Fleur Yorston at Toi o Tahuna art gallery

Fleur Yorston at Toi o Tahuna art gallery
26.09.09 – 21.10.09

Toi o Tahuna fine art gallery will be holding an exhibition showcasing new work from Fleur Yorston. Currently Dunedin based, Fleur spent many years travelling and working in Australia, Britain, Ireland and Thailand. She has been refining her aestheic in light of her cultural expeirences and estrangement from the New Zealand cultural situation. Yorstons’s work continues to explore numerous facets of cultural representation and kiwiana motifs.

“When we distance ourselves from our culture, such as living in another country, then we see more clearly what symbols, icons and words represent us as a nation and also how we appropriate them”

Jewellery continues to be a focus of observation in Yorston’s work. “Jewellery carries with it the notion of a memento, a reminder of the past that survives in the memory as a trace, and it may also have a commemorative function. “Depiction of these items of jewellery in Yorston’s paintings retains their tangibility as objects, but also transcends the everyday descriptive

Fleur incorporates elements of the alchemical into her work with a basis of jewellery and body adornment. Body adornment is cross –cultural and it can represent spirituality, beliefs and ideologies. It can become a vessel of cultural memory. Fleur’s work includes continued references to Gordon Walters and her trademark sepia tones have been added to with a strong ochre palette

There is an obvious Kiwiana reference and her work has subtle influence from Asian art, culture and body adornment. Jewellery provides continuity between past and present in Yorston’s work. It acts as a metaphor for the memento, the wearer and the transcendental.

Process has always been important to this artists and it is laid bare in her works. Yorston’s recent works are a combination of paintings and pigments inkjet prints, printed on Hahnemuhle fine art inkjet paper. Fleur’s recent series of prints The inspiration of prints came from a gold charm bracelet of Maori and Kiwiana charms that belonged to Yorston’s nana. It was gifted to Fleur a few years after she passed away. Fleur describes it as “an eerie coincidence is that I never knew she had [the bracelet] and a few years before I had started painting charm bracelets which dealt with NZ symbols and icons, my Nana never saw any of these paintings”

Images for prints are created by manipulating photoshop and photocopying. Yorston has moved the image while photocopying to give it spontaneous and distortionate effects allowing for a physicality to remain in the works. The process is important (machine and physical) as it bridges a gap between painting and the contemporary digital age.

The show will run from 26 September until 21 October 2009 with a preview on the evening of Friday 25 September 5.30pm - 7.30pm.

ENDS

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