Artists

  • Roger Mortimer
  • Lottie Consalvo
  • Gavin Chai
  • Nick Herd
  • Sung Hwan Bobby Park
Föenander Galleries Aotearoa Art Fair

Roger Mortimer
Roger Mortimer has been aptly described as ‘a contemporary visual mythologist’ and is widely recognised for his distinctive use of medieval imagery, juxtaposed with early marine maps of Aotearoa. His work gives a post-modern and post-colonial take on the charting of the local coastlines.

“Mortimer chooses to paint maps, which are tools for location. ‘The map’ provides a space within which to locate yourself and to establish connections with your surroundings. It’s a way to identify a place, and to identify yourself in relation to other points, or points of view. While referencing a collective history, Mortimer’s map paintings invite a personal response, but more than that, they demand an investment from the viewer. Like maps, these paintings cannot be viewed in a glance. It takes time to take them in. As stories, they are both innately personal and universal”. [1]

His works have been described as “an allegorical scrambling of time and geography, that pushes at the limits of the human imagination” [2], giving rise to a dense layering of colliding or intertwined worlds and systems. In Mortimer’s fantastical landscapes and watery coastlines - people and creatures enact dynamic vignettes of beauty and barbarity, which speak to socio-political issues of this land, as well as a growing sense of global unease.

Mortimer graduated from the Elam School of Fine Arts in 1999. In 2014 he was the Paramount winner of the Wallace Art Awards and subsequently undertook the International Studio and Curatorial Program in New York. In 2017, a survey exhibition of his work, Dilemma Hill was shown in public galleries in Wellington and Auckland. In 2021 Mortimer had three works included in the landmark exhibition Oceania Now: Contemporary Art from the Pacific at Christie’s in Paris – a showcase with some of the most important and established artists working in New Zealand today. The same year also saw the publishing of: Apocrypha : The Maps of Roger Mortimer – a 160 page monograph with 7 essays examining Mortimer’s map paintings & weavings.

[1], Lara Thomas: As an Island : Navigating the Work of Roger Mortimer, 2021
[2], Kate Brettkelly-Chalmers, Art Collector, Special Edition, Auckland Art Fair 2016


Lottie Consalvo
Lottie Consalvo is an artist living and working on the land of the Awabakal and Worimi people in both Newcastle and Pindimar NSW, Australia. Consalvo’s works explore the human psyche, imagination, dreams, memory and their place in the real. With a practice traversing painting, performance, video, and sculpture, she looks at the physicality of the overwhelming presence of thought and the impact the mind has on all living things. She parallels these natural phenomena of the mind by investigating the human connection to nature, desire longing, loss and the ungraspable.

Consalvo’s paintings are often monumental forms with vast empty spaces. Working with a restricted palette across mediums, the artist often grasps onto forms and uses the high contrast of opposing dark and light to mark out a place for the unknown and the intangible.


Gavin Chai
Gavin Chai is a Tāmaki Makaurau-based artist, born in Malaysia. Chai captures everyday contemporary experiences through his careful composition and deft treatment of colour, light, and shadow. His detailed paintings of interior and domestic scenes are suffused with a particular psychological or spiritual charge.

Chai’s influences are a blend of historical and well the personal and present, making allusions to classical themes with timeless allegories His hauntingly vivid works – set within waiting rooms and unassuming domestic environments – are more metaphors for interior life and introspection, than depictions of place. Despite their often-stark realism, Chai’s masterful paintings have a an eerie sense of the surreal, which along with along with their restrained tones, create an uneasy sense of estrangement, isolation and longing.

Chai has a (First Class) Bachelor of Visual Arts from Auckland University of Technology (2020). He was recently the recipient of the Zinni Douglas Merit award, Walker and Hall Art Award, Waiheke Community Art Gallery (2021) and was the first artist to ever receive three awards at the Cleveland National Art Awards, Otago Art Society (2021). Recent public exhibitions include the Adam Portraiture Award Touring Exhibition (2019), Character Study: the figure in action and inaction, Arts in Oxford, Oxford (2019) and accept each word spoken with love, Northart, Auckland (2019); and Blue and White, Northart, Auckland (2018), Life as a Builder (2021) The Suter Art Gallery Te Aratoi o Whakatū and Trees (2023) at the Malcolm Smith Gallery.

