Artist fires colour into Central City

MEDIA RELEASE Thursday 8 November 2010

Artist fires colour into Central City

The public are invited to come and watch an explosive work of art take shape in the Central City this Saturday [10 November].

Paint will be thrown, sprayed and fired onto a concrete wall in Worcester Street from buckets, weed sprayers and fire extinguishers, as Christchurch Art Gallery joins forces again with Gap Filler to enliven the Central City.

On Saturday, Melbourne-based artist Ash Keating will create Concrete Propositions, a huge, abstract painting on a concrete wall revealed by demolition.

Projects and Team Facilitation Manager Neil Semple says that Keating’s Christchurch work will draw its colour palette from the surrounding natural landscape.

“We are delighted to support a work that promotes creative ways of ‘greening’ our gap-filled central city and we hope that this work will provide a welcome injection of energy and colour into the streetscape”.

Keating is a Melbourne born and based contemporary visual artist, who has been working professionally since 2004. His practice ranges from site-specific, conceptual, collaborative, mixed media installations, public and gallery based projects created both throughout Australia, and also internationally in residencies and exhibitions in Chile, Korea, Indonesia, Japan and New Zealand.

At the time of the 4 September 2010 earthquake, Keating was Artist in Residence at the Arts Centre as part of the SCAPE Biennale and he returns to Christchurch with mixed emotions.

“Christchurch is vastly different to what it was when Keating was last here” says Gap Filler’s Coralie Winn.

“He is excited about making a dynamic artwork in a city that desperately needs colour and life.”

The wall work is not Keating’s first. In September this year, Keating painted a 50 metre-long, 10 metre high tilt-slab warehouse building on the edge of Melbourne's Western District Industrial Park. He used the colours of the surrounding farmland to propose what he described as “a camouflage aesthetic for the surfaces of these imposing concrete block structures”.
Visit christchurchartgallery.org.nz and gapfiller.org.nz for details.
ENDS

Fact file:
• Concrete Propositions will be created on site at 117-119 Worcester Street (the Manchester Street side of the Cathedral Junction building) on Saturday 10 November.
• The process will be documented with still and video cameras and the footage will become part of future works by Keating.
• The public are invited to join Keating on the site between 9.00am and 1.00pm on Saturday 10 November to watch the painting emerge and even lend a hand with filling containers. Old clothes should be worn!!
Thanks to: Ernest Duval, John Reese, Cliff Mitten, Resene, Wormald & Tess Sheerin.

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