Carrying the Beast is a solo presentation of new work by Tāmaki Makaurau-based artist Anoushka Akel. A group of oil paintings on stretched and un-stretched canvas thoughtfully record particularities of locale and often overlooked archival materials.
Testament to states of porousness, Carrying the Beast is the result of time and space afforded to Akel by an artist’s residency at Parehuia McCahon House in Otitori Bay, and her subsequent attunement to a museum of material. Sources include the silver bodies of kauri and kānuka, chlorophyll-coloured bush, as well as the branching forms and densely-forested surroundings of the residency pole house and its studio. In proximity, Akel has captured the all-encompassing views of the trunks of trees and their vascular branches.
Through processes of creative mimicry, Akel has interpreted historical compositions through her own hand, specifically those Anne McCahon (née Hamblett) (1915-1993) made for the Dunedin School of Medicine and the New Zealand School Journal. These illustrations which acted as both paid employment and artistic practice, have been particularly fecund in terms of their subject matter– the titular image Akel has extracted and permuted is that of a person carrying a donkey. This absurd, onerous and magical feat makes sense when one considers the beast to be a symbol of peace, and the collective enormity of carrying the possibility of hope.
Charcoal black, sun-redness, Levantine purple, vegetal greens, shadowy blues, lignun yellow, watery quicksilver. The matter of colour is of prime importance. Thick dark lines create discrete shapes as containers for colour and shading. Drawing becomes re-drawing as Akel’s lines replicate, co-operate and exaggerate those of Hamblett, for example, with the way she rendered triangular shapes of waves in the sea, the circles of a mad/sad king’s crown, or the curve of a donkey’s tail. The artist invokes Hamblett’s handling of the brush with mastery, confidence and athleticism – a certainty of line, requiring an exacting ensemble of brush-head, paint viscosity and focus. The removal of paint remains part of Akel’s painting process, though in this case rubbing creates a more pointed, area-specific loss, mimicking those associated with print-making techniques such as early off-set lithography. There is a play between the fixity of printed lines upon a page, and the fluidity of action, painting and gesture.
To touch, to hold, to carry. Akel addresses the question of how painting can be employed to bestow attention and care upon the people, objects and entities that surround her. How might painting reach out and search for the shapes that describe where we are today? What happens when it touches at its borders and rubs up against the very edges of things? Perhaps it is power that lies at these edges, in the lines, at the borders that hold. It is here that storytelling, the rudimentary and accumulative transmission of narratives becomes an act of survival. There is that which can be held, and that which slips away. It is the load-bearing structures that remain: trunks, branches, those with the capacity to provide relief… she who carries the beast.
– Victoria Wynne-Jones
Opening Hours
- Wednesday–Friday 11am–5pm
- Saturday 11am–3pm
Address
- 312B Karangahape Road
- Corner East Street and Karangahape Road
- Auckland 1010
Carrying the Beast is a solo presentation of new work by Tāmaki Makaurau-based artist Anoushka Akel. A group of oil paintings on stretched and un-stretched canvas thoughtfully record particularities of locale and often overlooked archival materials.
Testament to states of porousness, Carrying the Beast is the result of time and space afforded to Akel by an artist’s residency at Parehuia McCahon House in Otitori Bay, and her subsequent attunement to a museum of material. Sources include the silver bodies of kauri and kānuka, chlorophyll-coloured bush, as well as the branching forms and densely-forested surroundings of the residency pole house and its studio. In proximity, Akel has captured the all-encompassing views of the trunks of trees and their vascular branches.
Through processes of creative mimicry, Akel has interpreted historical compositions through her own hand, specifically those Anne McCahon (née Hamblett) (1915-1993) made for the Dunedin School of Medicine and the New Zealand School Journal. These illustrations which acted as both paid employment and artistic practice, have been particularly fecund in terms of their subject matter– the titular image Akel has extracted and permuted is that of a person carrying a donkey. This absurd, onerous and magical feat makes sense when one considers the beast to be a symbol of peace, and the collective enormity of carrying the possibility of hope.
Charcoal black, sun-redness, Levantine purple, vegetal greens, shadowy blues, lignun yellow, watery quicksilver. The matter of colour is of prime importance. Thick dark lines create discrete shapes as containers for colour and shading. Drawing becomes re-drawing as Akel’s lines replicate, co-operate and exaggerate those of Hamblett, for example, with the way she rendered triangular shapes of waves in the sea, the circles of a mad/sad king’s crown, or the curve of a donkey’s tail. The artist invokes Hamblett’s handling of the brush with mastery, confidence and athleticism – a certainty of line, requiring an exacting ensemble of brush-head, paint viscosity and focus. The removal of paint remains part of Akel’s painting process, though in this case rubbing creates a more pointed, area-specific loss, mimicking those associated with print-making techniques such as early off-set lithography. There is a play between the fixity of printed lines upon a page, and the fluidity of action, painting and gesture.
To touch, to hold, to carry. Akel addresses the question of how painting can be employed to bestow attention and care upon the people, objects and entities that surround her. How might painting reach out and search for the shapes that describe where we are today? What happens when it touches at its borders and rubs up against the very edges of things? Perhaps it is power that lies at these edges, in the lines, at the borders that hold. It is here that storytelling, the rudimentary and accumulative transmission of narratives becomes an act of survival. There is that which can be held, and that which slips away. It is the load-bearing structures that remain: trunks, branches, those with the capacity to provide relief… she who carries the beast.
– Victoria Wynne-Jones
