Bartley Nees Gallery

Bartley Nees Gallery

November 2004 January 2005: Listings and information

--

Chiara Corbelletto Archimedes¹ Garden 9 November 4 December 2004

Auckland based sculptor Chiara Corbelletto is included in two exhibitions opening in Wellington next week [November 9 & 12]. In a solo show at Bartley Nees Gallery, she creates a three-dimensional installation using screens and tessellated patterned structures suspended from the ceiling. Shape, material, light and space interact to create an abstract visual garden referencing the mathematician¹s search for meaning through sequential logic.

Trained as both an artist and architect, Corbelletto came to New Zealand from Italy in 1981. Her work also features in an exhibition opening [12 November] at Te Papa Tongarewa, the National Museum of New Zealand. Qui tutto bene explores the contribution of the Italian community to New Zealand society.

Archimedes¹ Garden marks a significant progression for Corbelletto and a movement on from an interest in repeated patterns in modular work to a new concern with the transformation, actual and metaphorical, of pattern to create new forms. Amazingly all the great variety of works in the exhibition have been generated from what Corbelletto describes as "a surprisingly fertile and versatile singular shape". Compositions created by overlapping and intersecting this singular form have Corbelletto says "opened up new and exciting possibilities of layered abstraction".

As gardens provide multi-sensory experiences, and sculptures such as those by the famous American sculptor Richard Serra demand to be spatially experienced, so too Corbelletto¹s installation Archimedes¹ Garden goes beyond the visual. This is an exuberant, shimmering, semi-transparent and multilayered Œgarden¹ that offers the viewer the opportunity to walk, experience and reflect and as in a garden, to find a sense of intimacy, harmony and beauty.

Chiara Corbelletto is an established artist with a strong record of exhibitions, sculptural installations and public commissions. Earlier this year she was a winner of the inaugural Cube Award for the creative industries with an innovative concept for integrated modular wall solutions. In 2002, she installed a large floating work in the Lampton Harbour Lagoon in Wellington, as part of the International Festival of the Arts. Since then she has completed a significant sculpture for the University of Auckland and worked on a number of other projects including a commission for the Auckland University of Technology. Chiara is currently producing a major public sculpture for the Auckland Domain, developing a wind responsive sculpture for the Wellington Sculpture Trust and working on a civic project for Waitakere City Council.

Image attached: Chiara Corbelletto, ŒOrangina¹, 2003

---

Max Gimblett New paintings 7 23 December 2004 and 11 - 29 January 2005

The work of Max Gimblett, described as one of New Zealand¹s "most internationally prominent and successful artists", will be seen in Wellington for the first time in six years when he opens a solo show of new work at the Bartley Nees Gallery on Tuesday 7 December.

The exhibition has been timed to coincide with a major survey of Gimblett¹s work The brush of all things which opens at City Gallery Wellington on 12 December.

Gimblett has lived and painted in New York for more than 30 years and has exhibited widely in the United States, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. His paintings, which are at once seductive and austere, move from flat matte canvases to gilded and luminescent surfaces. They break out of the conventional rectangular frame with many employing circular, oval or the Gimblett trademark quatrefoil support as seen in the painting Fandango - for Len Lye, 2004.

Max Gimblett will be in Wellington for the opening of these exhibitions and will be available for interview from Monday 6 December.

Image attached: Fandango - For Len Lye, 2004

© Scoop Media