We welcome Kirsten Roberts to the gallery with her first solo painting show ‘Idol, Idyll, Idle’

We successfully introduced Kirsten’s practice to the gallery at the Aotearoa Art Fair recently with both paintings going in to private and institutional collections.

Painting is a well-traversed pilgrimage, a meditative act where the canvas as altar relays a pigmented transmission of image and ideas.

Arise the subject of everyday actions of faith, the devotees, the practitioners. Roberts research has drawn a bow between her painting practice and physical culture where surprising parallels lie in shared ritual; of time put aside - the daily repeat. The donning of appropriate clothing, comfortable kicks. The constant movement, up down, back forth, sequence and repetition. Visible improvement. Adrenaline. Pushing and pulling, wresting with limitations and fatigue of mind and body. Disappointment. And, endorphins in the hallelujah moments.

These paintings are an exercise in spatial ambiguity; paintings where a pathway is negotiated between what exists, and what we believe to exist.

This painted stage slowly reveals itself as a false idyll, almost as if these figures fall short of enlightenment. Paint thins to the point of the substrate reveal, or sits astride the surface.
Fast and slow painting techniques contribute to an experience of simultaneous acceleration, and deceleration of time and movement.

This is painting as sport, engaging in the circuitous game of figure and field reversal.