kind of disturbing awareness, ‘the world’s oceans starkly uncover the fact that culture and nature now interpenetrate physically and symbolically, and are equivalent in power and influence....  The current resurgence of interest in the ocean among contemporary artists, primarily photographers, speaks to the heightened awareness of the ocean as a location which transparently reflects the total permeation of life and art...  creating a kind of convergence zone or tidal vortex for some of our most powerful emotions about modern materiality and our interactions with it.’  [See: Abigail Susik, Convergence Zone:  https://drainmag.com]

Among the artists in Coast, photographer, Maurice Lye describes his photographs as that of a ‘scavenger, forever on the lookout for situations that appeal to his vision, and how people affect their environment.’ Lye’s photographs subtly detail our association with, and ‘otherness’ from Nature.  Stefan Robert’s photographs similarly share in the curiosity of the realities of his subjects, and he is recognised for his interest in photography's potential for paradox in relation to the deceptions of its claims, for example, its documentation of a moment in time.

DETAILS

Josh Bashford, Jacqui Colley, Maurice Lye, Euan Macleod, Vivienne Murchison, Jenna Packer, Chris Pole, Marian Maguire, Stefan Roberts, COAST, PGgallery192, 192 Moorhouse Ave,6 – 26 June

IMAGE

1.  Stefan Roberts, untitled, photograph