Light From Near and Far brings together many works from the Arts House Trust Collection and works by Audrey Goggin, Sophia Malota, and others artists.

The Morrinsville Gallery’s exhibition, Light From Near and Far, brings together many works from the Arts House Trust Collection and works by Audrey Goggin, Sophia Malota, Bridget Pahl, Angus Collis and Shan James, to explore how artists utilise a sensitive depiction of light to convey emotion and intimacy. Whether portraying distant landscapes or close domestic scenes, each work communicates a distinct lightness through the artist’s use of colour, texture, or their treatment of space.

Including works from 1930 to the present day, the exhibition provides a snapshot of the use of light in image and object-making throughout art history. Rita Angus’ painting Clouds over the Bealey (1930–34) replaces dark shadows with rich blues to evoke a cool remote landscape, while Michael Browne uses warm corals and yellows to create a sense of richness and warmth in his painting Burn Time (1990). In more abstract works, Georgia Arnold and Allen Maddox play with lightness, colour and form, leaving the viewer to decipher any subject or message.

Sculpture and ceramics works in the exhibition use different qualities of glaze and finish that interplay with physical light. These three-dimensional pieces engage in interesting conversations with nearby paintings that reveal and explore each medium’s respective relationship with light. The role of time and space in relation to light also becomes evident with the juxtaposition of the three-dimensional with the flat picture plane. For example, the radiance captured in Marc Blake’s Evanescent (2014) shares similar colours and luminosity with Graeme Storm’s Bellarmine style bottle (2009), but only depicts this particular snapshot in time while Bellarmine style bottle continuously plays with light dictated by the environmental context and conditions in which it is viewed.

Bios:

Audrey Goggin is a London-born, Tāmaki Makaurau-based artist currently completing her BFA at the University of Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Arts. Her practice is based primarily in oil painting and explores ideas of identity and cultural representation. She was awarded first prize in the 2023 Arts House Trust Secondary School Art Awards and was a recipient of a Pat Hanly Creativity Award in 2023.

Samoan-Australian artist Sophia Malota is based in Tāmaki Makaurau. Working in oil, she explores fond childhood and familial memories through painterly brushstrokes that convey a warm light. She was a finalist in the 2023 Arts House Trust Secondary School Art Award.