His works are held in collections including Porirua City Council, The Stevenson Collection, and the New Zealand Portrait Gallery.


Nick Herd
Nick Herd, born and raised in Tāmaki Makaurau is currently based in Sydney Australia. Painting has always been a part of Herd’s life - gradually taking over - as his practice explores what it means to be human.

Herd’s current practice depicts abstracted human subjects and floral arrangements, both representing a captivating study of existence. His energetic brushstrokes preserve a subtle interplay of emotion, vulnerability, and a resilience that define living species. Herd’s work is characterised by expressionistic mark making and unrefined - sometimes grotesque - figurative depiction which navigate the tensions between embodiment and liminality.

His thick gestural application of paint, explores the performative nature of painting and the physical discharge of energy and anxiety; where the subject becomes a vessel for contemplating the human experience.

Herd undertook a Bachelor in Art and Design at AUT and recent His solo exhibitions include ‘Dear Georgie, I’ve been painting’, Jerico Contemporary, Sydney, Australia (2023), ‘She Loves You’, Lindberg Galleries, Melbourne, Australia (2022), ‘Bloom’, Parlour Projects, Hawkes Bay, New Zealand (2021), and ‘Fool on a Hill’, Lindberg Galleries, Melbourne, Australia (2017). His selected group exhibitions include, Group Show, Lindberg Galleries, Melbourne, Australia (2017) and We Are The Ones, Copenhagen (2017)


Sung Hwan Bobby Park
박성환 Sung Hwan Bobby Park is a Korean-born, Tamaki Makaurau-based sculptor. He graduated from Auckland University of Technology and has been working with ceramics since 2016, exploring the relationship between objects and people.

박성환 Sung Hwan Bobby Park, and was recently the recipient of the Annual Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Springboard Award (2023), as well as the Driving Creek Pottery Residency (2021). and was resident artist at the Glasgow St Arts Centre in Whanganui (2019). He also was recently awarded the Hugo Charitable Trust Award (2023) and runner up at the National Contemporary Art Award (2023).

Born in South Korea, he draws inspiration from the craft traditions of Korea to create work that talks about identity in the current global environment; what it’s like to be it a queer individual in a heteronormative society – as well as an Asian living in a Pākehā colonised world. His early works were presented at the ‘Emerging Practitioner in Clay Awards 2018’ in Whanganui and had been involved in many more national exhibitions in surveying contemporary ceramic practices. His recent solo exhibition, BTM Complete in Reflection, was shown with Auckland Ceramic Potters in 2022. It incorporated various materials in conjunction with ceramics to make ceramic bullet proof helmets (BTM bang tan mo) which scrutinise the homophobic policy of Koren military law article 92-6. Sung Hwan’s bullet proof helmets explores his relationship with the article 92-6 having served in ROK Marine Corps. btm Cheese Corn


Foenandergalleries.co.nz

Föenander Galleries contributes to the civic and cultural landscape of Auckland, located in Mt Eden, we celebrate a rich history with the arts and promoting resurgence with new generations. We represent a diverse range of New Zealand artists, presenting an annual calendar of exhibitions and range of public programs, with a team to offer insight, expert advice and consultancy.

Föenander Galleries proposes a focused presentation of new works by Gavin Chai, Lottie Consalvo, Nick Herd, 박성환 Sung Hwan Bobby Park and Roger Mortimer. Themes in the work proposed work for the fair will explore aspects of Interior Life, through allusions to the body, community, and everyday spaces. Each artist, in their own way, will navigate the intricate interplay of identity, selfhood, phycological shifts, as well as the ‘physicality thought’ and the subsequent impact the mind has on the physical world.

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