Pauline Rhodes returns to CoCA for new solo exhibition

Just over 40 years since Pauline Rhodes’ first solo exhibition at the CSA gallery, she returns to what is now CoCA Toi Moroki for a striking new site-specific installation, Time Ongoing, including recently digitised images spanning four decades of her ephemeral works in the landscape.

With an exhibition set to open at Jonathan Smart Gallery that evening, the February 22nd 2011 earthquake destroyed much of Rhodes’ personal archive. In a review of that exhibition, local art writer Andrew Paul Wood noted that “[Pauline] and the camera in many instances may be the only ones to see the physical work.” The creation of a new archive, bringing together digitised slides spanning 1985 - 2002 alongside newer digital images preserves these temporary, often isolated works for future generations.

Time Ongoing contrasts images from this archive with new site-specific works developed for CoCA’s Mair and North galleries, consisting of found and recycled natural and fabricated materials such as plywood and Muehlenbeckia, a characteristic wiry shrub also known as tororaro. Using rescued pieces from Rhodes’ quake-damaged studios, the artworks in Time Ongoing continue Rhodes’ iconic practice of bringing together the natural and built, the gallery and the environment, indoors and outdoors.

“We’re extremely proud to be hosting Time Ongoing, Pauline’s first solo exhibition here since 2005” says Jennifer Shields, CoCA’s Exhibitions Manager & Programming. “She is working at the very peak of contemporary art in New Zealand, with such a dedicated and unique practice.”

The opening event on the 30th of November is open to all, and doubles as CoCA’s Christmas Party.

Opening alongside Time Ongoing on the same night is an exhibition by CoCA’s Associates Programme.

Pauline Rhodes’ Time Ongoing: 1st of December 2018 - 17th February 2019
Mair Gallery & North Galleries
Opening night 30th November 2018

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